Nora McKeon Ezell (1917-2007), Eutaw, Alabama, Star Quilt, 1977, Cotton and synthetics; 94 x 79"; collection American Folk Art Museum, New York, museum purchase made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, with matching funds from The Great American Quilt Festival.
Bessie Harvey (1929-1994), Alcoa, Tenn., A Thousand Tongues Can Never Tell, 1991-1993, Painted wood with shells, wooden beads, and miscellany; 59 x 34 x 30"; collection American Folk Art Museum, New York, Blanchard-Hill Collection, gift of M. Anne Hill and Edward V. Blanchard Jr., Photo by Gavin Ashworth.
Clementine Hunter (1886/1887-1988), Melrose Plantation, Natchitoches, La., Black Matriarch, c. 1970s, Oil on cardboard; 24 x 16 1/2"; collection American Folk Art Museum, New York, gift of Mrs. Chauncey Newlin, Photo by Gavin Ashworth. |
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Gibbes Museum of Art
135 Meeting Street
843-722-2706
Charleston
South Carolina
Ancestry & Innovation:
African American Art
from the American
Folk Art Museum
July 31-October 11, 2009
Comprising nine quilts and nearly 30 works of art in various media, Ancestry and Innovation includes paintings by an elder generation of creators, such as David Butler, Sam Doyle, Bessie Harvey and Clementine Hunter; works by contemporary masters, such as Thornton Dial Sr.; and provocative pieces by emerging artists, such as Kevin Sampson and Willie LeRoy Elliot. Juxtaposed with richly patterned and graphically exciting quilts, the exhibition celebrates the ongoing contribution of black artists to the kaleidoscope of American cultural and visual experience.
For many self-taught artists, artmaking is a means of preserving memories of home and community, a way to express spirituality, or a therapeutic act created in response to a death or other life-changing experiences. Other vernacular artists assimilate and reinterpret the artistic influences passed down through generations.
“The life stories of many self-taught artists drove them into artmaking,” says Brooke Davis Anderson, co-curator of Ancestry and Innovation and director and curator of the American Folk Art Museum’s Contemporary Center. “Providing biographical background in exhibitions helps us appreciate the aesthetic beauty and richness of their work.”
“Vernacular art often emerges out of life experiences,” agrees co-curator Stacy C. Hollander, the museum’s senior curator and director of exhibitions. “To understand the material, we need to understand the context. At the same time, we can’t become so enamored of the biography that we forget the artistry.”
Artistry is in abundant supply in Ancestry and Innovation. Hollander based her selection of quilts by African American quilters from the rural South on her knowledge of the collection as well as on themes earlier scholars identified as African textile traditions — color use, patterning, and improvisation, among others. In what the curators term a “call-and-response” process, Anderson then chose artworks by artists from the urban North that could hold their own visually against the bold, colorful quilts while resonating with the textiles’ patterns and motifs.
“In color and spirit,” notes Anderson,“the art creates a beautiful dialogue with the quilts.” “Our selections,” adds Hollander, “provide natural transitions between media and visual associations that range from the explicit to the intuitive.”
In her 1990 book of essays, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, noted critic Bell Hooks writes eloquently of two houses that formed her own ideas about aesthetics: the home of her quiltmaker grandmother and the home in which the writer was raised. From her grandmother’s house she learned the “aesthetic of existence,” in which recognition of beauty is independent of material lack or abundance.
Many of the quilt artists whose works are included in Ancestry and Innovation started making quilts for utilitarian purposes and from “make do” materials. Most were taught to quilt by their mothers or grandmothers and have, in turn, taught their own daughters. Patterns and techniques have been passed through generations, remembered, reinterpreted, and ultimately changed through time. Present in each of these quilts is the echo of a path that has been followed before and that has been traced again. Yet through this cycle of ancestry and innovation, each quiltmaker has dreamed something entirely new.
“We’re delighted that objects from New York’s American Folk Art Museum will be featured throughout our second floor galleries in this exciting exhibition offered through the Smithsonian. The folk art tradition is a strong component of the history of art in the South. Ancestry & Innovation allows us to provide a context for this creative story,” noted Gibbes Executive Director Angela Mack.
“The unique presentation of vibrant quilts in conjunction with sculpture and painting enriches the viewer’s appreciation for the complexity and vitality of African American expression,” said Stacy C. Hollander, senior curator at the American Folk Art Museum. “This exhibition is an opportunity to showcase the range and depth of African American artworks in the museum’s collection,” noted Brooke Davis Anderson, director and curator of The Contemporary Center at the American Folk Art Museum.
Ancestry and Innovation was organized by the American Folk Art Museum in New York, and circulated by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. The exhibition was made possible by the generous support of MetLife Foundation. |
