Shawnya L. Harris, the Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art, and Jeffrey Richmond-Moll, the Curator of American Art at the GMOA, have each contributed video discussions of some of the museum’s most notable pieces to the educational website Smarthistory.
Dr. Harris lectured on four works, three of which are housed in the Georgia Museum of Art. The works available to view in our galleries are the paintings The Lynchers (ca. 1930s) and Juke Joint (1946), both by Vertis Hayes, and Stefanie Jackson’s Bluest Eye (1999). Also discussed by Harris is a Kongolese Power Figure (nkisi nkondi), currently located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Harris, with a Ph.D. in art history and undergraduate experience in African American studies, has a breadth of knowledge surrounding the Georgia Museum of Art’s collection of Black artists. Vertis Hayes, working in the social realist style, infuses his works with poignant commentary on the realities of the civil rights movement and African American communities in the South.
Stefanie Jackson, too, bases her works on what Harris describes as “a surrealist tinge with cultural references to novels and history.” The painting’s title, Bluest Eye, refers to a Toni Morrison novel of the same name, and mimics Morrison’s themes of racism, violence, and adulthood. Jackson, a University of Georgia painting professor, focuses much of her artistic attention on African American history and social justice, and cites Southern blues music and culture as one of her most important influences.
Jeffrey Richmond-Moll, like Harris, chose two paintings from 20th-century artists housed in the GMOA. The first, Contemporary American Sculpture by Ben Shahn, was painted in 1940. The second, discussed by both Richmond-Moll and Harris, is Charles Sebree’s The Mystic, created in the 1940s. Richmond-Moll is an expert in both early and contemporary American art and has authored a number of essays and publications, including the upcoming “Reckonings and Reconstructions: Southern Photography from the Do Good Fund.”
Contemporary American Sculpture follows the pattern of artists using their works as commentary on the conflict between real people and the human condition. Lithuanian-born Shahn worked (like Hayes) in the social realist tradition, but his background was in photography and many of his pieces focus on the realities of working-class Americans. Richmond-Moll describes Shahn’s work as “unique…a slice in time of American life and culture.”
Harris and Richmond-Moll join forces to discuss Charles Sebree’s The Mystic. Sebree, a lesser-known 20th-century artist and a member of both the Black and LGBT communities in 1940s Chicago, rounds out the curators’ examination of some of the museum’s most remarkable, grippingly provocative surrealist and social realist pieces.
To watch Harris and Richmond-Moll’s video contributions to Smarthistory, see the links below:
The Lynchers: https://smarthistory.org/vertis-hayes-lynchers/
Juke Joint: https://smarthistory.org/seeing-america-2/a-memphis-juke-joint/
Bluest Eye: https://smarthistory.org/stefanie-jackson-bluest-eye/
Power Figure (nkisi nkondi): https://smarthistory.org/nkisi-nkondi-kongo-people/
Contemporary American Sculpture: https://smarthistory.org/ben-shahn-contemporary-american-sculpture/
The Mystic: https://smarthistory.org/charles-sebree-the-mystic/
By Josie Lipton
