Reynolda House Museum of American Art will host a series of dynamic, informative and fun events in conjunction with the museum's spring exhibition: Ancestry & Innovation: African American Art from the American Folk Art Museum.
The reception is open to the general public and will include a performance by the singing ensemble, University Men of Winston-Salem State University, refreshments and entrance to the exhibition and the main floor of the historic house.
Ancestry & Innovation celebrates the ongoing contribution of black artists to the kaleidoscope of American cultural and visual experience by highlighting complex and vibrant quilts, paintings, works on paper and sculpture by contemporary self-taught African-American artists from the rural South and the urban North. The art is taken from the American Folk Art Museum's rich holdings and was organized for travel by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES). It will be on display at Reynolda House through April 13, 2008 before continuing on a five-city national tour through 2009.
Additional events associated with the exhibition include a concert on Friday, February 8 at 8 p.m., entitled East to West, which will feature local jazz musicians Matt Kendrick, Keith Byrd, John Wilson and others who will premiere works inspired by the art of Ancestry & Innovation. An additional concert, A Celebration of Black American Music with the Triad Chamber Music Society, will be held on Saturday, March 8 at 8 p.m. and will highlight Black American music—from authentic spirituals to modern art songs as well as instrumental works by celebrated 20th century composers John Carter, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, and William Grant Still.
A symposium, A Day of Looking and Listening, will be held on Saturday, March 1 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Speakers will examine thought-provoking questions about self-taught artists and the work featured in the exhibition and will include Brooke Anderson, curator of the exhibition and the director of the Contemporary Center at the American Folk Art Museum in New York; Kevin Sampson, a sculptor whose work is in the exhibition; Robert Knott, a sculptor and professor of Art History at Wake Forest University; Belinda Tate, director of the Diggs Gallery at Winston-Salem State University and co-curator of Ascension II, an exhibition of black self-taught artists working in North Carolina; and Tom Patterson, a critic and co-curator of Ascension II.
On Sunday, March 30 from 2 to 5 p.m., a free community day festival will be held at Reynolda House in conjunction with Delta Arts Center. It will include musical entertainment by the Triad Youth Jazz Society and the Winston-Salem Children's Chorus as well as art activities for children. Quilters who have exhibited at Delta Arts Center will show and discuss their work, and nationally recognized folk artist Sam "The Dot Man" McMillan will be available to discuss his distinctive art. Little Richard's Lexington BBQ and George's kettle corn will be available for purchase. A free shuttle will deliver people to see several local art treasures: Origins and Ascension, two murals by Gastonia artist John Biggers in the O'Kelly Library on the campus of Winston-Salem State University, and an exhibition of Elizabeth Catlett drawings, prints and sculpture at Delta Arts Center. -- www.reynoldahouse.org
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