Please join the Mennello Museum of American Art in welcoming Dr. Katherine Jentleson, Merrie and Dan Boone curator of folk and self-taught art from the High Museum of Art (High) in Atlanta, GA, for a virtual lecture highlighting the significant contributions of self-taught artists on the 20th Century American Modern Art World on Thursday, July 22 at 6 p.m. ET.
Purchase tickets here to garner intriguing insights from a foremost expert of 20th Century Folk Art and then delve deeper into discussion during the Q&A session that follows the virtual lecture with Dr. Jentleson. The virtual lecture is $10 for future museum members and free for current museum members.
In 2015, Dr. Jentleson, joined the High Museum of Art as the Merrie and Dan Boone Curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art. Prior to becoming a curator, Dr. Jentleson worked as an arts journalist in New York. Through her editorial assignments and experiences at galleries and museums, she discovered her passion for autodidactic artists and their historical legacy in the United States. She began her graduate studies in art history at Duke University in 2010, where she focused her research on how self-educated artists first “crashed the gates” of the mainstream art world after World War I. She published the study as a peer-reviewed monograph titled Gatecrashers: The Rise of the Self-Taught Artist in America (University of California Press, 2020) and adapted it into a 2021 exhibition at the High.
A multi-award-winning curator, Dr. Jentleson is the recipient of fellowships from Duke University, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Archives of American Art, and the Dedalus Foundation. She has contributed research and writing to exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art, the American Folk Art Museum, the Ackland Art Museum, the Nasher Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and Prospect New Orleans. Since joining the High, she has overseen numerous exhibitions, including most recently Way Out There: The Art of Southern Backroads (2019) and Paa Joe: Gates of No Return (2020). Under her leadership, the museum’s collection has grown significantly since adding more than 500 objects, including significant acquisitions of work by Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, the Gee’s Bend quilters, and Henry Church. Many of these debuted in the newly-expanded folk and self-taught art collection, which opened to the public as part of the museum’s 2018 reinstallation.
For more information about the virtual lecture with Dr. Jentleson, visit here.
The Mennello Museum of American Art and its exhibitions are generously supported by the City of Orlando and Friends of the Mennello Museum of American Art. Orange County Government provides additional funding through the Arts & Cultural Affairs Program and United Arts of Central Florida. Sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture, and Visit Orlando. The exhibition is funded in part by the generous donors to the Frank Holt Fund, Strengthen Orlando and the City of Orlando.