Arturo Lindsay


Arturo Lindsay is a Panamanian born artist and Professor of Art and Art History at Spelman College. His scholarship specializes in ethnographic research on African spiritual and aesthetic retentions in contemporary American cultures. His Panamanian/American identity is reflected in his art, which focuses on African culture in America.

Early life and education

Lindsay was born in Colon, Panama, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He attended graduate school at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Lindsay studied with AfriCOBRA member Nelson Stevens, Lionel Góngora, a Colombian artist and a founding member of Nueva Presencia and Salón Independiente in Mexico, Dr. Nana Nkestsia, Kwame Nkruma’s first Minister of Art and Culture in Ghana.

Career

Lindsay began his career as a theater artist acting in and directing street theater projects in New York City and New England. While pursuing a doctorate degree at New York University Lindsay began working with fellow student Sandro Dernini, the originator of Plexus International. Lindsay became a founding member of Plexus New York. This multinational group of artists began creating large-scale collaborative art projects known as co-operas during the 1980s in New York City’s Lower East Side. Lindsay continues creating Plexus based projects in Atlanta, Georgia and Portobelo, Panama.
In the mid-1990s Lindsay returned to Panama where he co-founded the Painting Workshop of Taller Portobelo; an artist cooperative dedicated to preserving the traditions of the Congos who are descendants of cimarrones – enslaved Africans that liberated themselves in wars fought against the Spanish empire. He later founded the Spelman College Summer Art Colony, which provides students and emerging artists from the United States and Panama with an opportunity to create works of art in the rainforest of Portobelo, Panama.
In 2006, Lindsay was the Distinguished Batza Family Chair at Colgate University and the Kemp Distinguished Visiting Professor at Davidson College in Davidson, NC in 2005. Lindsay also received a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award in 1999. He has been selected to be a part of the project that is funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and administered by the Bronx Museum of the Arts.
Lindsay's 2008 solo exhibition, Love, at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporian Art, involves the use of "ashé", which is the Yoruba concept for the life force found in all things. In 2009 he was commissioned to create a sculpture for the Smithsonian Institution’s Latino Center Legacy Awards.

Recent career

Lindsay is the editor of Santería Aesthetics in Contemporary Latin American Art and has lectured and published several articles and catalogue essays on contemporary art theory and practice with a focus on the art and aesthetics of the African Diaspora.
In recent years Lindsay has been creating sustainable architecture, biodegradable sculptures and time specific large-scale installations and sculptures at Las Orquídeas Environmental Sculpture Park in Portobelo, Panama. He designed the railings and medallions for the Judge Lenwood Jackson Justice Center in Atlanta, and paintings of Bayano and Felipillo, for Frank O. Gehry’s new museum, Museo de La Biodiversidad in Panama.
Lindsay collaborated with poets Opal Moore and Sharan Strange, musician Joseph Jennings, set designer Paul Thomason, production coordinator, Dan Bascelli, choreographer T. Lang and soprano Laura English Robinson to create a performance entitled "Artists Contemplating Torture". It was presented in Portobelo, Panama, Cape Town, South Africa and Atlanta, Georgia, and was based on Lindsay's earlier work "Artists Contemplating the Fate of Those Who Speak of Freedom".

Lindsay took part in a U.S. Department of State initiative called smARTpower) which partnered the Bronx Museum of the Arts and Medrar for Contemporary Art in Egypt, in an experiment in one-to-one diplomacy through the visual arts. The project documented social-media based experiences in the lives of ordinary Middle East youth.
In 2016 Lindsay retired from teaching at Spelman College.

Selected Solo Exhibitions