In this lecture, Sarah Kelly Oehler, Field-McCormick Chair and Curator of American Art at The Art Institute of Chicago and organizing curator of Charles White: A Retrospective, will explore White’s early years growing up and studying in Chicago. Oehler will shed light on how White’s formative years led to a long career as a painter and printmaker and, above all, as a masterful draftsman dedicated to rendering the African American figure and his sociopolitical reality with dignity and pathos. Her talk will also highlight artists who influenced White at an early age and how the legacy of the Chicago Black Renaissance paved the way for his development as an artist.