Norton exhibit features works by African-American, African artists

‘Say It Loud’ emphasizes museum’s renewed initiative to collect works by diverse artists

The 40 works by 23 artists in Say It Loud: Art by African and African-American Artists in the Collection represent the lion’s share of such work in the Norton Museum’s collection. The museum owns 50 or so works by African-American or African artists, 20 of which were acquired within the last two years.

“This exhibition celebrates the museum’s renewed initiative to collect art by diverse artists to better represent the contemporary art world and the many different voices in the art world,” education curator Glenn Tomlinson said. But hurry over if you want to see it, as the show closes Sunday.

The Norton’s emphasis on such work has paid off.

“In the last couple of years we’ve been given and purchased some great African-American and African art,” museum directorHope Alswang said. “There’s a great opportunity because there’s been a huge explosion, particularly in Africa, of great things happening.”

African artists represented include Malick Sidibe of Mali, J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere of Nigeria, Yinka Shonibare of Britain and Nigeria, and Mary Sibande of South Africa.

The exhibition, which was organized by contemporary art curator Cheryl Brutvan, takes its name from James Brown’s 1968 black pride anthem Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud, a sentiment that permeates much of the show.

The earliest works are James Van Der Zee’s black-and-white portraits shot between 1915 and 1920 of black dignitaries in Harlem. One of the portraits is of Sara Spencer Washington, who accumulated a fortune as the founder of Apex Hair Co.

Like Van Der Zee, Charles Henry Alston was a star of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. During the Great Depression, he was one of the directors of the Harlem Art Workshop, where he taught and mentored African-American artists such as Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden. His 306 studio was a gathering place for African-American intellectuals such as Alain Locke and Langston Hughes. An artist who worked in many styles, Alston painted the untitled work in the show in the 1940s, when he was experimenting with positive and negative space and organic forms.

Geometric abstractions, like the one in the Norton show, were the focus of Alvin Loving’s 1969 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. It was the museum’s first solo show of work by an African American artist. Later, after seeing an exhibition of Amish quilts, Loving took his art in a new direction, tearing up, dying and sewing canvas to create layered, illusionistic works such as the untitled 1981 piece in the show.

Kara Walker, born in 1969, is represented by seven works: a tapestry and a suite of six etchings. Walker uses the 17th and 18th century portrait silhouette technique to make biting narratives that comment on racial prejudice throughout history. Like stereotypes, silhouettes simplify the complex.

In Walker’s 2008 tapestry A Warm Summer Evening in 1863, the silhouette of an antebellum woman hangs against a backdrop of an image taken from a Harper’s Magazine illustration for a story about New York City’s draft riots during the Civil War, when an orphanage for black children was burned down.

South African Sibande, born in 1982, is the show’s youngest artist. Sibande’s …of Prosperity is an imposing figure cast from the artist’s body and clad in a billowing blue dress. Blue is the color of worker’s uniforms. Sibande descends from generations of domestic servants. By making the figure an image of power, she celebrates her heritage, Tomlinson said. The work, a 2012 gift from Beth Rudin DeWoody, is the most recent to enter the Norton’s collection.

---

IF YOU GO

What: “Say it Loud: Art by African and African-American Artists in the Collection”

When: Through Sunday

Where: Norton Museum, 1451 S Olive. Ave., West Palm Beach

For information: Call 832-5196 or visit norton.org