Exhibition Details
This exhibition will feature an immersive viewing of approximately 22 paintings by five contemporary Black artists in the American Folk Art Museum collection: Leonard Daley, Claude Lawrence, J.B. Murray, Mary T. Smith, and Purvis Young. By positioning these artists in conversation with one another, the exhibition will explore the artistic self-expression of Black makers working in and around abstraction.
Additional Details
The exhibition’s title is drawn from a passage by literary critic and Black feminist scholar Hortense Spillers, whose groundbreaking 1987 essay Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book includes the statement: “in order for me to speak a truer word concerning myself, I must strip down through layers of attenuated meanings, made an excess in time, over time, assigned by a particular historical order, and there await whatever marvels of my own inventiveness.”
Location
American Folk Art Museum
2 Lincoln Square
New York, NY 10023
Image: Detail from Mary T. Smith (1904-1995), Untitled, Hazelhurst, Mississippi / courtesy of American Folk Art Museum