Radcliffe Exhibits: Corita Kent: Footnotes and Headlines | 8/24 - 9/18/15.

Date: 

Monday, August 24, 2015, 9:00am

Location: 

Schlesinger Library, 3 James Street Cambridge, MA 02138

Corita Kent: Footnotes and Headlines opens on August 24, 2015, and runs through September 18, 2015.

The exhibition will be on view on the first floor of the Schlesinger Library, Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Artist Frances Elizabeth Kent was born in 1918 and took the name Sister Mary Corita when she became a nun with the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1936. She left the order in 1968 and continued to create work that was inseparable from her faith and activism until her death in 1986.

Kent’s bold pop art prints broke down the divisions between sacred and secular, art and daily life. Her iconic artwork appeared on book covers, greeting cards, billboards, postage stamps, magazines, and even a 150-foot-high gas tank; all of it conveys her commitment to social justice and socially engaged religion.

Drawn from the Schlesinger Library’s collection of Kent’s papers, letters, and images, this exhibition explores her career, artistic process, teaching, and activism. Footnotes and Headlines illuminates the work and life of an innovative artist who confronted war, hunger, and the Catholic Church hierarchy through her art.

Items on display include a draft of Kent’s 1985 “LOVE” stamp, correspondence with the radical antiwar activist Father Daniel Berrigan, and gallery invitations to her solo exhibitions in New York City.