A Deep House of Soulful Vision: The Paintings of Terry Thompson, with Special Guest Franklin Sirmans

Join us for an evening of contemporary African American art and house music, presented by the Johns Hopkins University’s Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts.

Enjoy a lecture by Franklin Sirmans, Director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, a conversation with Baltimore art fixture Leslie King Hammond and abstractionist painter Terry Thompson, and a reception. Each year, the center invites distinguished intellectuals and arts practitioners to address topical, historical, or philosophical issues connecting the work of the arts to the renewal and revitalization of civic life.

This lecture series is the Billie Holiday Project’s capstone annual public lecture to honor the life of one of Baltimore’s promising young leaders, who lost his life to violence.

About the Donald V. Bentley Memorial Lecture

The Donald Bentley Annual Memorial Lecture is the Billie Holiday Project’s capstone annual public lecture to honor one of Baltimore’s promising young leaders who lost their life in the violence crisis that has been endemic to the city for more than thirty years. Each year, the Billie Holiday Project invites a distinguished arts practitioner and intellectual to address topical, historical, or philosophical issues connecting the work of the arts to the renewal and revitalization of civic life.

The Donald Bentley Annual Memorial Lecture is a unique platform to drive debate and critical reflection on the role of the arts in our everyday lives and in our imagining of a future just world.

Photo credit: Terry Thompson. Futurismo #2. Oil, ink, and oil stick on canvas. 70 x 70 in. 2022