PRJI Events

In conjunction with the exhibition The Art of Elizabeth Catlett, the University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press will sponsor a day-long symposium that explores Elizabeth Catlett’s art and activism in its transnational contexts. Although Catlett may be best remembered for her feminist representations of black life and the fight for racial justice in the United States, she was also a Mexican citizen, having permanently resettled in Mexico City in 1947. Her leftist politics eventually led Catlett to be declared an “undesirable alien” by the U.S., and she was barred from re-entering the United States until 1971. Throughout and despite this exile, Catlett continued to create politically charged work that transcended national borders. As she famously described in the 1970 Ebony magazine article entitled “My Art Speaks for Both My Peoples”: “I am inspired by black people and Mexican people, my two peoples.”

This event is sponsored by the University of Delaware Library, Museums & Press, with support from the Paul R. Jones Initiative, University of Delaware College of Arts & Sciences

Organizers: Dr. Amanda Zehnder, Ashley Rye-Kopec, Anne Cross, and Dr. Tiffany E. Barber

Please email ud.catlettsymposium@gmail.com if you have questions about this event.  Additional information can be found at: https://library.udel.edu/special/catlett-symposium/

​The Paul R. Jones Annual Lecture will be held on Tuesday, September 24, 2019, featuring transmedia artist and author Allan deSouza.  Based in California, his works restage colonial-era material legacies through counter-strategies of humor, fabulation, and (mis)translation.

deSouza’s work has been shown extensively in the US and internationally, including at the Krannert Museum, IL; the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; and the Pompidou Centre, Paris. deSouza’s book, How Art Can Be Thought (Duke, 2018), examines art pedagogy, and proposes decolonizing artistic, viewing, and pedagogical practices that can form new attachments within the contemporary world. The book provides an extensive analytical glossary of some of the most common terms used to discuss art, while considering how those terms may be adapted to new artistic and social challenges. deSouza is represented by Talwar Gallery, NY and New Delhi, and is Chair of the Department of Art Practice at University of California, Berkeley.

The Lecture will be in Room 100 of Kirkbride Hall.  A reception for deSouza will be held immediately following in the Recitation Hall Gallery.  His works will be on exhibit in the Recitation Hall Gallery from 09.17.2019 through 11.01.2019.