Tea with Mytris

Tea with Myrtis is an ongoing series of intimate art salons featuring lively conversations with contemporary artists, collectors, and leading arts professionals. Guests enjoy a selection of teas and delectable treats while exploring the ideas and trends shaping contemporary art. This special edition brings artist Lavett Ballard together with gallerist, curator, and art advisor Dr. Myrtis Bedolla for a conversation presented in conjunction with Lavett Ballard: a Rose is a Rose is a Rose. Experience the exhibition through the artist and curator’s perspectives as they share behind-the-scenes stories and explore the ideas and connections that shaped Ballard’s Grand Staircase installation. Before or after the program, guests are invited to have a keepsake portrait taken by a professional photographer within the installation. Tickets include light refreshments with specialty tea and one keepsake portrait experience. Presented by UPMC and UPMC Health Plan. About the Artist Lavett Ballard is a mixed-media visual artist, art historian, curator, and author. She holds dual bachelor’s degrees in Studio Art and Art History, with a minor in Museum Studies, from Rutgers University and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of the Arts. TIME commissioned her work for its 2020 Women of the Year project and again in 2023 for an essay by Isabel Wilkerson. Ballard describes her art as a reimagined visual narrative of people of African descent, using layered photography, paint, oil pastel, metallic foil, and reclaimed wood to illuminate Black women’s stories within historical and contemporary contexts. Myrtis Bedolla Dr. Myrtis Bedolla is the founder and proprietor of Galerie Myrtis. Her career spans more than three decades as a gallerist, art advisor, and curator, with a sustained commitment to equity, scholarship, and market advocacy. In 2022, she made history as the inaugural African American curator of The Afro-Futurist Manifesto: Blackness Reimagined, presented during the 59th Venice Biennale. The Maryland Institute College of Art awarded her an honorary Doctorate of Fine Art in 2023 in recognition of her curatorial leadership and scholarly contributions. About Galerie Myrtis Founded in 2006 in Baltimore, Galerie Myrtis is an emerging blue-chip gallery and art advisory specializing in twentieth- and twenty-first-century American art, with an emphasis on work by African American and African Diaspora artists. The gallery advances artists whose work speaks to cultural, social, historical, and political life.