Ben F. Jones
American visual artist (born 1941)
Benjamin Franklin Jones (born 1941) is an American visual artist, educator, and activist, whose creative career spans six decades. His multimedia artworks draw on his travel and research in Africa, Europe, South America, the United States and the Caribbean; most notably, he has made more than fifty cultural exchange visits to Cuba since the 1970s. His works explore his African-American heritage, African spiritualism and ritual, as well as jazz and soul music, reflecting his engagement with the Black Arts Movement.
As art historian Eddie Chambers observes, "Ben Jones has established himself as perhaps one of the most respected senior figures of contemporary African-American art, whose practice emerged in the artistically, culturally and politically turbulent period of the late 1960s, and continued, with notable rigour and constantly maturing creativity, through the decades right up to the present time."
Biography
Benjamin Franklin Jones was born in 1941 in Paterson, New Jersey, United States. He has said that, being from a family of 15 children, with relatives constantly visiting: "As a little boy, I found myself drawing them all the time and by the age of 8 or 9, I was regularly doing drawings of the family. One day at school my teacher said 'You can draw!' and I just enjoyed doing what I was doing and carried on."
He received a BFA degree from William Paterson University (formerly Paterson State Teachers College), an MA from New York University and an MFA from Pratt Institute.
Jones has lectured worldwide at educational and cultural institutions, among which are Harvard University, Howard University, Savannah College of Art and Design, Wifredo Lam Center (Havana, Cuba) and the University of Ghana.
In honor of his life-long commitment to youth art education and diversity in the arts, the Ben Jones Scholarship Fund was set up by Montclair Art Museum, "for students with financial need to have transformative experiences through exposure to fine art and opportunities to advance their skills, explore their creative voice, build portfolios and personal connections in the arts, and increase confidence and self-esteem."
He is the subject of the 2018 documentary film The Art of the Journey: The Ben F. Jones Story.
He expresses through his work his activist belief that "everything connects"; interviewed following the opening of a 2021 dual show with William Rhodes, Making Visible the Connections, at the California Institute of Integral Studies' Desai Matta Gallery, Jones said: "Racism, social justice, environmentalism, spirituality. … we have to see the connection between social justice and protecting the environment and working for equality."
Works by Jones are held in the permanent collections of major institutions, including The Studio Museum in Harlem, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Modern Art in New York, New Jersey State Museum, Montclair Art Museum, and Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes of Havana.
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