424 East Wisconsin Avenue

Retired professional basketball player Desmond Mason will discuss his own career as an artist as well as interpret the Hank Willis Thomas sculpture, Liberty, 2015. 

This dramatic piece explores how identity and ideas of race are shapred by media and popular culture. Liberty is a life-sized, shiny purple bronze sculpture inspired by a 1986 found photograph of a Harlem Globetrotter. An arm emerges from a base, spinning a basketball, in a gesture similar to the Statue of Liberty which was in the background of the original source photograph. By enshrining a basketball player's arm as a public monument, Hank Willis Thomas raises questions regarding what we value as a culture and what we then choose to embed and write into history as monuments and icons.

5:30 Cash Bar in Monarch Lounge right off the lobby
6:00 pm Complimentary Lecture in the Empire Room next to the Monarch Lounge (bring your purchased cocktail into the lecture hall!)
Optional Stroll of the Sculpture Exhibit to Follow

Register HERE
 
Sponsored by Guardian Fine Art Services and Portrait Society Gallery.