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- and Austin-based photographer; and Nicole Fleetwood, a Houston-based art historian and curator, discuss what books and research mean for contemporary artists and creators.
Fortune’s new book, Hardtack, recently acquired by the Hirsch Library, explores Texas and the American South, as well as the people fixed within that complex landscape. He uses his personal experiences to examine the friction between public and private life, as well as the unspoken tensions in daily life.
A book signing follows the conversation.
Plan Your Visit
- Admission is free.
- This event takes place in the Hirsch Library Reading Room, on the lower level of the Beck Building.
- Parking Information | Museum Hours | MFAH Campus Map
About the Speakers
Rahim Fortune, a visual artist and educator from the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, uses photography to explore American identity through narratives of families and communities. His work, including the award-winning book I can’t stand to see you cry, has been featured in global exhibitions and major collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.
Nicole R. Fleetwood, a MacArthur Fellow and art historian, is the inaugural James Weldon Johnson Professor at New York University. She authored Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, which won multiple awards. Fleetwood also co-curated and co-edited Aperture’s Prison Nation, focusing on 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.