On the occasion of the opening of Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love, the first major museum retrospective spanning the full breadth of the artist’s career, join us for a conversation between Jackson and scholar and curator Kellie Jones. Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love celebrates Jackson’s groundbreaking artistic vision through more than 80 lyrical paintings and drawings from the 1960s to the present, exploring her use of color, light, and structure to expand the parameters of painting and illuminate the persistence of peace, love, and beauty. In this conversation with Jones, she will reflect on her creative process, her deep experience across artistic disciplines, and her relationship to the Bay Area.
About the Speakers
Dr. Kellie Jones is a curator and professor in art history and archaeology at the Institute for Research in African American Studies (IRAAS) at Columbia University. Dr. Jones’s writings have appeared in a multitude of exhibition catalogues and journals, including Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love. She is the author of two books published by Duke University Press, EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art (2011), and South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s (2017). Dr. Jones has worked as a curator for over three decades and has numerous major national and international exhibitions to her credit including Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960–1980, at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. In 2016 she was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow.
Suzanne Jackson lives and works in Savannah, Georgia, and St. Remy, New York. For nearly five decades, the artist has worked experimentally across mediums, including drawing, painting, poetry, dance, theater, and costume design. In the early 1970s, Jackson worked as an artist and teacher in Los Angeles, where she engaged a community of artist peers and established Gallery 32, showcasing figures like David Hammons, Senga Nengudi, and Betye Saar. During this time, Jackson was known for her figurative paintings using layers of acrylic wash to depict the melding of humans and nature. Jackson’s recent “environmental abstractions” are composed of pure acrylic and recycled materials from the artist’s life such as produce bags, rods, paper fragments, peanut shells, bamboo bells, and leather string. In 2023, the artist established the Suzanne Fitzallen Jackson Foundation, dedicated to providing fully supported residencies for emerging and mid-career artists, particularly those underrepresented from the South. The foundation is based in her beloved Savannah home.
Accessibility Information
Accessibility accommodations such as American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and assisted listening devices are available upon request 10 business days in advance.
Please email publicengagement@sfmoma.org, and we will do our best to fulfill your request.