The Birmingham Museum of Art announces the opening on August 30, 2009, of a gallery dedicated to the work of African-American artists. One of the few in the U.S., the gallery will reflect the depth of the Museum’s permanent collection, highlight new acquisitions, and feature traveling exhibitions as well as works on loan from other institutions and private collections rarely seen by the general public. The Museum’s curators of African, Contemporary, and American art will collaborate on installations to rotate on a quarterly basis. African-American art will continue to be shown in the Contemporary, American, and Folk Art galleries of the Museum.
“We are delighted to highlight in a new way our very fine collection of works by African-American artists,” says Gail Andrews, R. Hugh Daniel Director of the Birmingham Museum of Art. “Many members of our community have told us that a space devoted to the work of African-Americans would be meaningful. We believe this newly-designed gallery responds to that desire and allows us to focus on a body of work of great interest to our staff and visitors.”
Titled Lift Every Voice: African-American Art from the Permanent Collection, and on view August 30, 2009 through January 3, 2010, the first exhibition in the gallery presents paintings, prints, sculpture, and photographs spanning a period of 140 years, from the mid-19th-century to the present. Although the works in the exhibition are diverse in media and subject matter, all reflect aspects of African-American experience and identity.
The Works
Some of the earlier works include a circa 1912 painting by the renowned Henry Ossawa Tanner reflectling his visit to North Africa, and photographs by James Van Der Zee and Prentice H. Polk documenting Black life in New York and Alabama in the early decades of the 20th century.
Religion and the Church are subjects explored in an early Romare Bearden painting and a photograph by Gordon Parks. Works by Benny Andrews, Bob Thompson, and Radcliffe Bailey refer to music in the Black experience. Other aspects of experience and identity are the subjects of work by Emma Amos, Lorna Simpson, Kerry James Marshall, David Driskell, Willie Cole, and Lillian Blades.
Jacob Lawrence’s Builders No. 1 (1971) will also be shown in the first installation. The Museum of Art brought to Birmingham one of the first tours of the combined Phillips Gallery (Washington, DC) and Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY) collections of Lawrence’s Migration Series, a moving interpretation of the journey of African-Americans from the South to the North during the early 20th century.
Contemporary works in the gallery include Willie Cole’s G. E. Mask and Scarification, with its modern day references to the marks of slavery, and Emma Amos’s Measuring Measuring and Lorna Simpson’s Tense, which address racism and cultural standards of beauty.
The Birmingham Museum of Art
Founded in 1951, the Birmingham Museum of Art today has one of the finest collections in the Southeast, with more than 24,000 paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, and decorative arts. The collection represents African, American, Asian, European, Native American, and Pre-Columbian cultures. The Museum is located in the heart of the City’s cultural district. Erected in 1959, the present building was designed by architects Warren, Knight and Davis of Birmingham, with a major renovation and expansion by Edward Larrabee Barnes of New York completed in 1993. The facility encompasses 180,000 square feet, including a splendid outdoor sculpture garden, café, and Museum Store.
Admission to the permanent collection is free. The Terrace Café serves lunch Tuesday—Saturday, 11am—2pm, and Jazz Brunch the first Sunday of the month.
www.artsbma.org
Image: Bob Thompson, American (1937-1966), Ornette, 1960-1961, oil on canvas. Photo: M. Sean Pathasema
