Liquid at the Borders

The Wits City Institute, Studio X-Johannesburg, and the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) invite you to

Liquid at the Borders

A public lecture by Professor Robert G. O'Meally (Columbia University).

Professor Robert G. O’Meally will discuss the American artist Romare Bearden and his series of works based on Homer’s Odyssey. O'Meally, the curator of an exhibition of Beardon's works currently on a world tour, will discuss Columbia’s celebration of this great Harlem-based artist. In preparation for an exhibition in Johannesburg, this lecture will also explore the questions raised by Bearden’s work, and particularly by its many points of connection with African art and culture. How do we see Africa in the work of an African-American artist – and what does it mean to bring his work across the ocean to a modern African nation?

Bio: Robert O'Meally (BA, Stanford,1970; PhD, Harvard,1975) is Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature, and founder and former director of the Centre for Jazz Studies. His major interests are American literature, music, and painting. He has written extensively on Ralph Ellison, is the author of Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday (Little, Brown, 1989), and has also produced a documentary on Holiday. His Holiday book and liner notes for Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington collections won Ralph Gleason Awards. O'Meally's new project is a full study of Bearden's uses of literary subjects.

For more information, see here.