A Conversation with Artist Bisa Butler 
Date: Thursday, August 6, 2026
​Time: 4:00PM
Location: Art Barn Lawn at Featherstone Center for the Arts
Fee: SOLD OUT

The Smithsonian American Art Museum's (SAAM) Jane Carpenter-Rock, Acting Margaret and Terry Stent Director, invites you to a conversation with artist Bisa Butler at Featherstone Center for the Arts.

Enjoy a lively conversation between Bisa Butler, Dalila Scruggs, the Augusta Savage Curator of African American Art at SAAM and Liz Andrews, Executive Director of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, as they discuss Butler’s artistic career and the forthcoming exhibition Bisa Butler: Tender Monuments opening March 2027 in Washington, DC

Bisa Butler is a rising star among a cadre of Black contemporary artists that engage figural representation to examine the beauty and complexity of Black experience. A painter by training, Butler employs a wide array of textiles as her “palette” and quilting as her medium. Her body of work draws largely on black and white archival photographs of Black American and other African diasporic people, which she translates into her own brightly colored interpretations using African and American fabrics to layer in stories based upon historical research. Through culturally-significant fabric choices and immense technical prowess, Butler brings her often unnamed subjects to life, creating lush and deeply empathetic portrayals of Black people. 

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