Exploring Black History Month through Art at the Museum

“The multiple truths about a people are revealed by that people’s artists – that is what artists are for,” wrote James Baldwin in his 1962 essay “As Much Truth as One Can Bear.” As we recognize Black History Month this year, the Georgia Museum of Art is proud to offer a wide range of programming meant to examine our collective narrative and understanding of race and African American history in America. As a museum, our exhibitions and programming are integral in the endeavor to contemplate the past and potential future. We hope that you will take advantage of the opportunity to visit us this month and gain historical understanding, context and nuance by exploring our galleries.

If you visit the museum this month, please be sure to find our gallery guide for Black History month. The publication features works by Black artists that are currently on view. There are currently three major exhibitions that feature Black artists:

“In Dialogue: Henry Ossawa Tanner, Mentor and Muse,”(opens in new tab) an exhibition that focuses on the African American painter who left the United States in 1891 to escape prejudice, settled in France. He became known for his religious pictures, genre scenes and depictions of the French landscape. This single-wall exhibition also includes works by other Black artists Tanner influenced.

Our permanent collection includes over 100 works of art donated by Larry and Brenda Thompson. On view currently are highlights from that collection in the exhibition “Decade of Tradition.”(opens in new tab) The Thompsons’ generous donation in 2012 mirrored the original donation of 100 American paintings by museum founder Alfred Heber Holbrook. This exhibition celebrates the expansion of the museum’s permanent collection and how the Thompsons’ gift has helped the museum fulfill a vision of a more inclusive canon of American art.

The Thompsons’ generous contributions to the museum go well beyond this collection. Known for their advocacy for African American art and artists, and they also endowed a curatorial position at the museum. In honor of their generosity, the museum’s annual Black Art and Culture Awards recognizes a living African American visual artist with a significant Georgia connection with the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Award. This year’s awards ceremony will be held on April 14. Due to high demand for the event, tickets are only available through sponsorship.

Other “Decade of Tradition” exhibition programming this month includes:

• On February 8, at 2 p.m., the museum will host a tour and curator talk by Shawnya Harris, the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art.
• On February 11, our Family Day event will focus on the exhibition. Come have fun in the galleries, complete Art Cart activities and create your own work of art to take home in the Michael and Mary Erlanger Studio Classroom. The event runs from 10 a.m. until noon.

“Object Lessons in American Art: Selections from the Princeton University Art Museum” is our most recent exhibition, opening February 4, and focuses on race, gender and the environment. Organized by Princeton University Art Museum, the exhibition arranges its works of art in 30 separate groups, each intended to provoke new considerations and raise timely questions about American history and culture. These juxtapositions serve as “object lessons” — gatherings of tangible artifacts that communicate an embodied idea or an abstract concept — to anchor debates about the country’s complex social, racial and political history, thereby expanding our ideas about the history of American art.

“At their core, object lessons unsettle entrenched understandings about American history and American art, particularly those that reinforce traditional hierar­chies, alleviate the complicity of individuals and insti­tutions from systems of oppression and exploitation, and heroize the achievements of white male artists,” notes in-house curator Jeffrey Richmond-Moll in an essay for the exhibition catalogue. “The history of American art is instead marked by rifts between the nation’s beliefs in equality and the realities of inequality.”

The exhibition has many accompanying events and programming, including:

• A Teen Studio program on February 16 from 5:30 to 8 p.m. led by local artist Kristen Bach (ages 13 – 18; free but email gmoa-tours@uga.edu to register)
• Student Night, geared to UGA students, also on February 16, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
• A talk by Richmond-Moll on February 22 at 2 p.m.
• A Toddler Tuesday on March 7 at 10 a.m. (for ages 18 months to 3 years; free but register by emailing gmoa-tours@uga.edu)
• The 2023 Emerging Scholars Symposium, “Rethinking America: Contemporary Contemplations on American Art,” on March 23 and 24, with a keynote speech by Nika Elder (full schedule at georgiamuseum.org/rethinking-america/)
• A reception on March 24 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. hosted by the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art with light refreshments, door prizes and more; $15 Not Yet Friends; $10 Friends of the Museum and Friend + Annual Fund Members; free for Friend + Annual Fund Members (Reciprocal level and above); register at https://bit.ly/90c-mar-23
• A Faculty Perspectives talk by UGA’s Akela Reason on April 12 at 2 p.m.
• A Family Day on April 15 from 10 a.m. to noon.
• A talk by Katherine “Katie” Jentleson, Merrie and Dan Boone Curator of Folk and Self-Taught Art at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, on April 20 at 5:30 p.m.
• A Gallery Talk, “Race, Representation, and Self-Presentation in American Art” co-sponsored by UGA’s Interdisciplinary Modernism/s Workshop and led by Richmond-Moll, on April 25 at 1 p.m.

Other events related to Black History Month at the museum include:

• An Artful Conversation program focused on Black artist Vertis Hayes’ painting “Juke Joint” on February 15 at 2 p.m. with Callan Steinmann, curator of education.
• “Black Art: In the Absence of Light,” a documentary that spotlights the indelible contributions of some of the foremost African American artists in today’s contemporary art world; February 16 at 7 p.m.
• A talk by Vaughn Watson, associate professor in the department of teacher education at Michigan State University, titled “On Elder Avenue: Envisioning Rightful Literary Presence as Traveling With,” on February 23 at 5:30 p.m.