Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power
Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power
The Brooklyn Museum presents the critically acclaimed exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, an unprecedented look at a broad spectrum of work by African American artists from 1963 to 1983, one of the most politically, socially, and aesthetically revolutionary periods in American history.
Soul of a Nation considers the varied ways that Black artists responded to the demands of an urgent moment and brings together for the first time the disparate and innovative practices of more than sixty artists from across the country, offering an unparalleled opportunity to see their significant works side by side. The Brooklyn Museum is the only East Coast venue for this exhibition in 2018. The Brooklyn presentation will remain on view through February 3, 2019.
The show begins in 1963, before the emergence of the Black Power Movement later in the decade, with the Spiral collective. This group of New York-based painters, including Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, and Emma Amos, worked in diverse aesthetic styles and explored the role of Black artists in the struggle for civil rights. Also active in New York at the time was the Kamoinge Workshop, a group of photographers who responded to the lack of institutional support and mainstream representation of Black artists by conducting workshops and producing their own gallery shows and portfolios.
The exhibition goes on to trace how artists across the country continued to work in collectives, communities, and individually during the rise of the Black Power Movement. In Los Angeles, years of urban unrest propelled a number of artists to experiment with assemblage and sculpture. Artists such as John Outterbridge and Noah Purifoy made works inspired by the aftermath of the Watts Rebellion of 1965. Emory Douglas, who served as the minister of culture for the Black Panther Party, founded in Oakland, California, in 1966, created striking graphics and illustrations that became powerful symbols of the movement -- 24 of which are included in the exhibition. In Chicago, a group of artists formed AfriCOBRA, whose manifesto and aesthetic philosophy aimed to empower Black communities. Works by its founding members are on display, including Gerald Williams's Say It Loud (1969), whose vibrant colors, graphic lettering, and use of black figures were emblematic of the AfriCOBRA style. In New York, painters incorporated symbols of protest, solidarity, and Black pride, while many organized for institutional inclusion. Also featured is artist and professor David Driskell, who drew upon similar themes in his painting, as he worked to organize university art departments across the South and promote scholarship of African American art.
The show also addresses formal concerns and aesthetic innovations across abstraction and figuration in painting and sculpture, featuring such works as Sam Gilliam's April 4 (1969), Barkley Hendricks's Blood (Donald Formey) (1975), Frank Bowling's Texas Louise (1971), and Martin Puryear's Self (1978). With its central triangular form, Jack Whitten's powerful Homage to Malcolm (1970) recalls the pyramids that Malcolm X visited on a trip to Africa in 1964, and was painted as a memorial to the late activist. Other works show the emergence of integral figures in Black feminism such as Kay Brown, Faith Ringgold, and Betye Saar, highlighting an important moment of visibility for female artists. The exhibition concludes with a section on Just Above Midtown (JAM), the first commercial gallery space dedicated to showing the work of avant-garde Black artists, notably including artists working in performance, such as Lorraine O'Grady, David Hammons, Senga Nengudi, and others.
The timely exhibition extends the Brooklyn Museum's trailblazing commitment to a vital period in American art, following its exhibitions Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties (2014) and We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85 (2017), as well as the Museum's major acquisition of 44 works from the Black Arts Movement in 2013.
"With Soul of a Nation, we are honored to highlight the truly exceptional work produced by African American artists during one of the most significant moments in U.S. history and to honor these artists and all those arts professionals, here in Brooklyn and beyond, who have long supported their work," said Anne Pasternak, Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Brooklyn Museum.
Ashley James, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, adds: "Artists in this exhibition bravely and variously created art responsive to an urgent time of social, political, and aesthetic rupture, resulting in some of the most striking works created in the late twentieth century. This exhibition adds to an already existing and growing focus on the art produced during the Black Power Movement, an indication of the period's important and continued resonance with our present as well as the absolute excellence that defines the art of the era."
Ming Smith (American, born 1947). When You See Me Comin' Raise Your Window High, 1972
Betye Saar (American, born 1926) The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972
About Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. Its roots extend back to 1823 and the founding of the Brooklyn Apprentices’ Library to educate young tradesmen (Walt Whitman would later become one of its librarians). First established in Brooklyn Heights, the Library moved into rooms in the Brooklyn Lyceum building on Washington Street in 1841. Two years later, the Lyceum and the Library combined to form the Brooklyn Institute, offering important early exhibitions of painting and sculpture in addition to lectures on subjects as diverse as geology and abolitionism. The Institute announced plans to establish a permanent gallery of fine arts in 1846.
In recent years, the Museum has focused on redesigning its galleries and reinstalling its major collections to make them more accessible to the public. Flowing spaces, vivid wall colors, dramatic graphic elements, and multimedia components feature in many of these reconfigured galleries. The Museum opened its spectacularly redesigned front entrance and new public plaza on April 17, 2004. With the nineteenth-century Beaux-Arts facade as a backdrop, a two-story glass entrance pavilion, named the Martha A. and Robert S. Rubin Pavilion and Lobby, provides a sense of direct connection between the interior of the building and the exterior surroundings, while bringing natural light into the formerly dark interior. The new 15,000-square-foot glass pavilion, recalling the staircase of the original McKim, Mead & White entrance, combined with the renovated lobby area of nearly 9,000 square feet, creates an entirely new entrance facility that more than doubles the size of the previous lobby area. Among the amenities is a new, full-service Visitor Center offering information, ticketing, and a range of services to the public.