Artists’ Conversation: Emory Douglas and William Rhodes

Join us for a conversation between Emory Douglas, artist and Minister of Culture of the Black Panther Party from 1967 to 1982, and William Rhodes, a painter, activist, and educator. The artists will discuss their collaborative piece Revolution in Our Lifetime, featured in the exhibition Some Particular Heaven: Ideas of Utopia in the BAMPFA Collection, and unpack how art can foster solidarity, reimagine collective power, and help realize new political possibilities.

This program is also presented in connection with the exhibition Campus Collaborations / Lotty Rosenfeld: Disobedient Spaces, with whose themes it promises to meaningfully resonate.

Emory Douglas was named the Revolutionary Artist and later Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, a position he held from 1967 until the party was disbanded in 1982. His artwork became the signature style for the Black Panther Newspaper. In 2007 the book Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas introduced new generations to his work, which has received solo exhibitions at the New Museum in New York and Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art, among others, and is held in major collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2015 he became the first living Black person to win an American Institute of Graphic Arts Medal for his contributions to art, design, and social justice.

William Rhodes is an artist whose work explores the correlation between materials and their inherent meaning, often incorporating recycled and found objects to open up questions of art and the environment. He studied sculpture and furniture design at the Baltimore School for the Arts and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. His work recently entered the collection of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC. Rhodes is cofounder of the 3.9 Art Collective, a Black art collective in San Francisco formed in 2011 in response to the city’s declining Black population. He is also Director of the Intergenerational Community Arts Program at Bayview Services, a role that combines his passion for art and public service.