5th Grade Howardena Pindell Project

Howardena Pindell is an artist, educator and curator best known for her painting and multimedia work. She was a curator at the MOMA for over 12 years, and was the first black woman to hold that position. As curator worked to uncover the injustice and lack of representation of Black artists in the museum, while simultaneously experiencing these injustices and struggling to have her work exhibited as a Black female visual artist.

Her work over the years has explored many themes including color, structure, and texture, as well as intersectionality in feminism, racism, violence and representation. The students looked at some of her early abstract pieces in which circles were a representation of some of Howardena’s own experiences.

The students’ pieces were a product of looking at her work, and also the result of a longer study of color theory. They first explored the primary colors through a series of mixing, matching and color scheme exercises that each began with just red, blue and yellow. They then expanded on a single color theme by creating larger pages of color and mixed media materials like oil pastel, colored pencil and paint. From these pages they cut circles and arranged them in ways inspired by Pindell’s work.

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Ryder Brownell