About the EXHIBIT: The Wallach Gallery of Columbia University serves as a laboratory for curatorial practice and as a forum for bringing the University's diverse approaches to the arts to a broader public.
This exhibit explores the changing modes of representation of the black figure as central to the development of modern art. The models' interactions with and influences on painters, sculptors and photographers are highlighted through photographs, correspondence and films. The artists featured in the exhibition depicted black subjects in a manner counter to typical representations of the period. The works included highlight the little-known, multiracial aspect of each artist's milieu. Co-organized with the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
About DENISE MURRELL, Curator: Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery and Curator of the exhibition based on the dissertation for her 2014 Columbia PhD. She is also the author of the exhibition's catalogue, published by Yale University Press and co-curator of an expanded version of the exhibition, titled Le Modèle Noir de Géricault à Matisse, to be shown at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, in spring 2019.
About NEW LEAF CAFE: spectacular fieldstone cottage built by John D. Rockefeller in the 1930s. Designed by the famous Olmsted Brothers.
