The Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College presents "Conversations on the Nature of Contemporary Curatorial Practice," a 3-part lecture series in conjunction with Mavis Pusey, Restless on view through January 3, 2027.
"MAVIS PUSEY: color/texture/demolition," a talk by Kellie Jones Hans Hofmann Professor of Modern Art, Department of Art History and Archaeology, and Professor, Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies, Columbia University
This talk considers the decades long practice of multimedia artist Mavis Pusey in painting, works on paper, and fashion design. When the wider art world finally caught up, it spoke of her works as embodying urban geometries inflected by tempo and movement manifesting the energy of building and construction. Pusey’s abstractions across media reflected cities made and unmade by development, while mirroring the processes of life and matter. Pusey’s oeuvre reflects the evolution of world class cities where she created (Kingston, New York, London, Paris). Her life gives us a window onto the art work of the many women of these and other places whose stunning visions are only now being celebrated.
Dr. Kellie Jones is Hans Hofmann Professor of Modern Art in the Department of Art History & Archaeology and a Professor in the Department African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University. Her research interests include African American and African Diaspora artists, Latinx and Latin American Artists, and issues in contemporary art and museum theory.
A member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Jones was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow in 2016. Her writings have appeared in a multitude of exhibition catalogues and journals. She is the author of two books published by Duke University Press, Eye Minded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art (2011), and South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s (2017). Her recent edited volumes include October Files: David Hammons (The MIT Press 2025) and, with Tumelo Mosaka, Black Curators Matter: Conversations on Art and Change (Getty Publications 2026)
Co-sponsored by the Kohler Lecture Fund for Art History, Pomona College
