Arts & Music of the sculpture department despite protests that she was a woman and a foreigner. She remained with the school until her retirement in 1975. When she moved to Mexico, Catlett’s first work as an artist was with the Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP), a famous workshop in Mexico City dedicated to graphic arts promoting leftist political causes, social issues, and education. At the TGP, she and other artists created a series of linoleum cuts featuring prominent black figures, as well as posters, leaflets, illustrations for textbooks, and materials to promote literacy in Mexico. She remained with the workshop for twenty years, leaving in 1966. Her posters of Harriet Tubman, Angela Davis, Malcolm X and other figures were widely distributed. Although she had an individual exhibition of her work in 1948 in Washington, D.C., her work did not begin to be shown regularly until the 1960s and 1970s, almost entirely in the United States, where it drew interest because of social movements such as the Black Arts Movement and feminism. While many of these exhibitions were collective, Catlett had over fifty individual exhibitions of her work during her lifetime. Catlett’s work can be found in major collections such as those of the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Library of Congress, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, National Museum in Prague, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries, the Palacio de Bellas Artes n Mexico, the Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Iowa,the June Kelly Gallery and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York. The Legacy Museum, which opened on April 26, 2018, displays and dramatizes the history of slavery and racism in America, and features artwork by Catlett and others. Catlett was the subject of an episode of the BBC Radio 4series An Alternative History of Art, presented by Naomi Beckwith and broadcast on March 6, 2018. For more information- www.wikipedia.org and Credits The Urban Experience 37 We currently feature originals, prints, sculptures and framed artwork of numerous African American and Iowa artists in the gallery. To see some of the prior artists featured visit www.westdesmoines.thegreatframeup. com and our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/ tgfuwdmiowa. Please follow us on Pinterest www. pinterest.com/tgfuwdm and Twitter @tgfuwdm. About The Great Frame Up Founded in 1972, The Great Frame Up, Inc. is a custom picture framer, offering more than 1,000 custom frames, mat styles, ready to hang framed art and local artwork. The West Des Moines location of The Great Frame Up opened in 2005 and is located at 5515 Mills Civic Parkway in the West Glen and is open Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday 10- 6pm; Thursday 10- 8pm & Saturday 10- 5pm.
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