- Category
- Members
Member Lecture—Sargent Claude Johnson and the Harlem Renaissance
Member Lectures are available exclusively to Museum Members. Join today!
Welcome guest lecturer Dennis Carr, the Virginia Steele Scott Chief Curator of American Art at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. Join Carr for an exploration into the significance of Sargent Claude Johnson’s work, the artist’s varied influences, and his active participation in the Federal Art Project of the WPA.
Courtesy of Dennis Carr
About the program
Sargent Claude Johnson was a pioneering Black modernist artist, working in a broad range of media during a period spanning the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and ’30s to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s. Johnson’s career was devoted to creating sensitive and ennobling portrayals of people of color, drawing from a range of international influences. Following the lecture, The Work of Art: The Federal Art Project, 1935–1943 will be open for viewing.
About the speaker
Dennis Carr joined The Huntington as the Virginia Steele Scott Chief Curator of American Art in January 2020. For the previous 13 years, he was the Carolyn and Peter Lynch Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. His recent exhibitions include the critically acclaimed Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia; Cecilia Vicuña: Disappeared Quipu; and Collecting Stories: Native American Art.
He contributed to Art and Industry in Early America (2016), which won the Charles F. Montgomery Book Prize and the Historic New England Book Prize. He holds graduate degrees in the history of art at Yale University and the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, and he was a 2019 fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership. His projects at The Huntington have included Made in L.A. 2020: a version, the biennial of contemporary art with the Hammer Museum, Borderlands, a reinstallation of the Virginia Steele Scott and Lois and Robert F. Erburu Galleries of American Art, as well as an ongoing partnership with Ghetto Film School.
Ticket information
Advance tickets can be reserved in person or through MetroTix using your Member ticket code. All tickets reserved through MetroTix incur a service charge; the service charge is waived for tickets reserved at the Museum. For your ticket code or more information, visit slam.org/MemberTickets.
What is the Member Lecture Series?
Member Lectures are exclusive, live, in-person events held in the Museum’s Farrell Auditorium. Members enjoy a deeper look at the fascinating changes and ongoing scholarship by the Museum’s curators and researchers. Learn more here.
