Richard Duarte Brown, known as Duarte, is a master artist with the TRANSIT ARTS Youth Arts Program and the Ohio Alliance for Arts Education’s Art in the House program. For more than 30 years, Duarte has dedicated his talents to helping young people in Columbus, Ohio, through countless programs including CAPACITY (CAPA’s youth arts program), the Short Stop Youth Center, the King Arts Complex, Ohio Alliance for Arts Education’s (and formerly GCAC’s) Artists-in-Schools program, GCAC’s Children of the Future, Ebony Boys, Art Safe, and VSA Ohio. Duarte has also worked as a high school art instructor at the Arts and College Preparatory Academy in Columbus. Currently, he serves as a resident artist for Whitehall City Schools and Berne Union Schools in the Village of Sugar Grove, Ohio. His murals can be seen throughout the city, bringing comfort and inspiration to countless viewers.You can read more in this article from Columbus Monthly magazine.

When the local news channels aired the L.A. riots in the 90s, Duarte’s mixed media paintings gravitated toward the medium of healing, comprehending the universal creative desire in everyone to heal, thus Duarte’s Human Series. Duarte’s current body of work evolves from this Human Series and reflects his deep dive into connecting to people through narratives, unveiling layers of personal development and stirring individual strength, wisdom, and courage. He encourages the innate creative voice in all of us that desires to rise, create, and heal. His work is a visual demonstration of ethnography that shows a quest for growth, provokes dialogue, ignites assurance, draws out brilliance, and impacts lifelong alumni of his creative influence. Click here to hear Duarte speak more about his life and work on Hanif Abdurraqib’s Small Joys podcast.

Duarte was selected for the 2022 Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson Fellowship, one of two programs created by the Greater Columbus Arts Council and the Columbus Museum of Art to support African-American, professional visual artists and honor the legacy of the beloved Columbus artist and MacArthur Fellow.

RECENT PROJECTS: First Friday Lecture @ Kent State, “Teaching Art as Social Engagement”

Whitehall City Schools Family & Student Day @ The Columbus Museum of Art – Led week-long workshop “Makin’ Analog” assemblage project involving every seventh grade student at Rosemore Middle School that got to be displayed at the museum.

“Looking for Family” Beeler Gallery, Columbus College of Art & Design. A multimedia exhibition that emanated from the notion of mentorship, following the strong influence that Smoky Brown had on Brown’s life and work to the continuation of Duarte Brown’s mentoring activity in the present, which includes working with faculty and students from three Ohio schools: Berne Union High School in Sugar Grove, Benjamin Logan High School in Bellefontaine, and Whitehall-Yearling High School, in Whitehall, as well as with student artists involved in TRANSIT ARTS, in Columbus.

“The Art of Justice: Stories of Black Cultural Expression” at Thomas J. Moyer Ohio Judicial Center. Brown presented with fellow Ohio Teaching Artist Roster member and storyteller Lyn Ford and Ohio Arts Council Arts Learning Coordinator and poet Chiquita Mullins Lee to share their backgrounds and the sources of inspiration for their works and careers with over one hundred high school students interested in history and art during the Supreme Court of Ohio Black History Month Celebration. Click here for a video celebrating the event from The Ohio Channel.

Availability

Upon request

Video courtesy of “Broad and High” via YouTube.