In this engaging conversation, curator Melissa Messina will offer an overview of the MFA’s current Magnetic Fields exhibition, a groundbreaking intergenerational traveling exhibition that highlights abstraction by 21 African-American women artists. She will describe the impetus and importance of the exhibition, provide insight into the curatorial process, and give biographical information on many of the artists while delving deeper into specific works on view.

FREE with price of admission. No registration required.

Melissa Messina is an independent curator and curator of the Mildred Thompson Estate. She recently co-curated the exhibition Magnetic Fields, Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today, which opened at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City and traveled to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, in Washington, D.C. As the former Interim Executive Director at the SCAD Museum of Art, Messina organized the exhibition Mildred Thompson, Resonance: Selected Works from the 1990s. In 2014 she received a Creative Time | Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant for research on the life and work of Mildred Thompson. Formerly as the Senior Curator at the Savannah College of Art and Design she curated exhibitions in Savannah and Atlanta, GA, as well as France and Hong Kong for numerous internationally acclaimed artists. She has also held positions at Flux Projects, Atlanta, ArtTable, New York, and the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Messina is the co-curator of the 2018 Bermuda Biennial.

Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today runs through August 5, 2018.