The Columbia Museum of Art (CMA) presented the community with a significant survey exhibition of artwork by renowned artist Elizabeth Catlett (1912-2015.) The show offered an overview of Catlett's career as a printmaker and sculptor, and it included select works by others with which she had a personal connection: mentors, peers, and students. Additional works from the CMA Collection were also included in the installation.

It was an honor to take Darcy to see the work of Elizabeth Catlett, whose artistic career covered seventy years. In her work, Catlett aimed to give visibility and "voice" to unrepresented people, and to that end, her subject matter was often the laborer, women, and African Americans. She often focused on social issues pertinent to the United States and her adopted home of Mexico. From the CMA exhibition statement: "Catlett's powerful figures are grounded and stately, embodying resilience while acknowledging struggle. Hers is an art of, and addressed to, Black and Mexican working classes."

Catlett was born in Washington, D.C., amidst segregation. Her grandparents were enslaved people. Her mother and maternal grandmother raised her after her father died before she was born. Catlett's family stressed the importance of education, and her artistic ambitions were encouraged. She became an artist after studying at Howard University, the first Historically Black University to offer such a program. She was awarded the University of Iowa's first Master of Fine Arts in sculpture after training with the Regionalist painter Grant Wood.

Before embarking on further studies in Chicago and New York, Catlett chaired the art department at Dillard University in New Orleans. She left the United States in 1946 and moved to Mexico, where she married the artist Francisco "Pancho" Mora and joined the Taller de Griifica Popular. This joint printmaking workshop engaged in Mexican political affairs. Catlett taught sculpture at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas in Mexico City until she retired in 1975.