Wayne State University invites the community to attend the four-part African American Art Lecture Series 2002 to be held in the Helen L. DeRoy Auditorium at 7:00 p.m. on successive Wednesday evenings -- March 20, March 27, April 3, and April 10. The lecture series will feature three prominent Detroit artists and scholars -- Bamidele Demerson, Valerie Mercer, Carole Harris -- and emerging New York artist, Brett Cook-Dizney.

The series begins March 20 with a lecture by New York community-oriented artist, Brett Cook-Dizney, who describes himself as "a maker of objects, critical ethnographer, observer of community life, educator and storyteller." He will discuss his innovative public art projects and address the artist's role in facilitating social change.

Bamidele Demerson, Director of Research and Educational Programs at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, will offer the second lecture entitled "Bags, Brooms, Bottles, and Bedcovers: Hoodoo 'Folk' Beliefs in 'Fine' Art" on March 27. Demerson is a specialist on arts of the African Diaspora and a keen observer of spiritual traditions of Africa that continue to inform African American artistic tradition.

The third lecture on April 3 will be given by Valerie Mercer, Curator of the General Motors Center for African American Art ant the Detroit Institute of Arts. Mercer draws on broad teaching and curatorial experience, having taught at the City College of New York and served as Senior Curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem before settling in Detroit last fall. She will lecture on the complicated issue of the stereotype in African American art.

Concluding the series on April 10 will be Detroit artist, Carole Harris, whose lecture entitled "'Jammin' -- Improvisational Quilts" will relate her own work with fine art quilts to the distinctive aesthetics of African American quilt making traditions. Harris is a Wayne State University fine arts alumna and director of the interior design firm, Harris Design Group, in Detroit.

This lecture series has been organized by Wayne State University art history professor Marion Jackson in conjunction with an African American Art History course offered at Wayne State each winter term. The annual public lecture series highlights the ideas and accomplishments of African American artists and scholars in the Detroit area. Speakers in previous series have included Gilda Snowden, Shirley Woodson Reid, Charles McGee, Al Loving, Robert Martin, Edsel Reid, Allie McGhee, Al Hinton, George N'Namdi, Lester Johnson, Valerie Fair, Tyree Guyton, and visiting artists, Ben Jones and Beverly McIver. Support has been provided by the WSU Department of Art and Art History, the Department of Africana Studies, and the King Parks Chavez Visiting Faculty Fund of the Office of the Provost.

All lectures are free and open to the public. For further information or to obtain a flyer about the series, please call the Wayne State Department of Art and Art History at (313) 577-2980.