"Dancing on Top of a Volcano" Artist Benjamin Abramowitz- Life Stories

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

TIME: 11:30am - Bar Opens; 12:15pm - Lunch;1-2pm - Presentation And Q&A
PRICE: $10 Lecture Only; $20 Members; $30 Non-Members (Includes Lunch)
EVENT TYPE: Speaker Luncheon

Program associated with current exhibition OUT OF THE VAULT
Moderator: Susan Abramowitz Rosenbaum, Daughter and Co-curator

The artist's daughter guides personal and professional back stories about late artist Benjamin Abramowitz (1917-2011) as well as the burgeoning (and largely segregated) 1940's Roosevelt –era art scene in Washington, DC.

The WNDC is presenting a selection of Abramowitz prize winning WPA and New Deal works on paper. None of these has been exhibited for almost 70 years. Abramowitz burst onto the Washington, DC art scene from NYC in 1941; within four years, and before he was 30, he was winning prize after prize and numerous solo museum exhibitions including at Howard University, the legendary Barnett Aden Gallery and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. The Metropolitan Museum owns 11 impressions of the WPA lithographs, and his work in the collections of Howard University and the Phillips.

Panelists:

Scott Baker, Assistant Director, Howard University Gallery, who will speak on the relationship of the young artist Abramowitz to the Howard University art leadership, his works in the collection, and Washington's divided art scene in the 1940's and 50's.

Lilian Thomas Burwell, Artist, Former Abramowitz Student, has broad experience an accomplished artist, teacher, curator, director and activist in the arts. In 1997 Hampton University Museum in Virginia published her book From Painting to Painting as Sculpture: The Journey of Lilian Thomas Burwell in conjunction with her thirty-year retrospective exhibition there. During the 1960's Ms. Burwell became a student of Benjamin Abramowitz and a lifelong friend of the artist and his family. Since the 1960's her work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions through the United States.

Jean Lawlor Cohen, editor of Where Washington magazine, for which she covers galleries, museums, theater and dining. She has written about art and travel and has curated exhibitions for the National Portrait Gallery, Washington Arts Museum and, Kreeger Museum. Recently she co-authored a history of Washington art life to be published next year. Her chapters—from the 1940s through 1960s—reflect research and interviews begun years ago for a series in Museum & Arts magazine.

Mary Anne Goley was the founding director of the Federal Reserve Board Fine Arts Program (Washington, DC) from which she retired in 2007 after thirty-one years. She received a B.A. in art history from the University of Maryland and a M.A. from Case Western Reserve University where she also completed course work toward her Ph.D. She is currently preparing a catalogue raisonee on the work of John White Alexander. She has been published in American Art Review, The Art Newspaper, Antiques Magazine, Apollo Magazine and the Wall Street Journal.

Susan Abramowitz Rosenbaum is President and Founder of S.A. Rosenbaum & Associates, an arts management consulting practice. Previously she has served as Vice President of Development and Public Affairs, Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art; Vice President of Marketing and Development, Greater Washington Boys & Girls Clubs; Director of Development with Council for Basic Education, Coordinator Institute for Educational Leadership; Executive Director of Wake County Education Foundation in Raleigh, N.C.; and Director of the Arts for two nationally acclaimed public school systems. She previously served as a Trustee for the Humanities Council of Washington, DC, and has been a panelist for numerous civic and arts agencies.