Conversations on Contemporary Art Exhibitions - Black American Portraits at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art)

Recorded June 29, 2022 What is a portrait? Is it just a snapshot of a face? A seizing of the moment of human expression? Or is it more? Many believe that portraits have a way of capturing a personality, a human essence if you will. Portraits are used to remember loved ones, honor distinguished citizens who gain honors through achievement and capture the emotions of a subject with an ability to extract feelings that arrest the viewer with their presence.   Black American Portraits features over 140 works in different mediums with hopes of examining African-Americans as subjects over the last two centuries.  This show is a tribute to the late David Driskell, a well-regarded artist, curator, and pioneer for the arts who was the ultimate champion for the awareness, exhibition, and collection of black artists by institutions. His seminal exhibition Two Centuries of Black American Art, which took place at LACMA in 1976, was the first comprehensive survey of African American art.

Recorded April 29, 2019 "Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power shines a bright light on the vital contribution Black artists made over two revolutionary decades in American history, beginning in 1963 at the height of the civil rights movement. The exhibition examines the influences, from the civil rights and Black Power movements to Minimalism and developments in abstraction, on artists such as Romare Bearden, Barkley Hendricks, Noah Purifoy, Martin Puryear, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Alma Thomas, Charles White, and William T. Williams. Los Angeles-based artists appear throughout Soul of a Nation, and more deeply in three specific galleries, foregrounding the significant role of Los Angeles in the art and history of the civil rights movement and the subsequent activist era, and the critical influence and sustained originality of the city’s artists, many of whom have lacked wider recognition.   Featuring the work of more than 60 influential artists and including vibrant paintings, powerful sculptures, street photography, murals, and more, this landmark exhibition is a rare opportunity to see era-defining artworks that changed the face of art in America." - The Broad  “So what’s is the next step after Soul of a Nation? Is this the beginning of the retrospective for black art movements? Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983 was a great insight into the artistic movements that existed during the Black Power era and serves as a visual history. Are era-based retrospectives the best way to understand the African-American contribution to the global art world? As I write this essay I think of what I’ve learned just by observation. The research of artworks allowed me to understand the artists' backgrounds, their materials, and how their use of them helped to change and develop the practice of artmaking.  An excerpt from my research and review essay on Soul of A Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, 1963-1983 at The Broad Museum.