Community celebration for Nina Chanel Abney’s epic painting cycle, “I Dread to Think”
November 16, 2024
4:00pm
Annenberg Center
Nina Chanel Abney, I Dread to Think (detail), 2012. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the Neumann Family Collection.
Join The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, Arthur Ross Gallery, and Penn Live Arts on Saturday, November 16, for a champagne toast and light refreshments celebrating the installation of contemporary artist Nina Chanel Abney’s epic sixty-foot-long painting cycle, I Dread to Think (2012), in the lobby of the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.
On view through the University of Pennsylvania 2024–25 academic year, the installation is part of the upcoming exhibition, After Modernism: Selections from the Neumann Family Collection, which opens at the Arthur Ross Gallery in January 2025.
This event is free and open to the public.
- Saturday, November 16, 2024
- 4:00–5:00 PM
- Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
3680 Walnut Street
University of Pennsylvania
The installation of I Dread to Think is a collaboration between Arthur Ross Gallery, Penn Live Arts, and The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation.
About the Artist
Nina Chanel Abney (b. 1982, Harvey, Illinois) is a contemporary artist working across the mediums of painting, printmaking, and large-scale murals. Abney received a B.F.A from Augustana College in 2004 and an M.F.A from Parsons School of Design in 2007. The artist currently lives and works in New York.
Combining representation and abstraction, Nina Chanel Abney’s paintings capture the frenetic pace of contemporary culture. Broaching subjects as diverse as race, celebrity, religion, politics, sex, and art history, her works eschew linear storytelling in lieu of disjointed narratives. The effect is information overload, balanced with a kind of spontaneous order, where time and space are compressed, and identity is interchangeable. Her distinctively bold style harnesses the flux and simultaneity that has come to define life in the 21st century. Paying homage to the sophisticated color theories of Matisse, continuing the legacy of cubists Picasso and Léger, and connecting with the synesthetic sensibilities of Harlem Renaissance greats Douglas and Lawrence, Abney brings these historical movements into contemporary pertinence.