DMV ARTS GUIDE

From Williamsburg, VA to Washington, D.C., self-taught artists are having a moment. There are currently four exhibitions in DC, MD, and VA featuring works by these talented artists. Gee's Bend Prints: From Quilts to Prints is on view in the Modlin Center at the University of Richmond; We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection  is at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM); Called to Create: Black Artists of the American South is hosted at the National Gallery of Art (NGA); and I made this... The Work of Black American Artists is showcased at the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg.  

The prints at the Modlin Center draw inspiration from the quilts created by the African American women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama. Collaborating with master printers at Paulson Fontaine Press, innovative techniques were employed to transfer the quilt designs into etchings, celebrating the traditional Gee’s Bend quilts. We Are Made of Stories delves into the extraordinary lives of 43 artists through 110 works, highlighting their personal narratives that illuminate the depth and significance of their creations. The NGA exhibition features nine Gee’s Bend quilts alongside other inventive works. For decades, Thornton Dial, James “Son Ford” Thomas, Lonnie Holley, Mary T. Smith, Purvis Young, and many other Black artists in the South worked with minimal recognition, often utilizing recycled materials and transforming yards, porches, or boarded-up storefronts into their galleries. Called to Create uncovers the remarkable stories of these makers who felt ‘called’ to the profession of art making.

Photographer Iké Udé is retelling the narrative on African beauty, identity, and power...one portrait at a time. In Iké Udé: Nollywood Portraits, now on view at the National Museum of African Art, the artist celebrates the luminescent beauty and mystique of the African visionaries of Nollywood, Nigeria’s $3 billion film industry. This exhibition highlights the contributions of artists of color in reshaping the narrative around African identities.

Known for his performative and iconoclastic style and vibrant sense of composition, Udé’s photographs use color and attire to craft elegant portraits. His works boldly assert the power of African identities, despite centuries of attempted erasure by Eurocentric art history and notions of beauty. The images speak the rich visual language of classical portraiture and attest to the social and cultural impact of Nollywood. Of Udé’s 64 Nollywood portraits, 33 are on view at NMAfA through February 2023.

“In 1987, award-winning photographer Brian Lanker launched an ambitious, two-year effort to photograph courageous, groundbreaking Black women whose lives and careers had left an indelible mark on the nation,” said Ann Shumard, senior curator of photographs at NPG. 

Twenty-five of the 75 photographs from Lanker’s series were recently acquired and are now on view at NPG in I Dream a World: Selections from Brian Lanker’s Portraits of Remarkable Black Women. Iconic in American history and culture, these African American women not only transformed politics, arts, and activism, but they did so with supernatural style, class, and grace. Maya Angelou, Shirley Chisholm, Lena Horne, Barbara Jordan, Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, Leontyne Price, Wilma Rudolph, and Alice Walker are among the celebrated women featured in the first installation, on view through Jan. 29, 2023.

In a tumultuous time where democracy and voting rights are ‘on the ballot,’ countries are at war, and a recession looms while diseases linger…art activism will continue to trend. There are currently numerous opportunities to experience the way in which artists of color respond personally and politically to a changing world. Here’s a few.

What’s Going On is the inaugural exhibition at the brand new Rubell Museum DC. It features more than 190 works by 37 artists, including notable artists of color such as Rashid Johnson, Richard Prince, Sylvia Snowden, Hank Willis Thomas, Mickalene Thomas, Carrie Mae Weems, and Kehinde Wiley, who are responding to pressing social and political issues. The cornerstone is Keith Haring’s Untitled (Against All Odds), 1989; a series of 20 works inspired by Marvin Gaye’s revolutionary lyrics from the 1971 album. Dedicated exclusively to contemporary art, the museum reinvigorates the 1906 building of the former Randall Junior High School, a historically Black public school in Southwest DC that ceased operations in 1978. Free for DC residents, it will serve as a place for the public to engage with the most compelling national and international artists of our time.

Reckoning: Protest. Defiance. Resilience is an ongoing exhibition now on view at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. It explores the way in which art depicts Black resistance, resilience, and protest and examines how artists and photographers have used their voice to pay tribute to those we have lost. The newly acquired portrait of Breonna Taylor painted by renowned artist Amy Sherald is on view in the exhibition until May, along with 27 newly exhibited images and artwork by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Sheila Pree Bright, Bisa Butler, Shaun Leonardo, David Hammons, and many more.

The Radical Voice of Blackness Speaks of Resistance and Joy is now on view at the Banneker-Douglass Museum. Guest curated by Myrtis Bedolla of Galerie Myrtis, this exhibition showcases multidisciplinary works of art by 17 cross-generational Black Maryland-based artists, as well as commissioned portraits and pieces from the Museum Fine Art Collection. This exhibition highlights the contributions of artists of color within the DMV arts scene.  

Featured artists include Devin Allen, Tawny Chatmon, Wesley Clark, Larry Cook, Oletha DeVane, Edward D. Ghee, Sr., Phylicia Ghee, Jerrell Gibbs, and Curlee Holton. Through a confluence of artistic practices, these artists examine historic and contemporary themes of Black joy and healing, created in opposition to and despite oppression.  

Additionally, Lex Marie: Let Them Kids Be Kids is now on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington. Marie is a DC-area artist who uses the playground as a framework to explore the joys of Black childhood and the impact of race and equity issues on these spaces. Her newest paintings and installations address adultification bias, asserting that all children deserve the right to innocence.  

For years, Marie has drawn inspiration from personal objects and photographs to shape her compositions. In this exhibition, viewers witness scenes of her son Aiden playing from infancy to the present, capturing moments of pure joy and contemplative reflection while on a tricycle or swing set, further enriching the dialogue around exhibitions in DC MD VA.