More Advance Praise for

OLD IN ART SCHOOL

“This is a courageous, intellectually stimulating, and wholly entertaining story of one woman reconciling two worlds and being open to the possibilities and changes life offers.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Old in Art School is Nell Painter’s journey from famous historian to humble art student at age sixty-four. Along the way, she chronicles her own family history, including a mother who reinvented herself at the same age! Painter blows up treasured clichés about what it means to be ‘an artist’ and who fits that role, presenting us with comic scenes of questionable pedagogy. This book should have a corrective impact on art education—it deserves to be widely read and hotly discussed!”

— JOYCE KOZLOFF, artist

“One of our most distinguished scholars of race and racism has written an incisive, surprising, eloquent, and often wry account of what it means to go back to school at sixty-four, the age at which most academics contemplate retiring from it. Along the way, Nell Painter helps us to see the world as art, art as the world, and to understand arduous, creative self-transformation as toil worth the trouble. Old in Art School is as edgy as a contemporary work of art: bold in form, assured in line and shape, unflinching in its textured analysis of the ways race, gender, and age color how we perceive the world and how the world perceives us.”

—CATHY N. DAVIDSON, author of The New Education

“We all dream of starting over, but Nell Painter really did it. This unsparing account of inspiration and the creative process takes on racism, loneliness, self-loathing, the hazards of aging, and bad manners in the art world. Funny, edifying, and always mesmerizing, this book is also about searching for—and finding (most of the time)—happiness.”

—MARTHA HODES, author of Mourning Lincoln

“Memoirs by black women artists are extremely rare, and this one is so beautifully written, so perfectly formed in terms of its storytelling trajectory, with so many delectable details about art techniques and subject matter, the relationship of the work to her previous projects as a celebrated historian, and her life struggles as the daughter of once-perfect parents, now aged and with health difficulties. Old in Art School seems both definitive and unforgettable.”

—MICHELE WALLACE, author of

Dark Designs and Visual Culture

“Old in Art School is brilliantly written. A rare reflection of an artist and scholar who combines her voice and vision in this extraordinary work. Painter masterfully weaves a highly personal story into one that situates her art making with her history making . . . It is a book about belonging and longing; expectations and disappointments; beauty and humor. It is engrossing and heroic.”

—DEBORAH WILLIS, New York University, author of Envisioning Emancipation

“With wisdom, insight, brutal honesty, and flashes of humor, Nell Painter shares her journey to become an artist in this fascinating, original memoir. Old in Art School renders both the insecurity and elation of embarking on this path after a long and distinguished academic career. Her courage, sensitivity, and keen observation offer a rare and needed portrait of an older woman determined to live a creative life on her own terms.”

—FARAH JASMINE GRIFFIN, author of Harlem Nocturne