Several members of the extended Otis Community are featured in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) exhibition, Black American Portraits, which is on view through April 17, 2022. Visitors can view work by former Otis instructors Charles White (recently named for a new scholarship at the College) and Betye Saar, as well as former students Kerry James Marshall (’78 Fine Arts), Alison Saar (’81 MFA Fine Arts), and Kohshin Finley (’12 BFA Communication Arts). The exhibition originally launched in conjunction with The Obama Portraits Tour featuring the portraits of President Barack Obama by Kehinde Wiley and First Lady Michelle Obama by Amy Sherald, which was on view at LACMA from November 7, 2021 through January 2 of this year. Otis alumnx Maurice Harris (’05 BFA Fine Arts) was commissioned to provide floral environments for the touring exhibition, against which visitors took selfies inspired by the Obama portraits.
White was included in LACMA’s first exhibition of work by contemporary Black artists, Three Graphic Artists: Charles White, David Hammons, Timothy Washington, back in 1971, and again was featured in the first major exhibition of his work in over 30 years in Charles White: A Retrospective, which was organized in 2018 by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and traveled to Los Angeles the following year.
Black American Portraits features approximately 140 works and was co-curated by Christine Y. Kim, Curator of Contemporary Art, and Liz Andrews, Executive Director of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, with support from Breanne Bradley, Curatorial Assistant, Contemporary Art. Of the exhibit, Kim and Andrews said that it “centers Black love, abundance, family, exuberance, self possession, and self-expression through over two centuries of African American portraiture. Artists across time, geography, and diverse practices are represented in the exhibition, with attention to the work of many Los Angeles artists and figures. Paying homage to David Driskell’s Two Centuries of Black American Art, presented at LACMA almost 45 years ago, this is an exhibition that celebrates community, agency, and self-representation.”
To view the exhibition, reservations must be made in advance at www.lacma.org/gettickets.
About Black American Portraits, from LACMA:
“Portraiture has provided a tool for generations of Black Americans to see themselves in their own eyes, countering a visual culture that often demonizes Blackness and fetishizes the spectacle of Black pain. Black American Portraits depicts Black figures in a range of mediums such as painting, drawing, prints, photography, sculpture, mixed media, and time-based media. The exhibition spans over two centuries, with highlights including a late-18th-century portrait of a sailor, early studio photography, scenes from the Harlem Renaissance, portraits from the Civil Rights era and Black Power movement, and works exploring the politics of identity made from the 1990s to the present day. Drawn primarily from the museum’s permanent collection, the exhibition features approximately 140 objects by over 100 artists, ranging from emerging to self-taught to mid-career to established. Organized thematically, the exhibition explores family, legacy, and memory; history; myth, legend, and futurism; queer subjects and spaces; and the gaze.
Artists featured in the exhibition include Alvin Baltrop, Jordan Casteel, Beauford Delaney, Charles Gaines, Barkley Hendricks, Sargent Claude Johnson, Kahlil Joseph, Titus Kaphar, Deana Lawson, Samella Lewis, Kerry James Marshall, Archibald J. Motley Jr., Lorraine O'Grady, Augusta Savage, Amy Sherald, Ming Smith, Tavares Strachan, Henry Taylor, Tourmaline, Mickalene Thomas, James Van Der Zee, Laura Wheeler Waring, Charles White, Kehinde Wiley, Deborah Willis, Richard Wyatt, and many more. 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, such as Edward Biberman, Bruce Davidson, rafa esparza, Shepard Fairey, Alice Neel, Catherine Opie, Betsy Graves Reynaud, and Edward Steichen, among others. Speaking to a wider range of art practices beyond the gallery walls, Black American Portraits also includes an edition of Tavares Strachan’s ENOCH currently in low orbit around the earth in collaboration with LACMA’s Art+ Technology Lab supported by SpaceX, Kahlil Joseph’s BLKNWS in the foyer of the Resnick Pavilion, and Ada Pinkston's augmented reality (AR) monument honoring the life of Biddy Mason and accessible on the Snapchat platform near LACMA’s Smidt Welcome Plaza.
Images, from top: Photo of Black American Portraits exhibition by Museum Associates/LACMA; Frederick Douglas, 1950 (Lithograph) and Portrait of Tom Bradley, 1974 (Lithograph, edition 75 of 200) by Charles White, photo by Anna Raya; Essence and Jihaari, 2020 (Oil on canvas) by Kohshin Finley, photo by Anna Raya; photo of Maurice Harris by Museum Associates/LACMA.