Louisville · United States
Speed Art Museum Launches Sam Gilliam Visiting Artist Programme with Vanessa German and Eric N. Mack
The inaugural year of the SGVAP pairs two distinct artistic practices rooted in community, material experimentation and spatial intervention.
A New Chapter for Louisville's Art Scene
The Speed Art Museum has unveiled the first presentations of the Sam Gilliam Visiting Artist Programme (SGVAP), a venture established in tribute to the late Sam Gilliam (1933–2022). Born in Mississippi and raised in Louisville, where he studied at the University of Louisville, Gilliam forged the foundations of his radical painting practice within a thriving community of Black artists in the city.
Backed by the Sam Gilliam Foundation, the programme functions as both a visiting artist residency and an experimental platform for fresh approaches to pedagogy. Each year, two contemporary artists are invited to Kentucky to expand the social dimensions of their practice through research, fellowship, public conversation and exchange with regional creatives and communities. The initiative draws its purpose from Gilliam's enduring ties to Louisville and the Speed's commitment to contemporary art as a site of material innovation, historical investigation and civic dialogue.
Vanessa German: Collective Memory as Material
The programme's first year concludes with two exhibitions. Vanessa German's …do you remember when you were the sky? runs from 10 April to 28 June 2026, while Eric N. Mack's RARE ESSENCE opens on 27 May and continues through 29 November 2026. Both are organised by Assistant Curator Diallo Simon-Ponte.
German's contribution emerged from months of research and public engagement in Louisville. Central to her process was Future Histories of Emancipation, a three-day participatory performance series staged in October 2025 across several venues, including the University of Louisville's Gottschalk Hall — once the site of the Colored Girls Dormitory of the Louisville Industrial School of Reform — as well as the Belknap Playhouse Theater and the Speed itself. Informed by scholarship from Dr Felicia Jamison and Saidiya Hartman, the performances examined histories of Black girlhood, institutional confinement, experiments in freedom and collective memory. Local dancers and Grammy-nominated violinist V.C.R. joined the ensemble.
This ritualistic research gave rise to an exhibition of assemblage sculptures incorporating mineral crystals, teacups, quilts, doll parts and cowrie shells. Several works integrate objects and ideas contributed by Louisville residents during the performances, positioning community not as a distant subject but as a living material and social force within the art itself. Two public workshops, Critical Thinking Through Object Making: A Memory Jug Workshop, led by Assistant Curator Sirene Martin, offered further opportunities for embodied knowledge-sharing.
Eric N. Mack: Painting as Environment
Mack's RARE ESSENCE takes a different approach, investigating material experimentation and the social dynamics of museum space. Installed in the Speed's Gheens Court, his site-responsive work comprises suspended textile paintings that transform one of the museum's busiest circulation areas. Constructed from sheer, painted, patterned, stained and recombined fabrics, the pieces generate shifting relationships between colour, light, architecture and the movement of visitors.
Significantly, Mack's installation occupies a threshold within the Speed for the first time in the institution's history — the junction where the original 1927 building meets the 2016 expansion designed by Kulapat Yantrasast. In this setting, RARE ESSENCE treats painting as an environmental and social form rather than a static object. Mack's use of textiles, suspension and spatial movement enters into dialogue with Gilliam's own rethinking of the canvas, extending that legacy through fashion, found materials, bodily movement and architectural encounter.
Looking Ahead
The SGVAP is led by Diallo Simon-Ponte, the Sam Gilliam Assistant Curator of Artist Programs, and co-founded and supervised by Tyler Blackwell, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Speed. Earlier this spring, the museum announced its second-year artists: Deana Lawson and Brandon Ndife.
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