The Leonard A. Lauder Distinguished Scholar Lecture—Navigating Modernism: Beauford Delaney, 1940–1965

Join Adrienne Childs, Senior Consulting Curator, The Phillips Collection, as she charts American painter Beauford Delaney’s humanist vision, love of color, and evolving visual languages that navigated the aesthetics and cultures of transatlantic modernism. Delaney spent most of his artistic career between New York and Paris, arguably the most significant centers of modern art in the twentieth century. Immersed in these dynamic art worlds, Delaney honed his singular abstract aesthetic as he engaged with cubism, fauvism, expressionism, and the burgeoning energies of abstract expressionism. He explored the dynamics, boundaries, and spiritual possibilities of modernism as it, too, shifted through the mid-century.

Adrienne L. Childs will curate the upcoming Phillips traveling exhibition Beauford Delaney: So Much Love and Beauty (2027).

This program is presented by the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art.


Marquee: Beauford Delaney (American, 1901–1979). Untitled (Traffic Signals), 1945. Oil on canvas, 36 x 40 in. (91.4 x 101.6 cm). © Estate of Beauford Delaney, by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire, Court Appointed Administrator, Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY


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