Othello Re-imagined in Sepia

African American painter and printmaker Curlee Raven Holton reinvents Shakespeare’s Othello in this series of ten etchings, created during an artist residency at the Venice Printmaking Studio in 2012. At once aesthetically decadent and psychologically raw, Holton’s sepia-toned prints explore the inner life and public persona of the Moor of Venice, bringing to his story contemporary ideas about race, identity, and love.

Curlee Raven Holton is an internationally-recognized artist, scholar, and educator. The subject of a recent retrospective at the Cleveland Institute of Art, his work employs powerful visual narratives to address significant personal, political, and cultural events. From 1991 to 2017, Holton taught printmaking and African American art history at Lafayette College in Easton, PA, where he also founded the acclaimed Experimental Printmaking Institute (EPI). He currently serves as the executive director of the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland. Holton earned his M.F.A. with Honors from Kent State University and his B.F.A. from the Cleveland Institute of Art.

This exhibition is made possible by a grant from the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation and the gifts of individual donors in support of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum's Diverse Voices Initiative.