Please join us Thursday, April 3 from 5 – 8 PM.
Robert Carter, Karli Wurzelbacher and Mikaela Sardo Lamarche in conversation.
529 West 20th Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY
RSVP required: rsvp@acagalleries.com
ABOUT
Robert Graham Carter has been a celebrated artist and illustrator for more than 60 years. Born 1938 in Louisville, Kentucky, Carter received his Master of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute in New York in 1966 and was an illustrator for McGraw Hill and Simon & Schuster. He retired as professor of art at Nassau Community College after 50 years, and has been a lecturer at numerous public schools, universities, and private art organizations. A traveling solo museum show is currently on view at The Heckscher Museum of Art through May 25, 2025 and moves to the Cressman Center Galleries, University of Louisville in August 2025. His work will be included in Norman Rockwell Museum’s upcoming “Imprinted: Illustrating Race” traveling exhibition. A retrospective exhibition is also being planned in 2027 at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, his hometown.
Charles White (1918-1979) is widely recognized for his contributions to American Socialist Realism. In 1940 he created his first mural “History of the American Negro Press,” for the WPA’s Federal Art Project. The study for this important mural is currently on view at ACA. In 1941, White won a Rosenwald Foundation grant to travel through the American south. White had his first solo exhibition at ACA in 1946. After settling in the Los Angeles area in 1956, he became a respected teacher at the Otis Art Institute, where he remained on the faculty from 1965 until his death. In 2018, the first major retrospective exhibition of his work was organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art.
Richard Mayhew (1924 – 2024) was an American landscape painter, illustrator and educator of Native and African American descent. Mayhew attended the Brooklyn Museum of Art School and the Art Students League in the 1940s and had his first solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1955. In 1958 Mayhew was awarded the John Hay Whitney Foundation Grant allowing him to travel to Europe. After returning to New York in 1963 he became a founding member of “Spiral,” a group of African-American artists and intellectuals committed to promoting civil rights in the art world. In 2020 the publication of Mayhew’s first monograph Transcendence was released in conjunction with a solo exhibition at ACA Galleries.
Karli Wurzelbacher is Chief Curator at The Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York. The Heckscher Museum is currently presenting the exhibition Robert Graham Carter: The Art of Reflection, on view through May 25. In Spring 2021, the Heckscher also presented the exhibition Richard Mayhew: Reinventing Landscape. Each of these shows built upon major collection acquisitions: Carter’s Mama Taught Me Piano and Much More (2007) and Mayhew’s Pescadero (2014). Wurzelbacher will discuss the work of these two significant African American artists and beloved professors with ties to Long Island.
Mikaela Sardo Lamarche, Curator and Director of ACA Galleries, New York.
