Spring 2023
Following its debut at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 2021, Black American Portraits was on view at Atlanta’s Spelman College Museum of Fine Art in Spring 2023. Co-curated by Spelman College Museum of Fine Art’s Director Liz Andrews and Tate Britain’s Family Curator-at-Large Christine Y. Kim (both formerly of LACMA), the exhibition reframes portraiture to center Black American subjects, sitters, and spaces – this time placing Black women portrait artists center stage.
The exhibition was co-curated at the Spelman Museum by Liz Andrews and Curator-in-Residence Karen Comer Lowe. New to the exhibition at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art are four acquisitions: a new painting by Calida Rawles, who celebrated her 25th anniversary as a Spelman College alumna in 2023, two works by Augusta Savage, and a photograph of Spelman alumna Stacey Abrams by Atlanta-based artist Sheila Pree Bright. Spanning over two centuries from c. 1800 to the present day, the exhibition features 113 works to chronicle the ways in which Black Americans have used portraiture to envision themselves in their own eyes. Countering a visual culture that often demonizes Blackness and fetishizes the spectacle of Black pain, these images center love, abundance, family, community, and exuberance.
Black American Portraits depicts Black figures in a range of mediums such as painting, drawing, prints, photography, sculpture, mixed media, and time-based media. In addition to work by artists of African descent, Black American Portraits includes several works by artists of other backgrounds who have exemplified a thoughtfulness about, sensitivity toward and commitment to Black artists, communities, histories, and subjects.