Internationally Known Artist Wangechi Mutu Public Artist Talk May 14

The public is invited to a Montserrat College of Art Gallery sponsored lecture by Wangechi Mutu, an internationally renowned, Kenyan-born, New York-based artist and activist who has been called the most influential African artist today. She will present a lecture on Thursday, May 14 at 6 p.m. at The Cabot Theatre, 286 Cabot Street, Beverly. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. See Mutu’s work at wangechimutu.com.

She is the keynote commencement speaker and honorary doctoral recipient at Montserrat College of Art’s graduation ceremonies this spring.

Mutu is the recipient of the United States Artist Grant (2014), the Brooklyn Museum’s Artist of the Year Award (2013), and was honored as Deutsche Bank’s first Artist of the Year (2010). She received an MFA from Yale and BFA from Cooper Union.She will be just returning to the US from her appearance at the Venice Biennale.

The lecture is free, but we ask that you RSVP by contacting  [email protected]

“We are extremely honored to have an artist of Ms. Mutu’s caliber speaking to our community,” said Stephen D. Immerman, president of Montserrat College of Art. “Her successful career both in the US and abroad will be inspirational to our community. We are excited to welcome her to the campus and to the North Shore.” Mutu joins a long list of illustrious commencement speakers at Montserrat including Bryan Konietzko, Gregory Crewdson, Amy Sillman, Jenny Holzer, Janine Antoni and James Rosenquist, to name a few.

Artist Biography

Mutu earned a BFA from Cooper Union for the Advancement of the Arts and Science in 1996, and then received an MFA from Yale University in 2000. She is the recipient of the United States Artist Grant (2014), the Brooklyn Museum’s Artist of the Year Award (2013), and was honored as Deutsche Bank’s first Artist of the Year (2010). She has exhibited at major institutions including recent one-person shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia; Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin; the Brooklyn Museum of Art; Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Staatlichen Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany; Wiels Contemporary Art Center, Brussels; the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, North Carolina; the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, Illinois; and Miami Art Museum. Mutu recently participated in the Dak’Art Biennial, the Kochi-Muziris Biennial, the Paris Triennial: Intense Proximity, the International Center of Photography’s Triennial and the Moscow Bienniale. Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art; The Studio Museum in Harlem; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art; the Brooklyn Museum; and Tate Modern in London. See Mutu’s work at wangechimutu.com.

Montserrat Gallery will be open for viewing of the 2015 All Senior Show May 1 – 15, 2015 at the college’s main campus building at 23 Essex Street, Beverly, MA.

For further information, visit montserrat.edu/galleries/Wangechi-Mutu or contact Jo Broderick at [email protected] or 978.867.9613.

Photo by Kathryn Parker Almanas