Delaware Art Shows- “Imprinted: Illustrating Race” at Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Delaware, Drawing, Painting / Painters, Printmaking, Wilmington
Feb 262026
 

Kadir Nelson, “Harlem On My Mind”, 2016, Oil on canvas, Cover for The New Yorker, February 22, 2016

There’s only a few days left to see the excellent and informative exhibition Imprinted: Illustrating Race at Delaware Art Museum.

From the museum about the exhibition–

The Norman Rockwell Museum assembled Imprinted: Illustrating Race with co-curator Robyn Phillips-Pendleton, a professor at the University of Delaware. The exhibition honors Rockwell’s powerful images supporting the Civil Rights Movement, displaying his work within a sweeping historical survey of American illustration that features illustrators including Romare Bearden, Emory Douglas, Howard Pyle, and Loveis Wise.

Illustration has been at the forefront of defining events in the United States, from the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era to the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, moving forward to today. Imprinted examines widely circulated imagery, conceived and published over the course of more than three centuries, which has reflected and shaped perceptions of race across time.

Featuring over 200 artworks commissioned by publishers and advertisers, the exhibition traces harmful and prolific stereotypical representations of race that were historically sanctioned and prominently featured in newspapers, magazines, and books, on trade cards, posters, and advertisements, and on packaging and products. Imprinted also celebrates the concerted efforts of 20th and 21st century artists and editors to shift the cultural narrative through the publication—in print and across digital platforms—of positive, inclusive imagery emphasizing full agency and equity for all.

Norman Rockwell, “Murder in Mississippi”, 1965, Oil on canvas (Unpublished, intended as the final illustration for “Southern Justice” by Charles Morgan, Jr, in Look, June 29, 1965)

From the museum about the Rockwell work above-

In 1963, Rockwell turned his attention to the documentation of America’s most pressing social concerns and the subject of human rights by making works for Look magazine.

In the beginning of 1965, Rockwell began work on a piece about the murders of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman-three young civil rights workers who were in Mississippi to expand voter registration.

He wanted the painting to express his outrage. In a letter to Look art director Allen Hurlburt, Rockwell wrote: “I tried in a big way…to make an angry picture. If I just had a bit of Ben Shahn in me it would have helped.”

Shahn’s portraits of the three activists are also on view next Rockwell’s.

Below is Jacob Lawrence‘s painting, The Brown Angel.

Jacob Lawrence, “The Brown Angel”, 1959, Tempera on gesso panel

From the museum-

In the 1940s and 1950s, Lawrence painted a series of compelling works inspired by nightlife and its social atmosphere. In The Brown Angel, the painting’s sharp, edgy forms convey a sense of unease, perhaps pointing to the mounting racial tensions of the time.

Several of Ahmed Samuel Milai’s series of comic-style historical portraits are also on view.

Ahmed Samuel Milai, “Marie Laveau, III”, 1966, Ink, benday, and conte crayon on board    For “Facts About the Negro” by J. A. Rogers, in The Pittsburgh Courier, April 2, 1966

From the museum-

Milai was an editorial and comic strip cartoonist for the Pittsburgh Courier, an influential African American weekly newspaper published from 1907 to 1966. For 30 years, he illustrated “Your History,” a cartoon feature that became known in the 1960s as “Facts About the Negro.”

Designed to celebrate and inspire pride in the accomplishments of people of color across the fields of the arts, literature, education, and science, the series brought Black history to light at a time when such information was not widely acknowledged or shared.

You can find a few more of his illustrations here.

Thanks to the support of The Gilliam Foundation, for Black History Month the museum is offering free admission (including the exhibition), every Saturday in February. The exhibition closes 3/1/26.

Films to Watch- “Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music”

 Art, Artists, Conceptual Art, Design, Fashion, Films, History, Music, Performance Art, Performances, Sculptors / Sculpture, Theater, Video and Film
Jun 112025
 

Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music Trailer

In 2016, Taylor Mac performed his immersive 24-Decade History of Popular Music in a theater in Brooklyn for a full twenty four hours. Normally performed in sections, this was the first and only time this had been done. Decade by decade, from 1776-2016, the history of popular music and the history of America merge, with a decidedly queer slant.

The documentary, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, includes footage from the show combined with interviews with Mac, his incredible costume designer Machine Dazzle, his musical director Matt Ray, and his co-director Niegel Smith. Although Mac is the main performer, the show includes a stage full of musicians, additional singers, and his “Dandy Minions” who can often be found offstage interacting with the audience. Mac’s desire to draw people together and build community is highlighted during several moments focused on the audience’s participation.

Throughout the many hours, performers leave the stage for good leaving only Mac by the end of the show. This is meant to mirror the losses from the AIDS epidemic. Even with only a small selection of these moments, you can feel the effect this creates.

Inventive, beautiful, funny, and often moving, this documentary provides a small taste of the performance and will leave you wanting more.

Mac’s costume for the 1980s

Taylor Mac and Machine Dazzle

Mac’s costume photo shoot for the 1950s

Mac with an audience member

Florida Murals- Zulu Painter in St. Pete

 Art, Artists, Florida Street Art, Painting / Painters, Public Art, St. Petersburg Street Art, Street Art
Feb 072025
 

This mural, Southern Expansion, was created by Zulu Painter and is located in St. Pete, Florida.

Located in the old phone booth on the corner is a plaque that reads-

In the late 1800’s, Black Men were hired to continue the railroad in to the territory that is now known as St. Petersburg, FL. These men settled in this area and were largely responsible for building our city and streets and creating this Gulf Coast community.

This mural honors the history and legacy of the African American people at the foundation of our great city.

You also find Zulu Painter’s work on Instagram.

 

North Carolina Murals- Triangle Park Mural in Asheville

 Art, Artists, Asheville, North Carolina Street Art, Painting / Painters, Public Art, Street Art
Feb 072025
 

The Triangle Park Mural, in downtown Asheville, North Carolina, pays tribute to Asheville’s historic African American business district and the surrounding Valley Street/ East End neighborhoods. Completed in 2013, the project was a collaboration between the Just Folks community club, the Asheville Design Center (ADC), and artist/community-arts organizer Molly Must.

From Molly Must’s website–

Triangle Park is in the heart of “The Block,” an historic area that was the cultural and economic center for all of Western North Carolina’s African-American citizens, from the time of Reconstruction until the years of integration and the East-Riverside Re-Development Project (funded under the federal Urban Renewal program), which severely altered the community’s physical, cultural, and economic topography. Although the community continues to experience displacement and transformation under heavy development, a generation of people who grew up on and around Valley Street (now Charlotte Street) still congregate in Triangle Park, as they have for many years. This dedicated group of community members — who organized under the name Just Folks — has been hosting regular block parties in the park for over a decade. The Triangle Park Mural was born of this vital commitment and a collective desire to mark the changing landscape with celebratory evidence of the area’s profoundly important past.

In an upwelling of community effort and care, nearly 100 volunteers helped paint the Triangle Park Mural between June of 2012 and May of 2013 (many of whom have their own stories about the heyday of the Block). The design is a product of community discussion that was aided by historical archives, interviews, family stories, and donated photographs (including the collection of photographer Andrea Clark). The mural honors both personal stories and memories of several historic institutions of the area, including the Stevens Lee High School, Catholic Hill School, and the Young Men’s Institute (YMI). Artist Molly Must composed the design, with contributions by artists Ernie Mapp, Twila Jefferson, Ian Wilkinson, Harper Leich, and Liana Murray.

 

NYC Art Shows- Isaac Julien at the Museum of Modern Art

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Films, New York Art Shows, Video and Film
Sep 202024
 

Isaac Julien’s video installations use multiple images on different sized screens to tell complicated stories. For Lessons of the Hour, currently on view at MoMA, he is telling the story of American abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The work presents this history in a thought-provoking way that is also visually stunning.

From the museum-

In Lessons of the Hour (2019), Sir Isaac Julien presents an immersive portrait of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who obtained freedom from chattel slavery in 1838 and became one of the most important orators, writers, and statespersons of the 19th century. Across the 10 screens of this video installation, a nonlinear narrative melds Douglass’s life and work with excerpts from several of his speeches, literary works, and personal correspondence. The most photographed American of his era, Douglass understood that portraiture could challenge racist tropes and advance the freedom and civil rights of Black Americans and subjugated people around the world.

For the first time, historical objects directly related to Lessons of the Hour will be on view alongside the work. They include albumen silver print portraits of Douglass, pamphlets of his speeches, first editions of his memoirs, a facsimile of a rare manuscript laying out his ideas about photography, and a specially designed wallpaper composed of period newspaper clippings, broadsides, magazine illustrations, and scrapbook pages. These objects reveal how Douglass’s image and words circulated in the transatlantic, 19th-century world, and also bear out Julien’s insight in Lessons of the Hour: that Douglass’s ideas about citizenship, democracy, and human dignity remain timeless.

This exhibition closes 9/28/24

Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2024

 Art, Artists, Books, History, Photographers / Photography, Politics
Jan 162024
 

(photograph by Richard Avedon from The New Yorker’s website)

Above is Richard Avedon’s portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. with his father, Martin Luther King, and his son, Martin Luther King III, 1963. The image is part of the 1964 book Nothing Personal, Avedon’s collaboration with writer James Baldwin.

Florida Art Shows- “Tom Jones: Here We Stand” at the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Florida Art Shows, Mixed Media, Photographers / Photography, Pinellas County, St. Pete
Aug 252023
 

“Bryson Funmaker”, 2020, Inkjet print and beadwork

The Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg is currently showing an impressive collection of work from photographer Tom Jones. The photos, in multiple series, focus on Native American identity, history, cultural appropriation, and the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin, of which Jones is a member. The work engages visually while also being informative.

From the museum’s press release for Tom Jones: Here We Stand–

For over twenty years, Tom Jones has created a visual record and exploration of his Ho-Chunk community. Born in North Carolina and raised in Orlando after a short stint in Minneapolis, Jones returned to the Midwest, moving to Wisconsin at age 15. He then made his way to Chicago for graduate school at Columbia College. Jones’s father worked with Kodak and owned a photography lab, helping shape the artist’s understanding of the practical aspects of photography from an early age. During graduate school, Jones began an ongoing photographic essay on the contemporary life of his Ho-Chunk community, beginning first with the elders.

The show comprises over a dozen series, ranging from the documentary to the conceptual. Of his series on Veterans’ memorials at the annual Black River Falls Pow-Wow, Jones says, “I was interested in the way families made very conscious decisions about how they want their loved ones memorialized.” Other series include the emotionally intimate, though larger than life, beaded portraits. “Beading is a metaphor for our ancestors watching over us. I am also referencing an experience I had when I was about 8 or 9 years old. My mother took me to see a Sioux medicine man named Robert Stead. He led the call to the spirits, the women began to sing, and the ancestors appeared as orbs of light. This event inspired the series Strong Unrelenting Spirits.“

Jones’s photographs examine identity and geographic place with an emphasis on the experience of Native American communities. He is interested in how American Indian material culture is portrayed through commodification and popular culture. Much of his work counteracts and corrects decades of misinformation and misrepresentation of American Indians, particularly targeting the field of U.S. history. Jones’s critical assessment of the romanticized representation of Native peoples in photography re-examines historic pictures taken by white photographers. This reassessment questions the assumptions about identity within the American Indian culture by non-natives and natives alike. “While each of Jones’s series is distinctly different, the message remains consistent: the Ho-Chunk are not vanishing or frozen in time,” said Dr. Jane Aspinwall, Senior Curator of Photography. “Jones’s photographs emphasize a solid, generational commitment to family, tribal community, and land. His photographs reclaim appropriated images and set the historical record straight.”

Below are a some selections from a few of the series in the exhibition.

“Trenton and Roger Littlegeorge”, 2011

“Dorothy Crowfeather”, 1999

“Dear America” series

About the Dear America series pictured above-

Using each line from the first two verses of the song, America (“My Country Tis of Thee”) as the title of fourteen of the works in the Dear America series, Jones questions whose history is being propagated here. With dry wit and an unfailing commitment to truth, Jones exposes atrocities like the massive effort by the U.S. government to assimilate Native American children to non-Native culture, the merciless seizing of Native lands, and the mass hanging of thirty-eight Sioux and Ho-Chunk men under President Lincoln in 1862. He also highlights Native American identity in relation to cowboy culture, the thoughtless misappropriation of Native American customs, and the influence of the Iroquois Confederacy on the U. S. Constitution. Jones’s aim is to broaden the “traditional” historical American narrative to be more representative of all people, especially the original inhabitants of this land.

About the Ho-Chunk Veterans Memorials, pictured above-

“I wanted to do this photographic essay to honor our veterans… One in four American Indian males is a United States veteran. Ho-Chunks have fought in every war for the United States except for the War of 1812. The Ho-Chunks did this even though they were not granted the right to vote until 1924, and during the Indian Removal Act, were removed at least seven times from Wisconsin by the United States government. This is the conviction we have as a people… I honor these people who give of themselves freely to protect this land. Traditionally, Ho-Chunks are taught to live their lives for the betterment of others. The veterans have done this.’
-Tom Jones

From Jones’ “”Native” Commodity” series

About the “Native” Commodity” series-

The Wisconsin Dells, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the state, is home to spectacular natural scenery and the largest concentration of waterparks. Located on Ho-Chunk ancestral land, the area is now highly commercialized, with much of its identity resting on the appropriation of Native American stereotypical tropes. In this series, Jones documented this unabashed use of Native American symbols, images, and place names in advertising and popular culture. The sale of “Native American” crafts made in China, the liberal use of names of historically important figures like Black Hawk, and the indiscriminate mix of tribal communities into one conglomerate-tipis from the Plains next to totem poles from the Pacific Northwest next to Pueblo pottery. The Dells serve as a microcosm for how images of Native Americans are reproduced and reframed into a collective memory that is often distorted. Jones wryly noted that none of the Native American objects feature anything specifically attributable to the Ho-Chunk Nation.

This exhibition has been extended until 9/10/23.

SHINE Mural Festival- 2022- Reginald O’Neal

 Artists, Books, Florida Street Art, History, Painting / Painters, Public Art, Quotes, St. Petersburg Street Art, Street Art, Writers
Feb 022023
 

 

“History is not everything, but it is a starting point. History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is a compass they use to find themselves on the map of human geography. It tells them where they are but, more importantly, what they must be.”- Dr. John Henrik Clarke

Dr. John Henrik Clarke was an American writer, historian, professor, and pioneer in the creation of Pan-African and Africana studies. He taught at both Hunter College in NYC, where he established the Department of Black and Puerto Rican studies, and Cornell University where he was the Carter G. Woodson Distinguished Visiting Professor of African History at Cornell University’s Africana Studies and Research Center.

The mural pictured above, Dr. John Henrik Clarke and the Mundari Tribe by Reginald O’Neal, was created for the 2022 edition of SHINE Mural Festival in St. Petersburg, Florida.