Please join us for The Artist's Voice featuring Jack Whitten in conversation with Assistant Curator Naima J. Keith. New York-based artist Jack Whitten's (b. 1939) earliest experiments with painting date back to the 1960s, a period during which he created dynamic works inspired by abstract expressionism. Noted for their raucous colors and density of gesture combined with topical content, these artworks manifest emotionally complex meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War.

Whitten's work has been exhibited in the 1969 and 1972 Whitney Annuals and the 1971 exhibition Contemporary Black Artists in America at the Whitney Museum of American Art; Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction 1964-1980 at The Studio Museum in Harlem (2006); High Times Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975, organized by Independent Curators International (2006); and Art 41 Basel (2010). Whitten's 1960s paintings and memorial works have been celebrated in solo exhibitions at P.S.1/MoMA Center for Contemporary Art, New York (2007), and the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, GA (2008).

This program is free with museum admission. RSVPs are required. Seating is limited. Studio Museum members receive priority seating, subject to availability.