The Artist & the Book | Rahim Fortune in Conversation with Nicole Fleetwood Thursday, September 5, 2024 6 p.m.-7 p.m.
September 5, 2024
Artists have long used the book as a source of inspiration and edification for artistic production. Increasingly, contemporary artists have used books and research as key elements in their artistic practice to examine the past and create new narratives.
Rahim Fortune, a Brooklyn, NY and Austin-based artist, and Nicole Fleetwood, a Houston-based art historian and curator, in conversation to explore what books and research mean for contemporary artists and creators.
Fortune’s second book, Hardtack (2024), which was recently acquired by the Hirsch Library, is an exploration of Texas and the American South, as well as the people fixed within its complex landscape. The artist uses his personal experiences to explore the friction between public and private life, and the unspoken tensions in daily life through an approach rooted in the physical and cultural landscape.
A book signing follows the conversation.
Plan Your Visit
- Admission is free.
- This event takes place in the Hirsch Library Reading Room, located on the lower level of the Beck Building.
- Parking Information | Museum Hours | MFAH Campus Map
About the Speakers
Rahim Fortune, a visual artist from the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, uses photography to explore American identity, migration, and resettlement. His work, including I Can’t Stand to See You Cry, has been featured globally and belongs to collections of institutions such as Atlanta’s High Museum of Art and London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.
Nicole R. Fleetwood, a MacArthur Fellow and inaugural James Weldon Johnson Professor at NYU, authored the award-winning Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration. She co-curated Aperture‘s Prison Nation, exploring photography‘s role in documenting mass incarceration.
General admission to the MFAH is free on Thursdays, courtesy of Shell Oil Company.
The Hirsch Library’s “The Artist and the Book” lecture series receives generous funding from Judy and Scott Nyquist and from Linda McReynolds.
Learning and Interpretation programs receive generous funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services; Samuel H. Kress Foundation; The Brown Foundation, Inc.; Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo; Houston Junior Woman's Club; Sharon G. Dies; Sterling-Turner Foundation; Susan Vaughan Foundation; and additional generous donors.
The Freed Lecture Series is made possible by endowment income from the Eleanor and Frank Freed Foundation.
Arion Press has generously provided additional support for this program.