Sculptural Legacies: A Curatorial Roundtable

Join a panel of museum curators for a "Sculptural Legacies: A Curatorial Roundtable on Emma Stebbins, Edmonia Lewis and John Rhoden," in partnership with the Heckscher Museum in Huntington, New York. This virtual discussion will focus on three recent single-artist exhibitions about three pathbreaking American sculptors: Emma Stebbins (1815–1882), Edmonia Lewis (1844–1907) and John Rhoden (1916–2001). Stebbins was a queer sculptor working in 19th-century Rome who is best known for creating Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain. Lewis was the first Black and Indigenous sculptor to achieve international acclaim in the 19th century, and Rhoden was a world-traveling Black sculptor who mastered a wide range of artistic media.

As the first museum surveys of each artist, these curators’ exhibitions meaningfully repositioned them within their broader networks, featuring new archival discoveries and resurfacing previously unlocated sculptures. Go behind the scenes to learn about how these exhibitions unfolded, and how the curators approached similar questions and challenges in bringing to life the artistic careers of these three trailblazing artists.

Speakers:

Shawnya L. Harris, Ph.D., Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art, Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia; co-curator of Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone, now on view at PEM

Jeffrey Richmond-Moll, Ph.D., PEM’s George Putnam Curator of American Art, co-curator of Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone

Brittany Webb, Ph.D., Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Curator of Determined to Be: The Sculpture of John Rhoden

Karli Wurzelbacher, Ph.D., Chief Curator at The Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York, Curator of Emma Stebbins: Carving Out History