Holton Curates Driskell Exhibit in Japan

AN EXHIBIT of the work of David C. Driskell, artist and leading authority on African American art, was featured in May at Gallery Ami-Kanoko, Osaka, Japan. “A Vision of Paradise” was curated by Curlee Raven Holton (seated), who has worked with Driskell at the Experimental Printmaking Institute since 2002. At the exhibit opening he was joined by artist Toshihiro Toyoizumi (second from right) and Rodney Moore, nephew and manager of David Driskell (far right).

Holton, Roth Professor of Art and director of EPI, led a discussion on contemporary art that included a dialogue on African American art.

Holton also is featured in a new documentary film about Driskell, David Driskell: In Search of the Creative Truth, from Union of Maine Visual Artists. Their collaboration began when Driskell was a Temple Visiting Artist at EPI, supported by the David L. Temple Sr. and Helen J. Temple Visiting Lecture Series Fund founded by Riley K. Temple ’71.

Gallery Director Yukiko Nakajima (above, left), whose graduate research partly focused on Driskell, has fostered new programs in Osaka and Tokyo introducing the Japanese audience to African American art including the work of Holton.

The exhibit was a collaboration between Osaka University and the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora, University of Maryland, where Driskell is professor emeritus of art.