Corita Kent made waves as the ‘Pop-Art nun’ in the ’60s. A new center honors her legacy
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Corita Kent, also known as Sister Mary Corita, was once famous. In December 1967, the then-L.A.-based artist made the cover of Newsweek and the banner in the upper right corner read, “The Nun: Going Modern.” Kent is depicted twice on the cover — once in her religious garb and also in an understated black outfit surrounded by her colorful silkscreen prints. Here was a woman, in the era of peace and love and social change, who was both a nun and an artist, and a political one at that. Kent used her art to convey messages of hope and social justice.
On Saturday, a new showcase for her work opened in the downtown Arts District to help us remember that legacy. Besides offices and storage for a collection that includes 30,000 pieces of art and ephemera, the Corita Art Center, once located within Hollywood’s Immaculate Heart High School, will have, for the first time, a gallery that will also serve as a classroom for visiting students. Researchers are also invited to study its archives.
The message starts in the shared lobby, with Kent’s 10 “rules” for the art department she ran at Immaculate Heart College posted on the wall. Rule No. 7 is in the largest letters: “The only rule is work.”
“We think about her creative legacy as a living legacy, sharing the ethos that she left us,” says Nellie Scott, the center’s executive director, “not only with the collection, but this that we keep repeating as our mantra, that doing and making are acts of hope.” Scott often uses the word “groundbreaking” to describe Kent’s artwork.
Upon entering the center, there is a small display profiling the artist and her unusual career: a tattered copy of that Newsweek cover sits on the wall. In 1936, at age 18, Kent joined the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart and for many years she taught art at Immaculate Heart College, next to the high school. She was drawn to the bold graphics of Pop Art, making serigraphs so that her work would be affordable.
Over the years, her artwork became increasingly political, supporting issues such as the antiwar movement, racial equality and women’s rights. Slogans and quotes often appear in her prints, including “Make Love, Not War.” After a showdown with the conservative Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, she left the order in 1968, relocating to Boston. She died of cancer there in 1986 at age 67.
In a city where female artists remain vastly underrepresented in galleries and museums, the opening of the Corita Art Center “stands as a powerful testament to her enduring impact and the necessity of amplifying women’s voices in art,” says Sheharazad Fleming, board chair of the center, pointing out that there are very few public art spaces dedicated to the work and legacy of an individual female artist.
Kent’s work has inspired L.A. artists who came on the scene long after she left the city. “Sister Corita Kent is central to my beginnings as an artist,” says Lauren Halsey, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended community college before going to CalArts. “I came across her work via my former professor, Paul Gellman, in 2005 at El Camino Community College. Her maximalist graphic sensibilities and insistence on embracing experimentation have been foundational to my own practice.”
Alexandra Grant, who discovered Kent’s work after she became a professional artist, admires “the freshness she proposed to the Pop Art movement through her idealism and the bold artistry she brought to the social justice movement.”
The first show in the center’s art gallery is “Heroes and Sheroes,” a group of 29 prints Kent made after she moved to Boston. In these works, she used a collage of words and images from newspapers and magazines to convey her messages, paired with portraits of Cesar Chavez, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Coretta Scott King and the Kennedys.
This is the first time these works have been shown in public together. Admission to the center, which is open on Saturdays, is free, but reservations are required.
One of the major funders of the move is the Immaculate Heart Community, the independent group formed when the nuns in Kent’s order splintered from the Catholic Church. “I think it is important to know that this community that she came from is one of the supporters of this legacy program,” Scott says. “This organization that usually is behind walls and kind of quiet — they’re still supporting the mission of Sister Corita 60 years later.”
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