Collection in Context

Can changing the visual conditions of one’s environment subsequently change one’s life? This Collection in Context is inspired by the Smokehouse Associates, who from 1968 through 1970 transformed vacant lots and barren walls throughout Harlem with colorful, abstract murals and sculptures. Founded by William T. Williams and comprising Melvin Edwards, Guy Ciarcia, and Billy Rose, the Smokehouse Associates executed a series of painted walls in pocket parks, above neighborhood grocers, and against building facades. Employing abstraction as a device for community engagement, the collective endeavored to “let the message be the change rather than put information out which said why the world needed changing.”¹ At the same time, the Black Power movement endorsed Black figuration as a conceptual and aesthetic tool for Black empowerment. Smokehouse instead embraced nonrepresentational techniques—through abstract geometries and hard-edged forms—to cultivate vibrancy, invite leisure, and, in due course, inspire local residents to borrow painting materials to enhance their surroundings.

Around Smokehouse’s inception, Black artists such as Frank Bowling, Sam Gilliam, Al Loving, Alma Thomas, and Jack Whitten were also forging new directions in abstraction. Frank Bowling’s Blond Betsey (1976) showcases the artist’s technique of pouring paint onto canvas to create washes of color. For William T. Williams and Al Loving, intersecting geometric shapes dominate in Trane (1969) and Variations on a Six Sided Object (1967), respectively, while in Untitled (1968), Betty Blayton-Taylor's entangled collage elements and loose brushstrokes portray a unique three-dimensionality. Among other artists, Ed Clark began experimenting with nonconventional painting tools (a push broom), and, notably, Clark is the first credited artist to exhibit a shaped canvas. And, Alma Thomas’s Space (1966) and Sam Gilliam’s Northwest Winds (1992) offer viewers with abstract representations of the world around us.

Within their refusals of figuration, these artists stirred emotive responses toward—and sometimes away from—the social and political. While Smokehouse’s efforts galvanized the communal potential of abstraction, the individual artists in this collection created a theoretical through-line between nonrepresentational art and freedom, and between blackness and expansion. Scholars and writers like Adrienne Edwards and Eric Booker have articulated this connection, the latter author affirming blackness and abstraction as “fluid and unfixed, it is not bound by a singular narrative or identity.”² With this in mind, abstraction exists along a movable axis—with aesthetics and protest on either side—generating the opportunity to impact one’s exterior (built environment) and interior (mind).

Abstraction was organized by Habiba Hopson, Curatorial Assistant, Collections.

Endnotes
[1] Melvin Edwards and Michel Oren, Michel Oren interviews with artists, 1979–1991, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 5.
[2] Smokehouse Associates, ed. Eric Booker (New York: The Studio Museum in Harlem, 2022), 28.

Inextricably linked, the oppressive structures of racism and capitalism have had a profound impact on Black life to this day. The works here not only examine the entwined history of racism and capitalism but also imagine ways of existing outside of both. 

Throughout history, Black prosperity has been seen as a threat to whiteness. In the face of this, Dawoud Bey’s Mr. Moore’s Bar- B-Que, 125th Street, 1976 (1976)  is one of many photographs in his “Harlem, USA” series that documents Black businesses throughout Harlem, marking them as vital parts of the neighborhood and local economy. Artists such as Noah Davis examine the moments when Black financial success has come under attack. Davis’s Black Wall Street (2008) reflects on the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, when the country’s wealthiest Black neighborhood, once known as Black Wall Street, was burned to the ground by white mobs.

How might we reimagine our systems of value? Hank Willis Thomas appropriates images from advertisements directed to or featuring Black subjects, showing how desirable these images are, and in turn, how valuable they are to those selling products attached to them. David Hammons and Meschac Gaba ask us to consider new possibilities for how money might exist in the world. In Hammons’s Too Obvious (1996), the cowrie shells, a precolonial West African currency, that fill the piggy bank acknowledge how that system of value was violently supplanted. Gaba’s African Artist with American Inspiration: Citigroup (2004) places images of himself and his artworks on dollar bills, creating an American currency that celebrates African artists and Black cultural production. 

If we are to leave capitalism behind entirely, then perhaps we should look to Pope L.’s Skin Set Drawing: Black People Are the Glory of a Shared Piece of Candy (2004) which calls to mind notions of mutual aid. It envisions an economy based in care, in shared sweetness. This is an ideal to hold on to as we move toward liberation and racial and economic justice. 

Black Wall Street was organized by Jordan Jones, former Joint Curatorial Fellow, The Studio Museum in Harlem and The Museum of Modern Art.

The works gathered in this collection ask: how can we address geography and cartography through the material, the hidden, and the abstract? As theorist, writer, and professor Katherine McKittrick calls it, these artists approach the map as “a terrain of struggle,”¹ laying bare the histories that have contributed to constructions of land and space thus far. 

Artists Benny Andrews and Renee Cox incorporate the globe as a symbol into their works, expanding and challenging narratives of globalization, freedom, and liberty. Andrews’s oil and collage Composition (Study for Trash) (1971) depicts a white woman posed as Lady Liberty sitting on top of a globe. The globe houses an outline of the United States of America, where three Black men tug an unseen object across the surface of the map. A crowd of onlookers pulls apart the curtain of the proscenium stage on which the scene takes place, exposing the dissonance between performed freedom and its violent reality. Cox’s silver gelatin print Atlas (1995) presents a nude Black man carrying a globe in the likes of the Greek Titan Atlas. The man holds the globe between his two palms, positioning the continent of Africa at the center of the composition. Both Atlas and Composition demand that the histories of labor, slavery, and colonialism be forefronted in critical dialogues about re-presentations of global histories and approaches to cartographic techniques. 

Radcliffe Bailey’s mixed-media work Mason Dixon (2009) addresses the history of the Mason-Dixon line, which marked the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania, separating slave states from free states. A photo of a young Black man in a suit and tie overlaps this demarcation, his body split between the two states. Taking the familiar form of a flag, the work positions the history of slavery and the division of the North and South as infrastructural components of United States history, mapping, and identity.  

For some artists, materials and processes speak to different types of geographies and expanding approaches to cartography. Robert Pruitt’s installation For Whom the Bell Curves (2004) traces the paths of slave ships taken during the transatlantic slave trade. The artist explores the enduring legacy of slavery and racism on contemporary thinking—the title refers to The Bell Curve, a book from 1994 by psychologist Richard Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray that attempts to draw a connection between intelligence and race. The process of superimposition drives Julie Mehretu’s 2D work Entropia (review) (2004). The artist abstracts an architectural diagram of a cityscape to reveal the limits of cartographic measurement, further highlighting the energetic dynamism and layers of history in urban landscapes. 

In Otobong Nkanga’s photographic diptych Alterscape Stories: Spilling Waste (2006), the artist situates herself as both creator and destructor of the environment. In showing the artist pouring blue liquid from a plastic container onto an artificial landscape across multiple panels, the work speaks about water importation into the Canary Islands; in the vein of environmental destruction and regeneration, Nkanga expresses the relationship between map-making and humans as a cyclical and durational process. 

Cartography was organized by June Kitahara, Publications Fellow at The Studio Museum in Harlem.

[1] Katherine McKittrick, Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle (University of Minnesota Press, 2006).

Scattered by migrations, voluntary and not, global Black populations have long contended with efforts to write them out of history. Along with the colonial impulse to capture and control vast swaths of already occupied land, the project of cultural erasure undergirds the expansion of empire. Countering such geographic dislocation and attempts at eradicating and looting aesthetic traditions, many artists of the Black diaspora turn to the cultures, art, people, and geographies of Africa to convey and reclaim relationships to the continent within their work.

As the civil rights and Black Power movements spread in 1960s America and beyond, further attention to diasporic artists’ African roots took hold. The rich cultural traditions of West and Central Africa, particularly masks, imparted critical inspirations. Artists like Romare Bearden, whose collage Prelude to Farewell (1981) features a figure with a highly stylized face, admired the formal qualities and expressive potential of masks. Elizabeth Catlett’s Mask (c. 1970) adopts a loose resemblance to its African counterparts, engendering solidarity through shared cultural heritage and using the form to convey the messages found in the newspapers adhered to the interior of the piece. Others recreated more specific traditions; of steam irons, like the one repurposed in Steam’n Hot (1999), artist Willie Cole says, “right away I saw it as an African mask, more specifically a Dan mask.”^[1] The face of the iron mirrors the almond-shaped outlines often found in the masks from this Ivorian and Liberian ethnic group. Similarly, Robert Pruitt’s Self Portrait as a Great Benin Emperor of the 23rd Century (2007) inscribes the artist, sitting in an office chair, with a regal Beninese heritage that at once looks to the past and future, as the title suggests.

Turning to the northeast of Africa, Lorraine O’Grady’s Sisters II (L: Nefertiti’s daughter Merytaten, R: Devonia’s daughter Candace), from the "Miscegenated Family Album" (1980/1988) pairs an image of the artist’s niece with one of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti’s daughters, tethering a contemporary African American existence to an ancient African one. Dave McKenzie’s They Dreamed of Nefertiti's Holiday (2011) collages images of the Nefertiti bust with cutouts from other contemporary sources. In spanning time and space to source the elements of his collage, McKenzie draws royal Egyptian history into the present. Likewise, Avel C. de Knight’s Untitled (from Pyramid series) (c. 1974) offers a glimpse at Egyptian architecture with a Black man reclining in front of a pyramid and passing travelers.

Zooming out to view the continent from afar, Fred Wilson’s Atlas (1995) envisions the diaspora, marked by pins on a globe upheld by a stereotypical minstrel figurine recast as the Greek Titan Atlas. Fatimah Tuggar uses a composite vantage point in her print Untitled (Army) (1996), which presents a troubling scene of miniature soldiers encroaching on a woman making food with her children. Rather than showing movement out of the continent, like Wilson, Tuggar depicts an invasion in, prompting us to consider just one of the many reasons behind the global dispersal of Black people.

Lastly, Malick Sidibé’s The Wannabe Musician Behind His Car (1971) offers a glimpse at post-Independence Mali. A young man, guitar in hand and smiling wide, leans on the back of his car. He emblematizes an Africa in flux, with numerous nations fighting for liberation from colonial rule. His eyes gleam at the camera. He is confident and he is free.

Diaspora was organized by Simon Ghebreyesus, Joint Curatorial Fellow, The Studio Museum in Harlem and The Museum of Modern Art.

[1] Willie Cole, “Willie and the Scorch,” Willie Cole, accessed January 30, 2023, williecole.com/scorches.

In this group, the everyday is abstracted, not erased—materials and objects are reworked, reassembled, repurposed, and transformed. This is not a new premise, as generations of creatives have used this approach. These works embrace the possibilities of ordinary objects and materials: those that facilitate tasks, those that populate our homes, those we wear, and those we discard. In abstracting the source, artists ask us to consider what associations are tied to their chosen materials, despite the ways they transform them beyond their original state.

The degrees to which these artists manipulate their quotidian materials vary. Altering perceptions is fundamental to Willie Cole. In Untitled Skull (II) (1992), a steam iron becomes a human cranium. The transformation allows us to readily connect the object to the hands that activate it and a history of generations of unsung domestic laborers. Senga Nengudi’s R.S.V.P. V (1973) leans into the properties of nylon stockings, namely their engineered purpose to flex and mold to the needs of a body. The stockings evoke the elasticity of the body—what it can withstand—but also the tensions of its possible limit.

Artists Derrick Adams and Shinique Smith look to fashion for materials, from which they draw out the geometric and organic, respectively. In The Journey (2017), Adams uses clothing patterns as his collage materials, embracing the possibilities of their abstract forms and their geometric essence. Smith layers and molds discarded or surplus textiles in Black and White Floaty (2006). By reinvigorating materials deemed irrelevant, the artist calls attention to the excessive consumption that powers the fashion industry. Lastly, in Stripes (2016), Rodney McMillian uses a post-consumer bedsheet—highlighting its canvas-like qualities—and applies stripes of latex to add texture to the fabric. For the artist, used objects, like bed linens, address matters of intimacy, as they can imply bodies even in their absence.

Everyday Reconsiderations was organized by Zuna Maza, former Joint Curatorial Fellow, The Studio Museum in Harlem and The Museum of Modern Art.

Land has served as a source of inspiration for generations of artists across time—for its beauty, its resources, its embattled histories, its social and economic implications, and its capability for both destruction and rebirth. For some artists, landscapes offer moments to revel in or contemplate the sublime. For others, landscapes bring the delicate balance of life into focus. Artists have looked to the land to understand society’s place in the world and the many unjust human histories that have resulted from conquest, cultivation, and “progress.” More recently, artists are considering the hand we all play in preserving the land for others by depicting the ecological toll that human industry has played on our environment. Through a variety of media and styles, these works pay deep respect to our lands and invite in reflection and consideration.

Landscapes was organized by Connie Choi, Associate Curator of the Permanent Collection.

As we attempt to strike anew this year, it seems necessary to operate from a place of compassionate, generous love—for our community, for those who’ve worked tirelessly to provide, produce, and care for our loved ones, and for ourselves. As says the late bell hooks (1952–2021), the practice of love remains central to social justice work: “The moment we choose to love, we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love, we begin to move toward freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.*” Just as experiences with art can inspire relief from the material world, so can the will to love. This curated selection of artworks present scenes of beauty, prayer, pleasure, and all-encompassing, unconditional love.

*hooks, bell. “Love as the Practice of Freedom.” Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations, Routledge, New York, 1994.

Love as a Practice was organized by Habiba Hopson, Curatorial Assistant, Collections.

The works here bring us in, offer a hand, and a bit of tenderness—they come together to think about care. They highlight the networks of support that exist among friends, across generations of family, and between all manner of loved ones, showing how care work is essential. In turn, the artworks may perform a bit of care for the viewer, offering a place to rest the mind and eyes.

How do we take care of each other? We hold space for each other—space to talk, to feel, and to lighten the weight of the world. Untitled (1990/2000), by Carrie Mae Weems, who is known for her sensitive photographs of Black interior life, captures an everyday but intimate moment shared by two figures who lean into a private space all their own. Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s Nwantinti (2012), Malick Sidibé’s Vue de Dos (2002), and Elizabeth Catlett’s Mother and Child (1993) pay attention to the loving actions that link people: a head in a lap, an arm encircling a waist, shoulders gently brushing up against each another, a hand on a back. Sadie Barnette’s drawings offer a genealogy of care, in which a branching family holds each member in place. Leslie Hewitt expands that network beyond the bounds of biological family, inviting the viewer to take part in, and be supported by, a collective family history.

These artworks explore care as a constant exchange, something given and something received. Surveying these works, it is important to acknowledge the Black women at their core, and at the center of so much care work.

On Care was organized by Jordan Jones, former Joint Curatorial Fellow, The Studio Museum in Harlem and The Museum of Modern Art.

“She won’t be no bird in a cage, no black woman at the lectern, no model Negro, no cog in the machine.”

— Saidiya Hartman, “Notes on Feminisms: The Plot of Her Undoing,” 2019

These works celebrate the right to refuse; to contradict; to say no; to be disorderly, unmanageable, and unruly. They focus on the artist as troublemaker, and look to refusal as a generative and deeply creative process.

What is refusal? Elizabeth Catlett’s Homage to the Panthers (1970) sets the scene as a reminder of the long legacy of refusal and protest at the core of Black radical movements. The Black Panthers’ Ten-Point Program—a set of guidelines that outlined the Party’s platform centered on the liberation of Black folks—embodies this spirit. Refusal can also exist at the individual level, expressed through the body. In Dawoud Bey’s A Boy in Front of the Loews 125th Street Movie Theater, 1976 (1976), refusal turns a barricade into a prop for the studied pose of a boy in dark glasses and fresh white sneakers. Refusal can speak with a quiet intensity, capturing our attention by making us lean in closer. In this way, Bethany Collins and Tony Lewis offer up redaction as a means of refusal, replacing text with thick, black boxes that defy legibility and bring new contexts and connotations to their source material. And in Adrian Piper’s Self-Portrait as a Nice White Lady (1995), refusal is defiant, and sounds like, “What choo lookin at, mofo?” Kalup Linzy’s Untitled (3 of 3) (2005) brings home the idea of refusal. To be mama’s badass child is a distinguished position. The honor comes from living between the two meanings of badass: to be big trouble, and to be truly remarkable.

Refusal was organized by Jordan Jones, former Joint Curatorial Fellow, The Studio Museum in Harlem and The Museum of Modern Art.

In reflecting on art as a portal between the tangible and spiritual, the following are altars, maps, paintings, and multimedia works that engage ritual and introspection.  

Betye Saar’s triptych assemblage Window of Ancient Sirens (1979) depicts an Egyptian pharaoh's golden head and a framed bird statuette flanked on the left by a figure reminiscent of the Egyptian funerary ba-bird of the Ptolemaic period, its sun disk reflecting cycles of the moon, and on the right by a solar orbit encircling a woman in a red smock. In Naudline Pierre’s painting Guardian (in Green) (2020), a celestial black-winged figure hovers in space as an orb of chartreuse light emanates from their cornrows and braided ponytail. Firelei Báez and Jeff Donaldson conjure an intergenerational and intercultural dialogue, shedding light on Yoruban spiritual traditions in, respectively, Elegant gathering in a secluded garden (or the many bridges we crossed) (2018) and Victory in the Valley of Eshu (1971).  

Sam Gilliam’s Mars I (1974) blends the abstraction of bleeding tones of magenta and navy coupled with the softened texture of rice paper. The pools of rich colors might simulate black holes awaiting to swallow the viewer into deep space. Hale Woodruff’s Portal (n.d.) is believed to be created in the early 1960s—during the conception of the artist collective Spiral—amid the artist’s “Celestial Gate” series, where he explored the theme of thresholds. In Tracey Moffatt’s Invocations (10) (2000), a little girl with deep brown skin in a blue dress and hairbows crosses the threshold between a knotted forest onto a warped desert landscape—the spectral composition encapsulating her in time. We see a similar “hyperlapse” technique explored within Entropia (construction) (2005), as Julie Mehretu layers reconstructed drawings that fold in on themselves repeatedly to lure the viewer into the composition, forming a passageway between audience and object. Charles Gaines’s Randomized Text Drawing #2 (2006) places excerpts from Love in The Time of Cholera (Gabriel García Márquez, 1985) and Orientalism (Edward Said, 1978), below a photo of a night sky. Gaines draws connections between cosmic and literary worlds, emphasizing the impact of human creation through a single luminous star to the left.   

By mapping a world anew, and manifesting reconstructed futures in our image, in art, the divine becomes an extension of our reality. In this selection, each work relishes uncertainty and presents a point of access to the unknown. To cross this threshold is to honor ourselves as guardians of our present and guides for the rest of our way home.  

Thresholds was organized by Starasea Camara, Joint Curatorial Fellow, The Studio Museum in Harlem and The Museum of Modern Art. Listen to Starasea speak more about Thresholds on the Bloomberg Connects app here.