anna huddleston

Public Radio

Artists Talk with LVA: March 20, 2025

The 2025 LVA Honors will recognize Annette Cable and Dr. Jabani Bennett and both joined us this week live in the studio. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Annette Cable (2025 Art Educator) grew up in the country outside of Columbus, Ohio and graduated from the Columbus College of Art and Design. As an illustrator, she has worked for commercial clients nationwide, including having illustrated 20 children’s picture books. She has worked for LVA for many years and has been a CFAC teacher, an Open Doors teacher, and a Summer Camp coordinator and teacher. She has been the LVA Education Director since 2016.

Her non-profit experience includes her work with many local museums and historic landmarks, including the Portland Museum for the past 25 years. From her drawing board and computer screen creating book illustrations to large murals, art classrooms, and community centers, creativity, community, and education encompass her teaching philosophy. 

Dr. Jabani Bennett (2025 Community Impact) served as the first Black woman director of the Women’s Center at the University of Louisville and as a student in 2007 was the student events coordinator at the center and led one of the few community-wide celebrations for LGBTQIA women on campus.

Dr. Bennett has shaped and provided oversight over numerous creative and inclusive learning and engagement programs for diverse learners across their lifespans. Her career as an award-winning arts educator in New York City and Louisville public schools informs her current projects in social justice, cultural equity planning, and empowering self-identified femmes and feminine-presenting women through the arts. 

In October 2024 through January 2025, The Kentucky Center for African American Heritage hosted her solo exhibition, And Say Hi To Your Mother: 30 Portraits of Black Women Culture Leaders.

Special

Legacy: Anna Huddleston (1913-1999)

On March 1, 2018, Louisville Visual Art will present WIlma Bethel with the Art Educator Award, in memory of Anna Huddleston. Former LVA director John Begley remembers the influential artist and educator.

“. . . (African American artists) run around, do good things and then disappear.” - Fred Bond, a Louisville Black artist, colleague, and friend of Anna Huddleston

Photo courtesy Ed Hamilton.

Photo courtesy Ed Hamilton.

Anna Huddleston was a force for art education in Louisville for many years.  Beginning as a elementary art teacher in what were, in that period of segregation, referred to as Louisville’s "colored" schools, then as a middle school teacher at DuVall in the integrated Louisville Board of Education, and finally as the Resource Art Teacher for the Jefferson County Public School system, she mentored and encouraged many students, beginning instructors, and emerging artists.  She was also president of the Kentucky Art Education Association.

After retirement, she continued her community engagement in many ways, working to establish the Louisville Art Workshop with fellow Louisville artists G.C. Coxe, Fred Bond, and Ed Hamilton, and serving on various boards including the Bourgard College of Art and Music, and the Art Center Association (now the LVA) where she was deeply involved in expanding the free Children’s Fine Art Classes (CFAC) into new neighborhood venues, including the West End.

Generally working behind the scenes, she received deserved recognition in Black Kentucky artists: an exhibition of work by black artists living in Kentucky that was organized for the Kentucky Arts Commission and toured by them from June 1979 through January 1981, and shortly after when she was the first African American artist to be awarded the Kentucky Arts Council’s highest honor, the Milner Award, at that time the only Governor’s Award in the Arts in Kentucky.

Ed Hamilton, Anna Huddleston, Gretchen Bradleigh, William Duffy, & Sylvia Clay. Photo courtesy Ed Hamilton.

Ed Hamilton, Anna Huddleston, Gretchen Bradleigh, William Duffy, & Sylvia Clay. Photo courtesy Ed Hamilton.

With the Stars Among Us luncheon on March 1, the LVA will again remember the important achievements of this landmark visual arts educator so that her contributions to following generations do not disappear.


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John Begley is a Printmaker, Installation, and Video Artist. From 1975 to 2014 he was a Curator and Gallery Director, including 19 years as Executive Director of LVA and several years with the UofL’s Hite Art Institute, where he is now Coordinator of the IHQ Project.

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