Richard J. Powell with Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore on Romare Bearden

Join Duke Professor Richard J. Powell for a discussion with author Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore about her new book Romare Bearden in the Homeland of His Imagination An Artist's Reckoning with the South (University of North Carolina Press, 2022, $40).

Followed by a light reception and book signing. The book will be available for purchase at the Nasher Museum Store.

Romare Bearden (1911-1988), one of the most prolific, original and acclaimed American artists of the 20th century, richly depicted scenes and figures rooted in the American South and the Black experience. Bearden hailed from North Carolina but was forced to relocate to the North when a white mob harassed his family in the 1910s. His family story is a compelling, complicated saga of Black middle-class achievement in the face of relentless waves of white supremacy. It is also a narrative of the generational trauma that slavery and racism inflicted over decades. But as Glenda Gilmore reveals in this trenchant reappraisal of Bearden's life and art, his work reveals his deep imagination, extensive training and rich knowledge of art history. Learn more.

Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore is the Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History Emerita at Yale University.

Richard J. Powel is an author, curator, art historian and professor. He is John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art & Art History at Duke. In 2006, Powell organized the exhibition Conjuring Bearden at the Nasher Museum and edited the accompanying catalogue.