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African-American Self-Taught Artists of the American South

Talk at Franklin Center scheduled for Feb. 13

Friday, February 8, 2008

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Art curator Ginger Young will speak on “African-American Self-taught Artists of the American South:Renderings of Their Everyday Lives,” noon Wednesday, Feb. 13, at the next Wednesdays at the Center held in room 240 of the John Hope Franklin Center.

Despite their lack of formal training, a handful of African-American self-taught artists from the Southeastern United States have emerged as creative
powerhouses in the past 20 years.  In this talk, Young will discuss  these visual narratives and the ways in which they bear witness to rural  farm life, race, work, family, and childhood.  Young will examine artworks by such artists as Jimmy Lee Sudduth, James Arthur Snipes, Bernice Sims, Mose Tolliver, Eddie Hayes, and MC Jones.

An avid art collector for thirty years, Young has run a business in  Southern self-taught art since 1990 and represents more than 60 artists in  her Chapel Hill home gallery.  A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard's  Kennedy School of Government, she has taught at Duke's Center for  Documentary Studies and UNC's Friday Center, and has published articles  and letters about self-taught art in Bible Review, Christianity and the  Arts, Oxford American, Gallery Notes, and Folk Art Finder.  To learn more,
visit www.gingeryoung.com.

All Wednesdays at the Center presentations can be seen afterwards on the Duke iTunesU site.