Join us for a special afternoon featuring artist Keith Duncan in conversation with artist and educator, Ron Bechet. The two artists and friends will discuss Duncan’s new body of work, Battle of the Bands, currently on view at Ogden Museum.
Their conversation will explore the history of HBCU drum majors and marching bands, as well as Duncan’s inspirations, influences and artistic practice. Bechet, is an art maker and professor of art at Xavier University of Louisiana, and a friend and colleague of Duncan’s for nearly ten years.
Free and open to the community, but pre-registration is requested.
About Keith Duncan
Keith Duncan, Photo courtesy of Crista Rock
Keith Duncan is a contemporary figurative artist and educator based in New Orleans, Louisiana. A visual storyteller, Duncan draws inspiration from personal narrative, community engagement, news media, art history, Black culture and the traditions of New Orleans. While his studio practice is firmly rooted in painting and drawing, his process is expansive, adroitly incorporating paper collage and textile art.
Duncan was born in New Orleans in 1964, and grew up in Empire, Louisiana – a small coastal fishing village in Plaquemines Parish near where the mighty Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico. He received a BFA from Louisiana State University, and an MFA from Hunter College (CUNY) New York, NY. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions at CUE Arts Foundation, New York and Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Mississippi, among other gallery spaces throughout the United States. He has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including Thelma Golden’s Black Romantic at the Studio Museum in Harlem and Prospect.2 curated by Dan Cameron. His work is included in the permanent collections of Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, Pérez Art Museum Miami and the Flint Institute of Art.
His awards and accomplishments include the Camille Cosby Fellowship, The Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and in 2001 his work was commissioned for NASA. Residencies include Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Skowhegan, ME. Duncan has taught art for over twenty years in New York and New Orleans and currently resides in New Orleans and is represented by Fort Gansevoort, New York.
About Ron Bechet
Image courtesy of Ron Bechet and the Joan Mitchell Foundation
Ron Bechet is an abstract painter from New Orleans and a relative of the early jazz pioneer Sidney Bechet. He began drawing in the fourth grade, studied art at the University of New Orleans and went on to earn a graduate degree from Yale University. He returned to New Orleans for good in 1982 and soon began a career in teaching art, first at Delgado Community College, then at Southern University in New Orleans and, since 1998, at Xavier University.
Bechet’s paintings reflect the inherent abstraction in thought, and he once said, “There are questions I can’t answer, that’s why I paint.” His works explore the interstitial zone between ideas, such as reality and illusion; the boundary where both entities exist or are possible. Trees and nature are a common theme in Bechet’s painting. For many years Bechet shared a studio with the renowned New Orleans sculptor, John T. Scott. Ron Bechet is currently the Victor H. Labat Endowed Professor of the Arts at Xavier University in New Orleans.
/// Event image: Keith Duncan, Southern University Marching Band, 2023, Acrylic, marker and fabric on unstretched canvas, 74.5 x 108 inches, © Keith Duncan. Courtesy of the artist and Fort Gansevoort, New York
