Back to News & PressTheaster Gates and Nari Ward Coming to AMFA for Free Talk on November 7, 2024
World-Renowned Artists Theaster Gates and Nari Ward Coming to the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts for Free Talk on November 7, 2024
Artists-in-Residence Dongyi Wu and Katherine Brimberry in the Museum’s Fall Programming Lineup
The Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts (AMFA) is set to welcome award-winning artists Theaster Gates and Nari Ward to the museum for Undivided on Thursday, November 7, 2024, at 6:00 p.m. in the Performing Arts Theater. Tickets to this once-in-a-lifetime event are free to the public with registration recommended on arkmfa.org. AMFA members and corporate partners are invited to a pre-event Member Mingle to learn more about the artists.
AMFA’s annual Undivided series redefines the traditional conventions of an artist talk by pairing contemporary artists together to interview each other, offering audiences a look into the minds of working artists and the ideas that fuel their practices.
Both Gates and Ward see art as a tool for social change, using discarded and repurposed objects in innovative ways to confront issues ranging from value to spiritualism.
As an Artes Mundi 6 prize winner and a recipient of the Légion d'Honneur, Gates has exhibited and performed around the world and is perhaps most widely known for his non-profit Rebuild Foundation (originally called Dorchester Projects). Beginning with a single-family home in 2009, Gates has revived nearly 40 abandoned buildings in a distressed Chicago neighborhood to create artist studios, gallery spaces, affordable housing, and more.
One of Ward’s most iconic works, Amazing Grace, was produced as part of his 1993 residency at The Studio Museum in Harlem in response to the AIDS crisis and drug epidemic of the early 1990s. The large-scale installation comprised of fire hoses and nearly 300 baby strollers has since been recreated at the New Museum’s Studio 231 series in 2013, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston in 2019, and in several locations across Europe.
AMFA’s Executive Director, Dr. Victoria Ramirez said, “Their respective bodies of work show us the people, objects, histories, and memories that time has forgotten, and we are thrilled to bring them here to AMFA as a reminder to our community of why this kind of artmaking and expression is so critical.”
Gates and Ward join incoming AMFA Artists-in-Residence Dongyi Wu and Katherine Brimberry in the museum’s fall programming lineup of artist-led talks and workshops.
The Artists-in-Residence program at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts supports emerging and established artists by providing studio space, access to the AMFA Foundation Collection, and experiential interactions with Windgate Art School faculty, local students, and museum guests.
Wu is hosting two fashion jewelry workshops at the museum: one for adults on Saturday, November 9, 2024, and a second for teens on Sunday, November 10, 2024. Advance registration is required.
Brimberry, the co-founder of Flatbed Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Austin, is leading an intaglio printmaking workshop for adults on Sunday, November 17, 2024, at 1:00 p.m. with advance registration required. AMFA Circle Society members, Collectors Group members, and corporate partners are invited to meet Brimberry and be the first to shop an exclusive selection of contemporary art prints by Flatbed Press artists on Thursday, November 14, 2024, from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. Public sales will occur in the museum’s Amerine/Calhoun Glass Box on Saturday, November 16, 2024, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
“AMFA is committed to providing the community with innovative and unique opportunities to have conversations with and learn from some of the most talented and groundbreaking artists working today,” shares AMFA’s Director of Community Engagement, Chris Revelle. “These experiences help give our guests the resources to have a more nuanced understanding of how art and artists are shaping our culture and society.”
For artist headshots, view the AMFA Press Kit.
Undivided: Theaster Gates/Nari Ward is supported by the Alice L. Walton Foundation.
The Artist-in-Residence program is supported by the John and Robyn Horn Foundation.
About Theaster Gates
Theaster Gates lives and works in Chicago. Gates creates work that focuses on space theory and land development, sculpture and performance. Drawing on his interest and training in urban planning and preservation, Gates redeems spaces that have been left behind.
Known for his recirculation of art-world capital, Gates creates work that focuses on the possibility of the “life within things.” Gates smartly upturns art values, land values, and human values. In all aspects of his work, he contends with the notion of Black space as a formal exercise – one defined by collective desire, artistic agency, and the tactics of a pragmatist.
Gates has exhibited and performed at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France; Sprengel Museum Hannover, Germany (2018); Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland (2018); National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., USA (2017); Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada (2016); Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy (2016); Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2013); Punta della Dogana, Venice, Italy (2013) and dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany (2012). He was the winner of the Artes Mundi 6 prize and was a recipient of the Légion d'Honneur in 2017. He was awarded the Nasher Prize for Sculpture 2018, as well as the Urban Land Institute, J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development.
Gates is a professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Visual Arts and the College. Gates also serves as the Senior Advisor for Cultural Innovation and Advisor to the Dean. Gates is Director of Artists Initiatives at the Lunder Institute for American Art at Colby College Museum of Art and the 2018/2019 Artist-in-Residence at the Getty Research Institute (GRI).
About Nari Ward
Nari Ward received a BA from City University of New York, Hunter College in 1989, and an MFA from City University of New York, Brooklyn College in 1992. Solo exhibitions of his work have been organized at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX (2019); New Museum, New York (2019); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2017); Socrates Sculpture Park, New York (2017); The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (2016); Pérez Art Museum Miami (2015); Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, Savannah, GA (2015); Louisiana State University Museum of Art, Baton Rouge, LA (2014); The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (2011); Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA (2011); Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (2002); and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (2001, 2000). Select group exhibitions featuring his work include Objects Like Us, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (forthcoming, 2018-2019); UPTOWN: nastywomen/badhombres, El Museo del Barrio, New York (2017); Black: Color, Material, Concept, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2015); The Great Mother, the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Palazzo Reale, Milan (2015); The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2015); NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, New Museum, New York (2013); Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Rotunda, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010); the Whitney Biennial, New York (2006); Landings, Documenta XI, Kassel, Germany (2002); Passages: Contemporary Art in Transition, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Projects: How to Build and Maintain the Virgin Fertility of Our Soul, MoMA PS1, Long Island City; The Listening Sky, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Whitney Biennial, New York (1995); and Cardinal Points of the Arts, 45th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy.
Ward’s work is in numerous international public and private collections, including Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX; the Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; GAM, Galleria Civica di arte, Torino, Italy; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Istanbul Modern, Istanbul, Turkey; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC; National Gallery of Victoria, Southbank, Australia; the New York Public Library, New York, NY; Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.
Ward has received numerous honors and distinctions including the Fellowship Award, The United States Artists, Chicago (2020); Vilcek Prize in Fine Arts, Vilcek Foundation, New York (2017); the Joyce Award, The Joyce Foundation, Chicago (2015), the Rome Prize, American Academy of Rome (2012), and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1998), the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (1996); and the National Endowment for the Arts (1994). Ward has also received commissions from the United Nations and the World Health Organization.
About Dongyi Wu
Dongyi Wu (she, her) is a Chinese-born contemporary jewelry artist who is currently working as an artist-in-residence at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock.
She received her master’s degree in metal and jewelry design from Rochester Institute of Technology in the United States and her bachelor’s degree in jewelry art design from Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology in China.
Dongyi has won numerous awards and exhibited worldwide, including at New York Jewelry Week, at Schmuck 2018 as part of Munich Jewelry Week, with SNAG (the Society of North American Goldsmiths), the Preziosa Young as part of Florence Jewellery Week, and JOYA 2020 at the Crafts Museum in Barcelona, Spain.
Her jewelry practices have been greatly influenced by fashion, which she incorporates garment-making skills and fashion elements into her jewelry works, and focuses on exploring the relationship between human bodies and their surrounding spaces.
About Katherine Brimberry
Austin-based artist Katherine Brimberry attended Highlands University in Las Vegas, New Mexico, for her BA and New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico, for a graduate degree in printmaking.
She is known for her “painterly” etchings as well as her skills as a collaborative intaglio master printer. Her work is a part of the Library of Congress, 3M Permanent Collection, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Galveston Art Center, Amarillo Museum of Art, the Texas Tech Library, and others.
In 1989, Brimberry co-founded Flatbed Press to be a collaborative publishing press for fine art prints and open studio for artist-printmakers where presently as sole owner, she serves as the director and lead collaborating master printer.
About the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts
Founded in 1937, the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts is the largest cultural institution of its kind in the state, offering a unique blend of visual and performing arts experiences. AMFA is committed to featuring diverse media and artistic perspectives within its permanent collection as well as through rotating temporary exhibitions. AMFA’s international collection spans eight centuries, with strengths in works on paper and contemporary craft, and includes notable holdings by artists from Arkansas, the South, and across the United States and Europe.
With a vibrant mix of ideas, cultures, people, and places, AMFA extends this commitment to diversity through the innovative Windgate Art School, a dynamic children’s theatre and performing arts program, and community-focused educational programs for all ages. Located in Little Rock’s oldest urban green space, MacArthur Park, AMFA’s landmark building and grounds are designed by Studio Gang and SCAPE, in collaboration with Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects.