Curlee Raven Holton, artist, art historian, master printmaker, David M. and Linda Roth Professor of Art Emeritus, and director (2012–present), David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park

Prior to his appointment as director of the Driskell Center, Curlee Raven Holton had a long-standing relationship with David C. Driskell as a friend, fellow artist and academic, and master printmaker. During this behind-the-scenes filming at Raven Fine Art Editions on August 19, 2020, Holton shares the history of their printmaking journey through works created together―beginning in 2003 with Driskell’s request to make Brown Derby and later Woman in Interior, both in the Gallery’s collection. Driskell modeled a generous sense of humanity in his practice as a scholar and teacher, as well as in the studio. He valued works by African American artists as reflections of the past and as deserving of greater illumination and significance in the present. Driskell understood these as records of achievement and expression of existential reality that these artists are here, seen, and celebrated. For Holton, Driskell’s “life and career were a reaffirmation of the goodness of spirit and goodness of creative genius, and how it could serve us.” The fourth annual John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art was held in partnership with the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park, and Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. This program was made possible by a grant from the Alice L. Walton Foundation.