Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Art At Noon: Retracing Rhoden’s Birmingham: An Artist’s Relationship with his Hometown 

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

12:00 - 1:00 PM (online)

Sylvea Hollis will examine the artist John W. Rhoden’s evolving relationship with his hometown, Birmingham, Alabama. He exhibited work in Birmingham nearly the full breadth of his life as an artist and he regularly framed his childhood as a formative period of self-making. What was Rhoden’s Birmingham like? How did it and he change over time?    

Sylvea Hollis is a social historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Black life. She is an associate professor of African and African American History at Montgomery College. Hollis is a native of Birmingham, Alabama and began her career at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Hollis’ website, www.sylveahollis.com, explores the intersections of archives, public humanities, and teaching. 

Image: Color photograph of Fred Shuttlesworth modeling for John Rhoden during a sculpting session, 1991-92. John Rhoden Papers.

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