Mentor’s equality struggle part of curator’s discussion
A goodly crowd turned out at the Arkansas Arts Center the evening of July 21 to hear about a woman who distinguished herself as a member of a small sorority of black abstract artists.
A wine reception preceded “Search for Mildred Thompson: An Artist’s Legacy Project,” a lecture by Melissa Messina, onetime senior curator for the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia and current curator of the Mildred Thompson Estate.
Thompson — a Jacksonville, Fla., native who painted, drew, sculpted, took photographs, made prints and wrote — was a graduate of Howard University, where she was mentored by James Porter. Messina described Porter as “the godfather of African-American art history.”
Thompson also studied at the Art Academy of Hamburg in Germany. Facing racial and sexual bias in the art world in New York, she spent two stints in Germany, lived for a time in Paris and also taught at Atlanta College of Art, Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga., and, for a brief time, Spelman College. Thompson died in Atlanta in 2003. Her work can be found at institutions including the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Brooklyn Museum; the Coca-Cola Co. in Atlanta and the Georgia Museum of Art.
Quoting Thompson, Messina said, “What you’re looking for is looking for you.” Messina recalled an encounter with the artist while Messina was a student at the Atlanta College of Art. She inadvertently signed up for Thompson’s drawing class due to a registrar’s office computer glitch and went on to take all of Thompson’s classes.
During her lecture, Messina outlined the highs and lows of her mentor’s life and displayed slides of such Thompson works as Music of the Spheres, an oil-on-wood, 96-by-144-inch triptych.