Elizabeth Catlett: Mentorship and Collaboration in Practice

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For this month’s Art at Noon, explore the expansive reach of Elizabeth Catlett’s praxes as a groundbreaking artist, educator, and interlocutor. Independent curator and art historian Charmaine Branch will discuss Catlett’s pedagogy in relation to her sculpture and printmaking practices. Branch will pay particular attention to the educational and artistic communities Catlett navigated throughout her life. Catlett’s relationships with fellow Black women artists illuminate the interconnected networks of friends, collaborators, mentors, and mentees who laid the foundation for African Diasporic artistic production and historiography from the mid-twentieth century into the early twenty-first century. The lecture will also consider recent scholarship and discourse surrounding Catlett’s legacy in relation to PAFA’s exhibition A Nation of Artists.