JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

March 31, 2020

Lives and works in California

ARTIST BIO

Janet Taylor Pickett (b. 1948) received her BFA in 1970 and her MFA in 1972 and was the Penny W. Stamps Commencement 2024 keynote speaker at the University of Michigan. She taught the History of African American Art at Essex County College and Bloomfield College for over thirty years. She received grants and fellowships from the New Jersey Council of the Arts Grant, the Ford Foundation, and the Mid-Atlantic States Art Council. Janet Taylor Pickett was the former African American Cultural Committee chair at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey.

Developing a groundbreaking visual vocabulary, AKIMBO EXOTICA, to probe themes of Blackness, identity, and the complexity of lived experience, Taylor Pickett is a forerunner in contemporary women painters whose work has been inspired by Romare Bearden, Bette Saar, Sam Gilliam, and Henri Matisse. Her most celebrated, “And She Was Born” (2020), was featured on the cover of the exhibition catalog for Seeing Differently: The Phillips Collects for a New Century (2021) at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.

Selected Museum exhibitions include Progressions: A Cultural Legacy at MoMA/PS1, African American Women Artists and the Power of their Gaze at the David C Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, The Matisse Series at the Montclair Art Museum, The Atlantic World-Layered Histories at the Harvard Art Museums, Hagar’s Dress at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, African Friends of Museums in Israel, Western Washington University Museum, State University of New York, The Studio Museum of Harlem in New York, Howard University, Telfair Museums, The Morris Museum, Denver Art Museum, Oceanside Museum of Art, Fairfield University Art Museum, Hammonds House Museum, Northern Illinois University Museum, Brandywine Workshop & Archive.

SPOTLIGHT

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CREDIT: Ben Zink, Videographer, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, University of Michigan

Janet Taylor Pickett

The Stamps Commencement 2024 Keynote Speaker

December 19, 2024, at the University Of Michigan

Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, University of Michigan, presented the life and career of the Stamps Commencement 2024 speaker, Janet Taylor Pickett, on December 19, 2024. In this video, Taylor Pickett discusses her initial interest in making art, her time as a student at U-M, and the challenges and successes she’s had as an artist throughout her career.

Link:

STAMPS interviews Janet Taylor Pickett: History and Artistry

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Necessary Memories

A Conversation with Marion K. Maneker and Janet Taylor Pickett

Tuesday, September 14, at 5PM at Jennifer Baahng Gallery

On September 14th, 2021, ARTnews President and Editorial Director Marion K. Maneker joined artist Janet Taylor Pickett for a discussion of “Necessary Memories” (Sept 14 – Nov 20, 2021), her solo exhibition at JENNIFER BAAHNG. The show chronicles Taylor Pickett’s journey as an artist, showcasing selected works from the 1980’s through 2021. In their conversation, Maneker and Taylor Pickett discuss how Blackness functions as what Taylor Pickett calls a “declarative statement” in her work, and the role that history and narrative play in her practice. Born in Ann Arbor Michigan, Taylor Pickett is a mixed media artist whose work is inspired by her life experience as an African American woman.