Beverly McIver, a Le Murate. Progetti Arte Contemporanea l’incontro con l’artista afroamericana “impegnata”

Beverly McIver is widely acknowledged as a significant presence in contemporary American art, and has charted a new direction as an African American female artist. She is committed to producing art that examines racial, gender, social identity, and occupational identity. Born in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1962, McIver is the youngest of three sisters. McIver is now the legal guardian of her oldest sister, Renee, who is mentally disabled with the mindset of a third grader. Renee is a frequent subject of the artist’s work, as are other family members. McIver’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, and was named one of the “Top Ten in Painting” in Art in America in 2011. She is the subject of a feature-film documentary, “Raising Renee,” which played on HBO, was nominated for an Emmy Award, and is now streaming on Amazon Prime. McIver’s work is in the permanent collection of the High Museum of Art, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the Mint Museum, and significant corporate and private collections.  McIver has received numerous grants and awards including the 2017 Rome Prize Fellowship, 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Anyone Can Fly Foundation, 2017 Purchase Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation grant, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship from Harvard University, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. McIver has held residencies at many of the America’s leading artist communities, including Yaddo, the Headland Center for the Arts, Djerassi, and Penland School of Arts and Crafts. McIver received a master of fine arts degree in painting from Pennsylvania State University, an honorary doctorate from North Carolina Central University, and is currently the Esbenshade Professor of the Practice of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke University.