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Alice Neel: Bringing the archives to life

Curatorial tour with Annabel Bai Jackson

painting by Alice Neel: Black Draftee (James Hunter), 1965, Oil on canvas.

Taxi drivers and radical feminists, intellectuals and family friends: Alice Neel painted a remarkable variety of people to fulfil her ambition of ‘plumbing the depths of the human creature’.

For this special evening, curatorial assistant Annabel Bai Jackson will lead a tour of the exhibition, revealing the fascinating lives of Neel’s portrait sitters and the archival work that went into discovering them. Join to learn about the people who were uncovered in our research using family trees, census records, and information requests – and those who still remain mysteries.

Annabel Bai Jackson is a curatorial assistant on Alice Neel: Hot Off The Griddle. She was a writer on the BFI Critics Mentorship Programme 2022, worked as an assistant curator for Odyssey: A Chinese Cinema Season, and undertook research work for moving image artist Daria Martin. Her writing has appeared in Sight & Sound, Kinfolk, The Arts Desk, and The Oxford Review of Books.

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