Beirut Art Center presents a workshop led by Emory Douglas, artist and former Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party.

Beginning in the late 1960s, Douglas created the overall design of the Black Panther, the Party’s weekly newspaper, and oversaw its layout and production until the Black Panthers disbanded in 1979–80.

The workshop at Beirut Art Center explores the use of graphics for political and social purposes, taking as its starting point the prolific oeuvre of Emory Douglas.

During the 1st part of the workshop, Emory Douglas will present the techniques used in his work and hold a critique session with the workshop’s participants.

The 2nd part of the workshop will concentrate on the realization of new works by the participants under the supervision of Emory Douglas.

The workshop is open to participants from various backgrounds, including undergraduate students and graduates, and especially visual artists (painters, photographers, illustrators, etc.), graphic designers, and graffiti artists.

Emory Douglas was born in 1943 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and has been a resident of the Bay Area since 1951. He became the Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party in 1967, a role he held until the party disbanded in the early 1980s. During the Party’s active years, he served as the art director, overseeing the design and layout of the Black Panther, the Party’s weekly newspaper. Douglas was trained as a commercial artist at City College of San Francisco and has been the subject of several solo exhibitions. His work has also been in numerous exhibitions about the history of the Black Panther Party, including shows at the Arts & Culture Conference of the Black Panther Party in Atlanta, GA in 2008 and “The Black Panther Rank and File” at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco in 2006.

Most recently his work was the subject of a solo exhibition at Urbis, Manchester, UK in 2008-2009. In 2007, artist Sam Durant curated a solo exhibition of Douglas’s work at the MOCA Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles, “Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas,” and in 2009 “Emory Douglas: Black Panther” at the New Museum, New York.

Douglas’s work has also been presented at the 2008 Biennale of Sydney, Australia; the African American Art & Cultural Complex, San Francisco; Richmond Art Center, CA; and the Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston.