REPRESENT
200 YEARS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ART
Represent: 200 Years of African American Art
Philadelphia Museum of Art
2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway - Philadelphia
January 10–April 5, 2015
The Philadelphia Museum of Art has organized an exhibition highlighting its substantial holdings of work by African American artists. Reflecting a broad range of stories, subjects, styles, mediums, and traditions, Represent: 200 Years of African American Art includes works by Horace Pippin, Jacob Lawrence, Alma Thomas, Martin Puryear, and Carrie Mae Weems, and many others. The presentation of this exhibition marks the publication of a new catalogue highlighting the Museum’s collection of African American art.
Timothy Rub, the Museum’s George D. Widener Director and CEO, stated: “In telling a story that spans two centuries, we recognize not only a great many important artists and their work, but also the dramatic shifts that have occurred in African American life during this period. Presenting these works together now, we are mindful of the many anniversaries of the civil rights movement and are thinking equally about the way race remains a key topic of conversation in the United States today—in politics, society, popular culture, and, of course, the arts. This is an important moment in which to explore the historic development and continuing growth of the Museum’s collections of African American art.”
Represent: 200 Years of African American Art includes works by more than 50 artists. It begins with rare examples of fine and decorative arts made by free and enslaved artists prior to the Civil War, including silhouettes made after 1802 by Moses Williams, who worked in Philadelphia at the museum of Charles Willson Peale, and a massive storage jar (with a Bible verse finely inscribed across the lip) by the South Carolina potter David Drake. Also included is Henry Ossawa Tanner’s landmark painting The Annunciation, which entered the Museum’s collection in 1899, the first work by an African American artist to be acquired by an American museum.
The exhibition places a strong emphasis on the modern era, when African Americans began to have greater access to artistic training and professional opportunities in this field. Artists such as William Henry Johnson, James VanDerZee, and Elizabeth Catlett embraced modernism in the early 20th century while sustaining a focus on aspects of African American life. Represent also includes a number of important works by self-taught artists such as William Edmondson and Bill Traylor.
Among the especially significant works in the exhibition are a group of abstract paintings and sculptures from the 1960s through the 1980s, most notably Barbara Chase-Riboud’s monumental Malcolm X #3. Many of these works represent the engagement of African American artists with broader stylistic movements. Numerous works from the past several decades directly confront issues pertaining to race and representation. This tendency is reflected in Glenn Ligon’s text painting Untitled (I’m Turning Into a Specter before Your Very Eyes and I’m Going to Haunt You) and Lorna Simpson’s C-Ration.
Represent: 200 Years of African American Art also ventures outside of the general narrative to present an array of portraits, historical as well as contemporary. Images of family, friends, and historical icons made by several generations of artists will be shown, from works by Philadelphia-based printmaker Dox Thrash and Samuel Joseph Brown, Jr., to Barkley L. Hendricks’s Miss T.
The exhibition will feature excerpts from recently recorded interviews with several of the livings artists represented in the exhibition.
Curators
Consulting Curator Dr. Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Associate Professor of American Art, University of Pennsylvania; Organizing Curator John Vick, Project Curatorial Assistant, Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Catalogue
This exhibition accompanies a major catalogue, co-published by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Yale University Press.
Image: John Woodrow Wilson, Martin Luther King, Jr., 1981.
200 YEARS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ART
Represent: 200 Years of African American Art
Philadelphia Museum of Art
2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway - Philadelphia
January 10–April 5, 2015
The Philadelphia Museum of Art has organized an exhibition highlighting its substantial holdings of work by African American artists. Reflecting a broad range of stories, subjects, styles, mediums, and traditions, Represent: 200 Years of African American Art includes works by Horace Pippin, Jacob Lawrence, Alma Thomas, Martin Puryear, and Carrie Mae Weems, and many others. The presentation of this exhibition marks the publication of a new catalogue highlighting the Museum’s collection of African American art.
Timothy Rub, the Museum’s George D. Widener Director and CEO, stated: “In telling a story that spans two centuries, we recognize not only a great many important artists and their work, but also the dramatic shifts that have occurred in African American life during this period. Presenting these works together now, we are mindful of the many anniversaries of the civil rights movement and are thinking equally about the way race remains a key topic of conversation in the United States today—in politics, society, popular culture, and, of course, the arts. This is an important moment in which to explore the historic development and continuing growth of the Museum’s collections of African American art.”
Represent: 200 Years of African American Art includes works by more than 50 artists. It begins with rare examples of fine and decorative arts made by free and enslaved artists prior to the Civil War, including silhouettes made after 1802 by Moses Williams, who worked in Philadelphia at the museum of Charles Willson Peale, and a massive storage jar (with a Bible verse finely inscribed across the lip) by the South Carolina potter David Drake. Also included is Henry Ossawa Tanner’s landmark painting The Annunciation, which entered the Museum’s collection in 1899, the first work by an African American artist to be acquired by an American museum.
The exhibition places a strong emphasis on the modern era, when African Americans began to have greater access to artistic training and professional opportunities in this field. Artists such as William Henry Johnson, James VanDerZee, and Elizabeth Catlett embraced modernism in the early 20th century while sustaining a focus on aspects of African American life. Represent also includes a number of important works by self-taught artists such as William Edmondson and Bill Traylor.
Among the especially significant works in the exhibition are a group of abstract paintings and sculptures from the 1960s through the 1980s, most notably Barbara Chase-Riboud’s monumental Malcolm X #3. Many of these works represent the engagement of African American artists with broader stylistic movements. Numerous works from the past several decades directly confront issues pertaining to race and representation. This tendency is reflected in Glenn Ligon’s text painting Untitled (I’m Turning Into a Specter before Your Very Eyes and I’m Going to Haunt You) and Lorna Simpson’s C-Ration.
Represent: 200 Years of African American Art also ventures outside of the general narrative to present an array of portraits, historical as well as contemporary. Images of family, friends, and historical icons made by several generations of artists will be shown, from works by Philadelphia-based printmaker Dox Thrash and Samuel Joseph Brown, Jr., to Barkley L. Hendricks’s Miss T.
The exhibition will feature excerpts from recently recorded interviews with several of the livings artists represented in the exhibition.
Curators
Consulting Curator Dr. Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Associate Professor of American Art, University of Pennsylvania; Organizing Curator John Vick, Project Curatorial Assistant, Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Catalogue
This exhibition accompanies a major catalogue, co-published by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Yale University Press.
Image: John Woodrow Wilson, Martin Luther King, Jr., 1981.
