Goldberg Lecture – Public Art, Public Health: Jacob Lawrence and the Murals of Harlem Hospital
The Vanderbilt University Department of History of Art and Architecture is excited to present the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Lecture in Art History, Public Art, Public Health: Jacob Lawrence and the Murals of Harlem Hospital. This talk will be presented by Ellerton M. and Edith K. Jetté Professor of Art at Colby College, Tanya Sheehan on Tuesday, October 22, 2024. The talk will begin at 4:10pm in 203 Cohen Memorial Hall with a reception to follow.
When Jacob Lawrence first painted the free clinic of Harlem Hospital in 1937, Harlem’s largest public healthcare facility was teaming with artists who were hired by the federal government and working under the supervision of Lawrence’s art teacher and mentor, Charles Alston. Although Lawrence was too young to work officially on Alston’s team, significant connections to the murals can be found in his artwork, in the murals themselves, and in their shared participation in a discourse on race, medicine, and health in urban America. In exploring these connections, this talk shows how Black life could and could not be represented on the walls of Harlem Hospital, and how a commitment to the publicness of Black care took shape in Lawrence’s private images.
This event is sponsored by the Department of History of Art and Architecture, the Department of Medicine Health, and Society, the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy, the Program in Culture, Advocacy, Leadership, the Department of African American and Diaspora Studies, and the Department of English.
