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Dawoud Bey

Lambert Family Lecture

Q&A moderated by Gaëtane Verna

Info & Tickets

Collage image including a portrait of Dawoud Bey and two of his photographs. One shows two Black women in a church, the other is of a cabin behind a tree.

View Gallery

Oct 24, 2024 6:00 PM

Film/Video Theater

Free for all audiences with ticket

The talk also streams on this page US Eastern Standard Time.

ACCESSIBILITY
Live captioning (CART) and ASL interpretation will be provided for this event. It will be recorded and made available with closed captions and a transcript on this page for future viewing.

We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. If you have questions about accessibility or require an accommodation to participate in this event, please email accessibility@wexarts.org or call (614) 688-3890. Requests made by two weeks in advance will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the Wexner Center for the Arts will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.

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Renowned photographer Dawoud Bey returns to the Wex for a presentation and conversation featuring Wexner Center for the Arts Executive Director Gaëtane Verna.

Bey has created photographs and film installations that examine and engage with the Black subject throughout his four-decade career. His work often explores invisible histories of the Black presence in America, including his series of photographs Harlem, U.S.A., which was exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, in 1979. His recent series Night Coming Tenderly Black visualizes a journey to escape slavery on the Underground Railroad through photographs of sites around Cleveland and Hudson, Ohio.

Bey shares a presentation around his contemporary photography practice before being joined by Executive Director Gaëtane Verna for a conversation.

Join us at 5 PM for a reception prior to the lecture. An audience Q&A follows the conversation, both in person and via the live stream.

Lambert Family Photography Symposium

Interested in learning more about contemporary photography? Register for the Lambert Family Photography Symposium and engage in two days of illuminating panel discussions, artist talks, and in-gallery conversations about identity, representation, and community in the works of Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Ming Smith.

"People say don't stare. Through the photos, not only do I stare, but I allow viewers to stare at the subject, to see things that they cannot see with a casual glance."

Dawoud Bey, Columbia Chronicle

More about the series

Established in 2004 through the generosity of Bill and Sheila Lambert, the Lambert Family Lecture Series invites experts to explore global issues in art and contemporary culture with the community’s diverse audiences, often to illuminate the works on view in our galleries. To date the series has featured an impressive roster of cultural luminaries, including art historians, critics, and curators T. J. Clark, Douglas Crimp, Arthur Danto, Greil Marcus, Diana Widmaier Picasso, Robert Storr, and Lynne Tillman; filmmakers Julia Reichert and John Waters; and visual artists Teju Cole, Carroll Dunham, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Christian Marclay, Josiah McElheny, Taryn Simon, and Luc Tuymans.

Dawoud Bey looks toward the camera. He is wearing black glasses and a black shirt and has short hair, a beard, and mustache.

Dawoud Bey, photo: Frank Ishman.

Side-by-side portraits of an older black woman and preteen black girl sitting in a church pew, resting their arms on the pew in front of them.

Dawoud Bey, Mary Parker and Caela Cowan. Archival pigment prints mounted to Dibond, 40 x 64 in., edition of 6 with 2 artist prints. Copyright Dawoud Bey.

Black-and-white photograph of a small, old, cabin with a metal roof obscured by the trunk of a large tree trunk centered inn front of it.

Dawoud Bey, Tree and Cabin. Gelatin silver print mounted to Dibond, 49 x 60 in., edition of 6 with 2 artist prints. Copyright Dawoud Bey.

About the Artist

Groundbreaking artist and MacArthur Fellow Dawoud Bey examines the Black past and present. His photographs and film installations have been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States and Europe. Bey’s work has been the subject of numerous solo museum exhibitions, including Dawoud Bey: An American Project organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art (2020–2022), and Elegy at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) (2023–2024) and New Orleans Museum of Art (2024–2025). Bey was recently recognized by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2024) and has been the subject of several monographs, including Elegy (Aperture and VMFA, 2023), which chronicles Bey's history projects and landscape-based work. Bey lives and works in Chicago and New York. He is an alumnus of Yale University and is Professor Emeritus at Columbia College Chicago.

Tag(s)

The Lambert Family Lecture is made possible by generous support from the Lambert Family Lecture Series Endowment Fund, which promotes dialogue about global issues in art and contemporary culture.

LEARNING & PUBLIC PRACTICE PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY
American Electric Power Foundation
CoverMyMeds
Huntington

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY
 Ingram-White Castle Foundation
 Ohio Arts Council 
The Ohio State University Office of Outreach & Engagement
Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation
Martha Holden Jennings Foundation

SUPPORT FOR LEARNING & PUBLIC PRACTICE RESIDENCIES PROVIDED BY
 Mike and Paige Crane

WEXNER CENTER PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY
Greater Columbus Arts Council 
The Wexner Family 
Institute of Museum and Library Services
 Mellon Foundation
Every Page Foundation
Ohio Arts Council, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts 
CampusParc 
Nationwide Foundation 
Lois S. and H. Roy Chope Fund of The Columbus Foundation
Ohio State’s Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme 
The Columbus Foundation 
Axium Packaging  

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY 
Ohio State Energy Partners 
Ohio History Fund/Ohio History Connection 
David Crane and Elizabeth Dang
Melissa Gilliam and William Grobman
 Rebecca Perry Damsen and Ben Towle