Panel Discussion: Truth in Abstraction

In connection with featured exhibition Rodney McMillian: A Son of the Soil, this program brings together artist Michaela Pilar Brown, art historian Frank Martin, and CMA Senior Curator Michael Neumeister for a conversation on the political dimensions of abstract art. Although abstraction is often seen as neutral or apolitical, McMillian's art engages politics of body, material, and history. The panelists address abstraction’s potential as a political language for social commentary, McMillian's work in relation to the genre’s histories, and the historic experience of Black artists working in abstraction. 

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Dr. Frank C. Martin II serves as visiting associate professor of art history and art theory at South Carolina State University and is the retired director of The I.P. Stanback Museum & Planetarium, located on the campus of the university. A graduate of Yale University and the City University of New York, Hunter College, with additional study in contemporary art and art theory at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University, Martin holds a Ph.D. in philosophy with a specialization in axiology and the history of aesthetics from the University of South Carolina. A former lecturer and associate manager of the Office of Education Services for the Uris Education Center of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Martin has served as an academic advisor for the PBS documentary Shared History and has worked as a contributing critic in the fine arts for Charleston’s The Post and Courier. Martin is a member of the International Association of Art Critics (Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art) based in Paris.

Michaela Pilar Brown is the owner/director of Mike Brown Contemporary Art Gallery. She is an independent curator and multidisciplinary artist using photography, installation, collage, painting, and performance. She is the 2018 grand prize winner of ArtFields’ juried art competition and a 2018 inaugural resident artist of the Volcanic Residency, Whakatane Museum, Whakatane, New Zealand. She was one of the six American artists selected to participate as a Resident Artist for OPEN IMMERSION: A VR CREATIVE DOC LAB produced by the CFC Media Lab, The National Film Board of Canada (NFB), and JustFilms | Ford Foundation in Toronto, Canada, an Inaugural Resident Artist at the 2016 Sedona Summer Colony and a 2016 Artist in Residence, Kunstlerwerkgemeinschaft Kaiserslautern, Germany, and has held residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the McColl Center for Art and Innovation. Brown’s work can be found in private and public museum collections in the United States. She is the former executive director of 701 Center for Contemporary Art, where she served from 2020 to 2022. 

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