The Artist’s Voice: Leonardo Drew In Conversation with Thelma Golden April 12, 2012

Join Studio Museum Director and Chief Curator Thelma Golden for a rare conversation with artist and 2011 Joyce Alexander Wein Prize winner Leonardo Drew on Thursday, April 12, 2012 at 7pm.

Leonardo Drew is best known for his dynamic large-scale sculptural installations. New York Times art critic Roberta Smith describes his large reliefs as “sweeps of plywood - pocked, splintered, burned here, bristling there and unexpectedly delicate elsewhere.”

Drew's sculptures can be seen as exercises in formalism rooted in the very experience of looking. His work explores memory by employing a wide range of material to evoke common elements of the human experience and of our diverse histories. Curator Zoe Whitley says,“Drew creates such order and unexpected beauty out of human detritus…What might at first appear to be an assemblage of found objects is in fact consciously fabricated, summoning themes of consideration and abandon, and retrieval and loss.”

Drew first exhibited his work at the age of 13. He attended the Parsons School of Design and received his BFA from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and art in 1985. Since then he has shown in institutions including the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin; the Art Institute of Chicago; Miami Art Museum; and the St. Louis Art Museum. Drew's mid-career survey exhibition, Existed: Leonardo Drew, debuted in 2009 at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston and traveled to the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina and the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Massachussetts. A monograph of his work was published in conjunction with the survey by Giles, Ltd., London.

Drew was a 1990-91 artist in residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem. In 2011, he received the sixth annual Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, established by musician, impresario and philanthropist George Wein in honor of his late wife, a former Studio Museum trustee. The Joyce Alexander Wein Prize honors an African-American artist of great innovation and promise and includes an unrestricted $50,000 award.

This program is free with museum admission. RSVPs are required. Seating is limited. Studio Museum members receive priority seating, subject to availability.