WhoFish - Local Events and Activities

Title:	Louisville’s Black Avant-Garde: Robert L. Douglas
Date:	6/30/2023 - 10/1/2023
Address:	The Speed Art Museum, 2035 South Third Street, Louisville, KY 40208
Location:	Louisville, KY
Hours:	Wednesday – Saturday: 10 am – 5 pm / Sunday: 12 pm – 5 pm
Cost/Cover:	free - $20
Web Page:	https://www.speedmuseum.org/exhibitions/louisvilles-black-av ...
Contact Info:	502.634.2700

Details:

Professor Emeritus, Robert L. Douglas (1934 – 2023), a prolific visual artist, is a longtime resident of Louisville’s West End, a former community organizer, and a teacher and mentor to generations of artists and thinkers. Douglas’ work is at once rife with visual references drawn from art history and uniquely his own. A scholar, and multidisciplinary artist Professor Douglas explores many themes in his work, including (but not limited to): Defining Black art and aesthetics; connections between Africa and African America; standards of beauty and femininity; art and everyday life; and improvisation and abstraction in the creative and artistic process. Featuring more than 30 paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures, Louisville’s Black Avant-Garde: Professor Robert L. Douglas presents rarely seen work from throughout the artist’s career, demonstrating the breadth of his practices and the continued relevance of his work in examining and reflecting the Black community in Louisville. Under Douglas’ leadership alongside other prominent artists such as Sam Gilliam, G.C. Coxe, Ed Hamilton, Johnny Richardson, Fred Bond, and Kenneth Victor Young, the Louisville Art Workshop publicly debuted in January 1967 in a converted West End Louisville storefront with the exhibition Designs in Space. The show and the subsequent exhibitions attracted the attention of other local artists, who joined and went on to organize workshops for a diverse array of subjects including sculpture, photography, poetry, creative writing, music, and theater.