Clementine Hunter: Her Life and Art, a Postscript

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Date:
August 10, 2013
Time:
7:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Venue:
The Watermill Center

With no formal education and only seeing guests at the plantation where she was a domestic servant making art, Clementine Hunter taught herself how use a paint and brush to tell a story.

25 years after her death, the works of Louisiana artist Clementine Hunter continue to be the source of new projects and inspirations: Zinnias, an opera based on her life, premiered in January 2013; her paintings will be a part of the new National Museum of African American History and Culture being built on the Mall in Washington; four books about her have been written about her since her death; and an original composition inspired by her paintings of plantation life in Louisiana is being recorded in London this fall.

Tom Whitehead, who knew Clementine Hunter personally and whose archives have become the definitive source of information about the artist, will speak about her life, work, and legacy.

About the Speaker
Tom Whitehead is a professor emeritus of journalism at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana, where he now serves as president as consultant on special projects.

When Whitehead joined the faculty at NSU in 1969, he took weekly trips to visit with Clementine Hunter that continued until her death on January 1, 1988.

He and Art Shiver coedited Clementine Hunter:  The African House Murals (2005) and Clementine Hunter: Her Life and Art(2012).

During the federal prosecution of the three individuals charged in the fraud and forgery case of Hunter paintings, Whitehead was an expert witness for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

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