Tuesday, January 7, 2025 at 6 PM
DC Moore Gallery
535 W 22nd Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10011
RSVP Here
Join us as we explore Romare Bearden’s influence on visual storytelling and his representation on film. The event will celebrate the WPI Digital Archives’ release of A/V footage from the Romare Bearden Foundation’s collection. Filmmakers Deborah Riley Draper and Nelson Breen will participate in a conversation, moderated by Dr. Camara Holloway.
The newly released audio recordings and footage range from professional interviews recorded by national broadcast channels to intimate home videos capturing Bearden in his studio or at exhibition openings in St. Martin. Spanning from the 1970s to the mid-1990s, this series features exclusive interviews with Bearden, as well as discussions with many artist friends and colleagues.
In (re)viewing select material from this collection, Draper and Breen’s conversation will consider how filmmakers have approached documenting Bearden’s life and work, how the artist has been portrayed on screen, and how the archives help preserve Bearden’s legacy.
Reception and open gallery of the exhibition, “Romare Bearden: Paris Blues/Jazz and Other Works” at the DC Moore Gallery to follow.
This event is free and open to the public, but your RSVP is required. Please note that DC Moore Gallery has a limited capacity. Seating is available on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Nelson E. Breen created the 1980 documentary Bearden Plays Bearden, for which he received an Emmy award for directing and which was nominated for original music.
Breen was the first individual to receive Emmy awards in successive years as a writer and director of documentaries. His documentaries have been nationally broadcast on PBS including Grand Central, earning him an Emmy-nomination for writing; The Precious Legacy, earning him an Emmy for writing among other film awards and nominations. He has collaborated on award-winning permanent video installations at major American museums, including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Ellis Island Immigration Museum. He has received grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and state arts and humanities commissions in New York, California, Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota.
Deborah Riley Draper is award-winning filmmaker who is currently producing the forthcoming documentary Romare Bearden: A Life in Collage.
Draper was named one of Variety Magazine’s “Top 10 Documakers to Watch.” Her docuseries, James Brown: Say It Loud, premiered in February 2024 on A&E Network, which she directed and co-wrote. The 4-part series is executively produced by Mick Jagger and Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson.
Draper’s other projects include 13 Days in Ferguson for CBS/Paramount+; OnBoard, which enjoyed a special screening world premiere in June 2023 at the Tribeca Film Festival and won the prestigious jury award for Best Social Impact Story at the 2023 Essence Film Festival; and The Legacy of Black Wall Street, a two-episode documentary special on OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, which earned NAACP Image Awards nomination for Outstanding Breakthrough Creative-Television.
