The Galleries at Pasadena City College

Where Art and Culture Thrive

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The Galleries at PCC is home to two acclaimed art galleries —The Boone Family Art Gallery and Gallery V. Both galleries host multiple exhibitions each year that feature the work of our students, our faculty, and visiting professional artists.

Current Exhibition

Mark Steven Greenfield: Venerated

PCC Galleries Presents Venerated, an exhibition of new work by Mark Steven Greenfield. Venerated updates and expands on his Halo series, which depicts historical Black figures, resistance leaders, folk saints, and survivors from the 1400’s- 1800’s who have often been marginalized or omitted.  Greenfield aims to not only honor the stories of black individuals in history but also specifically highlight their contributions to other political movements and paradigm shifts of other rights that are being challenged and erased, including transgender rights, reproductive rights, religious rights, and voter rights. Venerated in this case is an exhibition about interconnected solidarity. It upholds the value that honoring the suppressed history of one people can uplift the dignity of all people.

For example, in Greenfield’s painting, Francisco Manicongo, he represents the Brazilian slave who was investigated by the Portuguese Inquisition in 1591 for sodomy and cross-dressing. He is considered Brazil’s first cross-dresser.  The results of this court case resulted in the first laws in the New World to police gender presentation, a precedent that was followed by many of the colonies as a model of how to enforce European legal structures in the face of differing cultural practices by enslaved and indigenous peoples.

Mark Steven Greenfield is an American artist known for his paintings, installations, and graphic works that explore themes of race, identity, spirituality, and culture. Born in 1951 in Los Angeles, California, Greenfield is known as a luminary in African American art who reframes historical representations of black people and the African Diaspora in graphics, photography, and painting into new works that reframe these representations, challenging viewers to confront societal realities and celebrate cultural heritage.  Working for over 50 years, Greenfield has made several bodies of work including Incognegro, a series of lenticular graphic prints that appropriated images of white people in blackface, and Black Madonna, a series of paintings that reimagines the Virgin Mary & Christ Child as Black and often with backgrounds that reference racial conflict and symbols of modern life, and the Halo series which expands on Black Madonna.

Greenfield’s work weaves together themes of race, identity, and historical memory with visual complexity and spiritual symbolism. He interrogates how African American identity is constructed, distorted, omitted, or stereotyped in broader culture, often revealing what has been erased or hidden from mainstream narratives. His current practice retrieves lesser-known figures, events, and stories—folk saints, martyrs, and enslaved people—bringing them into visibility. Greenfield borrows from religious art, particularly Christian iconography, as well as Yoruba Egungun, which grounds his work both as a critical investigation of symbols and images, as well as well as a sincere practice of spirituality and ritual play. Symbols such as halos, mandalas, gold leaf, and devotional imagery are reimagined to honor and valorize Black subjects. Many of his works juxtapose past and present, beauty and violence, placing scenes of religious serenity or reverence alongside stark depictions of racial violence and social injustice, creating a tension that challenges viewers to confront the complexities of history and memory.

Biography

A native Angeleno, Mark Steven Greenfield studied under Charles White and John Riddle at Otis Art Institute in a program sponsored by the Golden State Life Insurance Company. He went on to receive his bachelor’s degree in art education in 1973 from California State University, Long Beach.  To support his ability to make his art, he held various positions as a visual display artist, a park director, a graphic design instructor, and a police artist before returning to school, graduating with a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting and drawing from California State University, Los Angeles in 1987. From 1993 through 2010, he was an arts administrator for the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, first as the director of the Watts Towers Arts Center and the Towers of Simon Rodia and later as the director of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery.   In 1998, he served as the Head of the U. S. delegation to the World Cup Cultural Festival in Paris, France, and in 2002, he was part of the Getty Visiting Scholars program. He has served on the boards of the Downtown Arts Development Association, the Korean American Museum, and The Armory Center for the Arts, and was past president of the Los Angeles Art Association/Gallery 825. He currently serves on the boards of Side Street Projects, The Harpo Foundation, and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions.

Greenfield’s work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States, most notably at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, the Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art, the Monterey Museum of Art, the Museum of Art and History, and the California African American Museum.  Internationally, he has exhibited in Thailand at the Chiang Mai Art Museum, in Naples, Italy, at Art 1307, Villa Donato, the Gang Dong Art Center in Seoul, South Korea, and the Blue Roof Museum in Chengdu, PRC.  He is represented by the Ricco Maresca Gallery in New York and the William Turner Gallery in Santa Monica, California. His work deals primarily with the African American experience and, in recent years, has focused on the effects of stereotypes on American culture, stimulating much-needed and long overdue dialogue on issues of race. He is a recipient of the L.A. Artcore Crystal Award (2006), Los Angeles Artist Laboratory Fellowship Grant (2011), the City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship (COLA 2012), The California Community Foundation Artist Fellowship (2012), the Instituto Sacatar Artist Residency in Salvador, Brazil (2013), the McColl Center for Art + Innovation Residency in 2016 and the Loghaven Artist Residency (2021). He was a visiting professor at the California Institute of the Arts in 2013 and was artist-in-residence at California State University, Los Angeles in 2016. 

Artist Lecture and Symposium

Greenfield will be presenting an artist lecture about his ongoing artistic practice on March 5 from 5-6 in the Westerbeck Hall before his opening reception from 6-8 in the Boone Family Gallery.

A symposium between Greenfield and PCC history professor Dr. Fanon Wilkins about the historical impacts of the subjects of Greenfield’s paintings and how it relates to history and culture in LA and the world.  The symposium will be on March 19 from 5-7 in the Westerbeck Hall.

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