The McMullen Museum welcomes new Assistant Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and Art History at Boston College, Justin Brown, for a virtual lecture introducing Spirit & Strength: Modern Art from Haiti on view at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC opening September 29, 2024. As co-curator of the exhibition, Brown will introduce its landmark artists, background, and main themes. 

Free; open to the public; register on Zoom here.

Foregrounding Haiti’s significance as the world’s first free Black republic, Spirit & Strength: Modern Art from Haiti presents some of the most prominent artists to have lived or worked there over the past century. Featuring paintings by trailblazing Haitian artists like Rigaud Benoit, Hector Hyppolite, and Philomé Obin, Spirit & Strength also includes works by renowned contemporary artists Myrlande Constant and Edouard Duval-Carrié. They are joined by African American artists like Lois Mailou Jones, Jacob Lawrence, and William Edouard Scott, who looked to Haiti as a source of inspiration, demonstrating the remarkable reach of Haitian artistic production. On view from September 29, 2024 through March 9, 2025, Spirit & Strength is the first chance to see 21 works by modern and contemporary Haitian artists recently given to the National Gallery of Art by Kay and Roderick Heller and Beverly and John Fox Sullivan.

Justin M. Brown is an assistant professor in the Art, Art History, and Film Department and the African and African Diaspora Studies Program at Boston College. His research and teaching focus on the art of the African Atlantic world, with emphasis on the Caribbean and Suriname. He has published and presented work on topics related to the visual and material culture of slavery, the art of the Guiana Maroons, and transatlantic water spirits. He has held curatorial and research fellowships at the National Gallery of Art, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Worcester Art Museum. He earned a Ph.D. in the History of Art from Yale University in May 2024.