Solo Presentation of Elizabeth Talford Scott: The Armory Show, New York

Goya Contemporary Gallery is thrilled to announce our solo presentation of works by Elizabeth Talford Scott at the 2021 Armory Show. 

Fiber artist Elizabeth Talford Scott (b.1916- d.2011) was born near Chester, South Carolina on the land her parents worked as sharecroppers, and where previously her grandparents were held as slaves. The sixth of fourteen children who lived on the Blackstalk Plantation, Elizabeth was trained by the age of nine to repurpose scrapped materials into usable objects to accommodate basic survival needs. In her generation, quilting was a familiar part of the black American experience, especially in the South. It was a keystone for innovation, recycling, and passing historical narratives from one generation to the next. The artist honed her quilting skills at a young age, though her invention within the medium would develop over many years, moving away from domestic function into sculptural wall hangings that live squarely within the vernacular of fine art.

During her lifetime, Elizabeth exhibited in Baltimore, where she moved in the late 1940’s, as well as national venues including The Studio Museum of Harlem, NY; The Museum of American Folk Art, NY; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. In 1998, she was the subject of a retrospective exhibition titled Eyewinkers, Tumbleturds, and Candlebugs: The Art of Elizabeth Talford Scott that opened at the Maryland Institute College of Art and traveled to the Smithsonian Institution’s Anacostia Community Museum in Washington, DC among other venues in New England and North Carolina. In 1987, Elizabeth Talford Scott was bequeathed the Women’s Caucus Award for Outstanding Achievements in the Visual Arts. 

Elizabeth Talford Scott died in 2011. In 2019, the estate management was awarded to Goya Contemporary Gallery. In that same year, Elizabeth Scott was the joint subject of the exhibitions Hitching Their Dreams to Untamed Stars: Joyce J. Scott & Elizabeth Talford Scott at the Baltimore Museum of Art and Reality, Times Two: Joyce J. Scott & Elizabeth Talford Scott at Goya Contemporary Gallery. Elizabeth Talford Scott’s work entered several museum collections in 2020 and 2021. As part of her posthumous success, Elizabeth Talford Scott has been cited by many contemporary, celebrated artists as an influence, counting her own daughter, MacArthur Fellow Joyce J. Scott among those she impacted. (Goya Contemporary also represents the career and work of Joyce J. Scott).