Join us for a curator and artist talk in celebration of MoAD's current exhibition JOESAM.: Text Messages. Curator Erin Jenoa Gilbert will moderate a dialogue with artists JoeSam., Dewey Crumpler, and Oliver Lee Jackson.

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JoeSam. will be joining the conversation virtually from Atlanta. Erin Jenoa Gilbert, Dewey Crumpler, and Oliver Lee Jackson will be live here at MoAD.

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Born in Harlem in 1938, JoeSam. is a self-taught, contemporary, mixed media painter and installation artist who has been making work for four decades in San Francisco. In this first Bay Area museum exhibition of the 84-year-old artist’s work, guest curator Erin Jenoa Gilbert, well-known for her careful scholarship and dedication to bringing forth unsung Black artists, has selected 20 mixed media paintings from key series produced between 1985 and 2020 to draw attention to JoeSam.’s experiments in text and abstraction, his activism, and his enduring love for the Bay Area in his work and life.

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About the Panelists

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Mixed media artist JoeSam. was born on September 18, 1938 in Harlem, New York. He received his B.A. degree in sociology in 1961 from Howard University, in Washington, D.C., his M.S. degree in educational psychology from Columbia University, in New York, New York, and his Ph.D. degree in education and psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. While a student at Columbia, JoeSam. facilitated educational seminars for public school teachers there and at the Floyd Patterson House in the East Village, a residential treatment facility for juvenile offenders. In 1976, JoeSam. was hired as director of the Head Start program for the City of San Francisco, California.

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JoeSam. has created commissioned artworks for several institutions including the San Francisco Mission Police Station Juvenile Facility, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority Rosa Parks Metro Rail Station, and the Sharks Ice Center in San Jose, California. He has exhibited at institutions nationwide including the Sargent Johnson Gallery in San Francisco, Merced College in Merced, California, the Mohr Gallery in the Community School of Music and Arts at the Finn Center in Mountain View, California, and the Hartford Public Library in Hartford, Connecticut. His artworks include Hope Flight (1994), Hide-n-Seek (1995), Ice Play (1996), and the Black Bible and Black Jazz series; illustrations for the book The Invisible Hunters (1987), which was named a Coretta Scott King Honor Book; and album art for Bobby McFerrin’s Medicine Man (1990), Bennie Maupin and Dr. Patrick Gleeson’s Driving While Black (1998), and Upsurge’s All Hands-on Deck (2000) and Chromatology (2004).

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JoeSam. was named an artist-in-residence at San Francisco’s Learning through Education in the Arts Project (LEAP) in 1987. In 1999, he became a Djerassi Artist-in-Residence in Woodside, California. From 2002 to 2003, JoeSam. served as a Sacatar Artist-in-Residence through the Sacatar Foundation, in Bahia, Brazil.JoeSam. received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1985 and the Compton Foundation Fellowship in 1999. JoeSam. lives in Hartford, Connecticut. He has one daughter, Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels.

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Oliver Lee Jackson is a painter, sculptor, draftsman and printmaker whose works are grounded in figuration. Known primarily for his paintings, Jackson has also consistently made sculptures in wood, stone, metal, and mixed media. Jackson has collaborated with musicians, writers, and dramatists who include Julius Hemphill, Marty Ehrlich, Quincy Troupe, Paul Carter Harrison, and others. His most recent collaboration is the 2021 print folio, Dear Friend, honoring composer and saxophonist Julius Hemphill. Jackson's works have been exhibited in museums and galleries for over five decades. Recent solo exhibitions include Saint Louis Art Museum (2021); di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa (2021–22); and the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (2019). Collections include the Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin; Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Seattle Art Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and many others. Recent awards include an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Iowa (May 2023); and the 2022–23 Lee Krasner Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. His work is represented in San Francisco by Rena Bransten Gallery.

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Dewey Crumpler (b 1949, Arkansas) explores themes of race, capitalism, and the history of oppression through his diverse mixed media artworks. His artistic journey began as a city muralist in the vibrant Bay Area during the 1960s. Immersed in the rich tradition of mural painting, Crumpler honed his craft in Mexico, studying alongside luminaries like Pablo O'Higgins and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

After over a decade of muralism, Crumpler shifted his focus to a diverse array of mediums including painting, sculpture, drawing, and collage. In these forms, he captures the complexity of Black identity, exploring its multidimensional nature through various shapes, textures, and even gravitational forces. He challenges conventional narratives, reshaping our understanding of objects and symbols like tulips, hoodies, slave collars, and containers. Across all his works, he transforms the ordinary into potent metaphors reflecting the subjugation of Black bodies and subverting capitalism's emphasis on productivity and commodification. By exploring the manipulation and reinterpretation of these symbols, Crumpler’s art serves as a profound commentary on the reconfiguration of Black identity and its journey from subjugation to empowerment and liberation. Through subtle yet powerful imagery, Crumpler invites viewers to contemplate the intricate interplay between culture, history, and social dynamics in America, revealing how Blackness emerges as a dynamic force that shapes and reshapes everything it encounters.

For over forty years, Dewey Crumpler has served as an Associate Professor Emeritus of Painting at the San Francisco Art Institute, where his mentorship has shaped the careers of notable artists such as Kehinde Wiley and Deborah Roberts. Recent solo exhibitions include In Space Time at Jenkins Johnson Gallery in 2023, Fog Design & Art Fair in 2023, and Post Atlantic at Andrew Kreps Gallery in 2023, among others. Crumpler’s works are held in the permanent collections of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; The DeYoung Museum, San Francisco; The Oakland Museum of California; The Triton Museum of Art, CA; and the California African American Museum. His contributions have garnered prestigious accolades, including the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Grant, the Flintridge Foundation Award, and the Fleishhacker Foundation Fellowship Eureka Award. In 2026, Crumpler is poised to unveil a solo exhibition at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, California. He currently lives and works in Oakland, California.

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Erin Jenoa Gilbert is a New York based curator and art advisor, specializing in Postwar and Contemporary Art. Her company EJG International, founded in 2013, explores the relationship between art, power and politics through exhibitions, publications and acquisitions. With focus on abstract, conceptual and sculptural practices Gilbert has held positions at the Art Institute of Chicago, Studio Museum In Harlem and the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. For the past four years she has worked with Barbara Chase-Riboud organizing a series of retrospective exhibitions, including Monumentale: The Bronzes at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis, Barbara Chase-Riboud: Infinite Folds at the Serpentine Galleries in London and The Encounter: Barbara Chase-Riboud and Alberto Giacometti at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

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This program is presented in conjunction with the exhibition JOESAM: Text Messages, on view at MoAD from September 27, 2023-March 3, 2024.