Dr. Hendricks at Harvard

One of the foremost American figurative painters working today, Barkley Hendricks has long been an inspiration for younger artists. For nearly 50 years, his images of friends, acquaintances, and subjects met on the street have enlivened and interrogated art historical genre, while rendering a moving portrait of cultural and historical milieus. Flooding portraiture with oft-overlooked subjects, Hendricks focuses our attention on the conversations and representations surrounding class and race, while delivering his characters with cool wit and style.

Following his talk, Hendricks will be in conversation with Matt Saunders, assistant professor of visual and environmental studies at Harvard University, and students from his painting class.

Born in Philadelphia in 1945, Hendricks lives and works in New London, Connecticut. He earned a certificate from The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and a B.F.A. and M.F.A. from Yale University. He is professor emeritus at Connecticut College, having taught studio art there from 1972 to 2010. His work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art; Yale University Art Gallery; Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Menil Collection; Tate Modern; and the Harvard Art Museums, among many others. His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions here and around the world, including a 2008 survey of his work, Birth of the Cool, which traveled to five museums throughout the United States. Hendricks is the 2016 Rappaport Prize winner, awarded by the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, in Lincoln, Massachusetts. In 2010, he received the Amistad Center for Art and Culture President’s Award, and in 2008 he received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Award.

After the lecture, the audience is invited to view Hendricks’s October’s gone . . . Goodnight (in Gallery 3620, on Level 3).

The lecture will take place in Menschel Hall, Lower Level. Please enter the museums via the entrance on Broadway.

Free admission

Complimentary parking available in the Broadway Garage, 7 Felton Street, Cambridge.

Modern and contemporary art programs at the Harvard Art Museums are made possible in part by generous support from the Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art.