OAF Talks | The Drawings of Minnie Evans
Monday, February 27, 5pm
The Americas Society, 680 Park Ave, New York, NY
20 West 29th Street, New York
Click to RSVP (essential, capacity strictly limited)
The Drawings of Minnie Evans, a conversation on the life and work of artist Minnie Evans (1892- 1987) between Nathan Kernan, Elizabeth Penton and Wayne Evans, moderated by Esther Adler.
Esther Adler is Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art. Most recently she organized Joseph E. Yoakum: What I Saw, which was shown at MoMA from November 21, 2021 – March 19, 2022. Past projects include Betye Saar: The Legends of Black Girl’s Window (with Christophe Cherix, 2019), Charles White: A Retrospective (with Sarah Kelly Oehler, 2018) and Dorothea Rockburne: Drawing Which Makes Itself (2013).
Wayne Evans is the great-grandson of Minnie Evans, who spent much of his formidable years living in Minnie’s home. After 20 years of working with the special needs population in the New Hanover County School District, Wayne is now a Foster Care Administrator with fifteen years of experience working with a team of professionals in his district for a National Healthcare Company. His work ensures that all required records are in state compliance with North Carolina Foster Care State Regulatory policies. Wayne currently lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. In his free time, he enjoys reading comics, fantasy fiction novels, especially the writings of Anne Rice and other similar authors, visiting his son, and spoiling his grandson, Jaden.
Nathan Kernan is a writer living in New York. He edited the Diary of James Schuyler, which was published by Black Sparrow Press in 1997, and is writing a biography of Schuyler to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. His collaboration with Joan Mitchell, Poems, was published by Tyler Graphics in 1992. He is the President of the Board of The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation and Executor of the Estate of his grandmother, Nina Howell Starr, the photographer who introduced Minnie’s work to New York audiences and curated her 1975 exhibition at the Whitney.
Elizabeth M. Penton, PhD, A native of Wilmington, N.C., Liz has been teaching non-Western art and Anthropology at the college level for over 30 years. She took three degrees in Anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with her dissertation work on Paleolithic cave paintings. A lifelong interest in art and culture, and visionary art in particular, has kept the works of Minnie Evans near the top of her mind. In 2020 she partnered with the Cameron Art Museum to engage in a disciplined analysis of the forms of Evans’ drawings and paintings. Her forthcoming manuscript, Minnie Evans (1892 – 1987): A Beautiful Light, addresses the artist’s complex use of perspective and showcases the artist’s own words with the objective of elevating her oeuvre to its rightful place among the world’s famous visionary artists. Liz is also on the production team with Linda Royal of By the Brook Films, creating a new documentary film on her life and works. Minnie Evans: Visionary Artist will bring recently recovered historic photographs to light and introduce the role of the beautiful coastal environment as a character in Evans’ world and in her pictures.