“If you’re to be a master drummer, you have to know about herbs.”
—Milford Graves

Milford Graves was introduced to botany by his grandfather, who used roots and herbs to make home remedies and teach self-reliance in his community. After inheriting his grandparents’ home, Graves developed a “global garden” in the backyard, mixing together plants he collected from all over the world. This continuously changing site, and the philosophy it embodies, has played a seminal role in nearly every aspect of Graves’s prolific creative output from music and the visual arts to holistic medicine and martial arts.

Join Narendra Haynes and Tyler Shine for an open discussion about Graves’s garden. All are welcome to participate in the conversation.

Bios

Narendra Haynes is a second-year MFA candidate in the Weitzman School of Design department at the University of Pennsylvania. His artistic practice is interdisciplinary in nature, combining painting and sculpture with his interests in digital culture, embodiment, phenomenology, and ecology.

Tyler Shine is a doctoral student in Art History at the University of Pennsylvania studying twentieth-century art and architecture with particular interest in the African diaspora. Before coming to Penn he was the Constance E. Clayton Fellow in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Coffee & Conversation

Coffee & Conversation are discussions led by graduate students from the University of Pennsylvania’s History of Art and Weitzman School of Design departments. For the fall exhibition season, this iteration will involve the students working in tandem. Through their unique perspectives as practitioners and researchers, they offer different approaches to consider the various facets that go into the formation of an exhibition and the artist’s process, creating entry points along the way for the audience to be involved in the conversation on a personal level.

—

Milford Graves: A Mind-Body Deal is organized by Mark Christman, Artistic Director, Ars Nova Workshop, with Anthony Elms, Daniel and Brett Sundheim Chief Curator, ICA. Curatorial support provided by Jake Meginsky. Accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue to be published by Inventory Press.

Major support for Milford Graves: A Mind-Body Deal has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Joseph Robert Foundation.

—