In Conversation with Kwame S. Brathwaite, Carter E. Foster, Claire Howard, and Sedrick Huckaby

Join Kwame S. Brathwaite and Sedrick Huckaby in conversation with Blanton Museum of Art Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Prints and Drawings, Carter E. Foster, and Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Claire Howard. Curators Foster and Howard will discuss with Kwame S. Brathwaite - Kwame Brathwaite’s son - and Sedrick Huckaby the respective upcoming concurrent solo exhibitions for each artist at the Blanton Museum of Art, opening mid-2021.

Kwame Brathwaite (b. 1938, New York, NY) is currently the subject of major touring exhibition, 'Kwame Brathwaite: Black Is Beautiful'. The exhibition premiered at the Skirball Cultural Center (Los Angeles, CA), and has travelled to the Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco, CA), and the Columbia Museum of Art (Columbia, SC). Additional venues include the Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, TX), the New-York Historical Society (New York, NY); and Reynolda House Museum of American Art (Winston-Salem, NC). A monograph of the same title, produced by the Aperture Foundation, was released May 2019 with essays by Deborah Willis, Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts of New York University and Tanisha C. Ford, Associate Professor of Black American Studies and History at the University of Delaware. Brathwaite’s work has recently been acquired by such institutions as The Studio Museum in Harlem (New York, NY); National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC); Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY); Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University (Chicago, IL); Minnesota Museum of American Art (St. Paul, MN); MIT List Visual Arts Center (Cambridge, MA); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston, Texas); Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY); The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, NY); Museum of the City of New York (New York, NY); Santa Barbara Museum of Art (Santa Barbara, CA); Columbia Museum of Art (Columbia, SC); Sharjah Art Museum (Sharjah, United Arab Emirates); JPMorgan Chase Art Collection (New York, NY); and Sidley Austin LLP (New York, NY). Brathwaite's work has recently appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vogue, New York Post, New York Magazine, Aperture, and other publications. Brathwaite lives and works in New York, NY.

In a museum career spanning over twenty-five years, Carter E. Foster has specialized in the history of drawing and the continuities of artistic practice from the Renaissance to the present, and has organized dozens of exhibitions covering this range of art history. He started his position as Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Blanton Museum of Art in September of 2016. Carter worked at the Whitney Museum of American Art for over 11 years, serving as the Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawing, and he was on the team curators who developed the Whitney’s inaugural display in its new building, 'America is Hard to See'. An expert on Edward Hopper, he developed the 2013 exhibition Hopper Drawing and edited and co-authored its award-winning catalogue. Prior to the Whitney, he held curatorial positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Claire Howard is the assistant curator of modern and contemporary art at the Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin. Her exhibitions at the Blanton include 'Ideas in Sensuous Form: The International Symbolist Movement', 'Lily Cox-Richard: She-Wolf + Lower Figs', and 'Joiri Minaya: Labadee'. Claire held the 2016-2017 Vivian L. Smith Foundation Fellowship at the Menil Collection and previously worked at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Fabric Workshop and Museum, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and Wellesley College’s Davis Museum. Her scholarly research focuses on Paris-based Surrealist journals and exhibitions of the 1950s and 1960s in dialogue with post-World War II cultural shifts. She earned a PhD and MA in art history from The University of Texas at Austin and a BA in art history and English from Wellesley College.  

Sedrick Huckaby (b. 1975, Fort Worth, TX) received a BFA from Boston University (Boston, MA) and an MFA from Yale University (New Haven, CT). His work will be subject of solo exhibition at Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, TX) May 29 - December 5, 2021. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at African American Museum (Dallas, TX); Amon Carter Museum of American Art (Fort Worth, TX); The Grace Museum (Abilene, TX); Danforth Museum of Art (Framingham, MA); and Valley House Gallery (Dallas, TX). Huckaby has been the recipient of awards and fellowships such as Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant (New York, NY); Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (New York, NY); The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition (Washington, D.C.); John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (New York, NY); and the 2018 Texas State Visual Artist Award. His work is in the collections of Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, CA); the African American Museum (Dallas, TX); McNay Art Museum (San Antonio, TX); Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University (Durham, NC); Minneapolis Institute of Art (Minneapolis, MN); and the U.S. Embassy, Namibia (Republic of Namibia, South Africa). His work has been featured in various publications including Artforum, Hyperallergic, National Geographic, and The Houston Chronicle. Huckaby lives and works in Fort Worth, TX.