VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

The Menil Collection presents a Panel Discussion and Booksigning:  Historians Celebrate the Image of the Black's Fifty Years of Using Art to Counter Racism, Friday, March 18, 2011, 4:30 p.m.

Featuring:  John Boles, moderator; speakers: Peter Wood; Sharmila Sen, General Editor for the Humanities, Harvard University Press; Rick Lowe; and Karen C. C. Dalton.

In 1960 responding to the prevailing climate of racism, John and Dominique de Menil launched an ambitious project: a photo archive that sought to gather every depiction of people of African descent from ancient Egypt forward. Later a series of books called The Image of the Black in Western Art paired images from the archive with essays by eminent historians.

In 1992 the project moved from Houston to Harvard’s W. E. B. Du Bois Institute; this fall Harvard University Press will republish the original volumes, plus five additional books. When the Organization of American Historians meets in Houston in March 2011, the Menil Collection will mark the project’s 50th anniversary with this panel that brings together historians, artists, and editors to consider the archival program’s origin, intent, and achievements.

A booksigning will follow.