The James Howell Foundation was pleased to host the Vera List Center’s VLC Producers Council Spring Event, Gray Matter: A Special Matter of Intelligence, in the artist’s home and studio. The program brought together artists, scholars, and members of the VLC community for an evening of conversation centered on materiality, perception, and the intellectual and aesthetic possibilities of the color gray.
The event featured opening remarks by Laura Bardier, Executive Director of the James Howell Foundation, who reflected on Howell’s decades-long engagement with gray as both a formal and conceptual concern. A panel discussion followed with artists Josiah McElheny and Kameelah Janan Rasheed, whose practices engage questions of material intelligence, history, and meaning-making. Together, the speakers offered distinct yet resonant perspectives on how artistic processes can reflect and reshape ways of seeing and understanding.
Presented in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, the program aligned with a shared commitment to supporting politically engaged artistic practices and fostering dialogue around the role of art in addressing urgent social and cultural questions.
Josiah McElheny combines his skills as an expert glassblower, which he honed for many years under the tutelage of European masters, with a playful approach to both the history of his medium and the history of ideas. His objects and installations, often based around historical events, seek to fuse materiality and thought in the experience of looking. He was born in Boston in 1966 and lives and works in New York. He has exhibited widely, including selected solo exhibitions at Cantor Art Center at Stanford University (2019); Moody Centre for the Arts at Rice University, Houston (2018); Madison Square Park, New York (2017); Museum of Applied Art, Vienna (2016); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio (2013); The Arts Club of Chicago (2013); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2012); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2011); Palacio de Cristal, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2009); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2007); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2007); Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma (2005); Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain (2002); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2001); The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (1999); School of Art Institute of Chicago (1998); and the Seattle Art Museum (1995).
Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s work across art and pedagogy has garnered numerous honors. In 2024, she was a finalist for Artes Mundi 11 and received a High Desert Test Sites Fellowship at Joshua Tree. She received additional fellowships and awards from Working Artist (2023), Schering Stiftung (2022 Award for Artistic Research), Creative Capital Award (2022), Artists + Machine Intelligence Grants - Experiments with Google (2022), and the Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts (2021). Her work has also been presented worldwide, spanning North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include Henry Art Gallery (2025), REDCAT (2024), KW Institute of Contemporary Art (2023), Art Institute of Chicago (2023), and Kunstverein Hannover (2022). She has participated in group exhibitions at the Studio Museum, the Bronx Museum, the New Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, MASS MoCA, The Kitchen, and the ICA Philadelphia, among others.
The Vera List Center for Art and Politics is an artist-focused research center and public forum for art, culture, and politics. It was established at The New School in 1992—a time of rousing debates about freedom of speech, identity politics, and society’s investment in the arts. A leader in the field, the center is a nonprofit that catalyzes and supports politically engaged art, public scholarship, and research throughout the world. It fosters vibrant and diverse communities of artists, scholars, and policymakers who take creative, intellectual, and political risks to bring about positive change.
The James Howell Foundation, established by D. Joy Howell and the James Howell estate in 2017 and directed by Laura Bardier, aims to perpetuate Howell’s legacy and provide access to his archives. This is accomplished through publications, exhibitions, and artwork donations. The Foundation also supports art professionals and artists, especially those who embrace Howell’s interdisciplinary spirit. For instance, the organization collaborates with nonprofits to offer opportunities for students in curatorial and art historical programs. Moreover, grants and donations are awarded to institutions that align with the Foundation’s mission.