David Huffman, Provo Soul, 2023. Acrylic paint, oil paint, spray paint, African cloth, photo collage, glitter, crayon, and graphite on gesso coated birch door skin; 96 x 154 in. Denver Art Museum: Funds from Contemporary Collectors' Circle with additional support from Vicki & Kent Logan, Craig Ponzio, Bryon Adinoff & Trish Holland, Kathryn & David Birnbaum, Catherine Dews Edwards & Philip Edwards, and Drs. Ellen & Morris Susman, 2023.399A-D. © David Huffman
Logan Lecture: David Huffman
David Huffman creates "social abstractions," large-scale paintings combining social and political themes with inventive abstract mark-making. Influenced by progressive Black politics, Afrofuturism, Pop art, basketball, and the television shows Star Trek and Astro Boy, Huffman layers these references to reflect on the African American experience.
In his paintings, Huffman transports us to celestial realms where images of basketballs float like planetary bodies while the circuitous netting of hoop chains ground his work in the urban environment of his youth. His current work recalls NASA’s Cold War-era space race and Sun Ra’s hypnotic sonic experimentations to envision a world where Black Americans may freely prosper.
Huffman joins crystal am nelson, assistant professor of African Diasporic Visual Studies at University of Colorado, Boulder, in a conversation about his almost three-decade-long practice as an artist.
This event is part of the 2025-26 Logan Lecture Series.
Artist Bio
Born in 1963 in Berkeley, California, David Huffman received a BFA in 1986 and an MFA in 1999 from California College of the Arts, Oakland and San Francisco. He has had solo exhibitions at Berkeley Art Center; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York; and Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco. His works are in the collections of Berkely Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California; Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Minneapolis Institute of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and The Studio Museum, Harlem, New York. Huffman lives and works in Berkeley and Oakland, California, and teaches at California College of the Arts.
Since 2007, the Logan Lecture Series at the Denver Art Museum has presented talks by over 120 contemporary artists. Organized by the Modern and Contemporary Art department, the series is made possible through the generous support of Vicki and Kent Logan.
