August 23 – December 7, 2024
Spelman College Museum of Fine Art presents Ming Smith: Feeling the Future (August 23 – December 7, 2024). The first solo exhibition of photographer Ming Smith in Atlanta and at an HBCU, this exhibition is a selection of the artist’s work from the 1970s to the present. Feeling the Future presents photographs that are in conversation with each other across time and space. The exhibition showcases Smith’s expansive use of lens-based media and features her street photography, figurative imagery, portraiture, and abstractions, plus new commissions in experimental film, sound, and installation. Drawn from the full complexity of Smith’s oeuvre, Feeling the Future places works from the artist’s five decades of creation and the cultural movements she witnessed and participated in. Exploring themes such as Afrofuturism, Black cultural expression, representation, and social examination, the exhibition offers a glimpse into unperceived moments of life as captured by one of the most profoundly gifted artists of her generation.
Ming Smith: Feeling the Future is the first major career-spanning museum survey for Harlem-based artist Ming Smith, a pioneer of image-making. Smith, who is known for her improvisational and experimental approach to photography, uses light, shadow, and movement to create dynamic portraits of the Black experience and multidimensional expressions of everyday life.
Ming Smith: Feeling the Future is organized by the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and curated by James Bartlett. The exhibition was conceived by Janice Bond. The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art presentation is curated by Karen Comer Lowe. Ming Smith: Feeling the Future at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art is made possible by the generous support of The Wish Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Friends of the Spelman Museum.