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Points of View Speaker Series: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s with Dr. Kellie Jones

  • Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts - Historic Landmark Building 118-128 North Broad Street Philadelphia, PA, 19102 United States (map)

In her 2017 book South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s, Dr. Kellie Jones explores how the artists in Los Angeles's black communities created a vibrant, productive, and engaged activist arts scene in the face of structural racism. Emphasizing the importance of African American migration, as well as L.A.'s housing and employment politics, Jones shows how the work of black Angeleno artists such as Betye Saar, Charles White, Noah Purifoy, and Senga Nengudi spoke to the dislocation of migration, L.A.'s urban renewal, and restrictions on black mobility.

Dr. Jones, a 2016 recipient of a MacArthur "Genius Grant," is Associate Professor of Art History at Columbia University, the author of several books and has curated numerous national and international exhibitions, including Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960–1980 and Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties.

This program is held in conjunction with the exhibition A Collaborative Language: Selections from the Experimental Printmaking Institute.