Bob Thompson

Bob Thompson, "Garden of Music," 1960. Oil on canvas. 79 1/2 × 143 in. (201.9 × 363.2 cm). Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut. The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund. © Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York. Photo: Allen Phillips / Wadsworth Atheneum

Bob Thompson in his studio on Rivington Street, NY, c. 1964. © Charles Rotmil

"All this was totally my imagination of a faraway place." - Bob Thompson

An important traveling exhibition offers a rich reconsideration of a visionary African American painter. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Bob Thompson (1937–1966) earned critical acclaim in the late 1950s for his paintings of figurative complexity and chromatic intensity. Bob Thompson: This House Is Mine borrows its name from a diminutive but exquisite painting created by the artist in 1960. With this title, Thompson declared his ambition to synthesize a new visual language out of elements of historic European painting.

Bob Thompson: This House Is Mine is organized by the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, and will travel after debuting at Colby (on view now through January 9, 2022) to: Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, Chicago, February 10–May 15, 2022; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 18–September 11, 2022; Hammer Museum at UCLA , Los Angeles, October 9, 2022–January 8, 2023.

The first museum exhibition devoted to the artist in more than twenty years, This House Is Mine traces Thompson’s brief but prolific transatlantic career, examining his formal inventiveness and his engagement with universal themes of collectivity, bearing witness, struggle, and justice. Over a mere eight years, he grappled with the exclusionary Western canon, developing a lexicon of enigmatic forms that he threaded through his work. Human and animal figures, often silhouetted and relatively featureless, populate mysterious vignettes set in wooded landscapes or haunt theatrically compressed spaces. Thompson reconfigures well-known compositions by European artists such as Piero della Francesca and Francisco de Goya through brilliant acts of formal distortion and elision, recasting these scenes in sumptuous colors. On occasion, familiar individuals appear: the jazz greats Nina Simone and Ornette Coleman, and the writers LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka) and Allen Ginsberg.

Bob Thompson, “Untitled,” 1962. Colby College Museum of Art/Gift of the Alex Katz Foundation/© Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York/Photo: Luc Demers

Bringing together paintings and works on paper from more than fifty public and private collections across the United States, This House Is Mine centers Bob Thompson’s work within expansive art historical narratives and ongoing dialogues about the politics of representation, charting his enduring influence. The exhibition is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated catalogue featuring scholars, artists, and poets, published in association with Yale University Press. 

Robert Louis (Bob) Thompson briefly studied medicine at Boston University before enrolling in the studio program at the University of Louisville, which had desegregated in 1951. As an art student, Thompson explored the languages of totemic abstraction then in vogue and developed an extraordinary proficiency in academic drawing. He spent the summer of 1958 in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he continued his training at the Seong Moy School of Painting and Graphic Arts and forged valuable friendships. Thompson also encountered the work of the recently deceased German émigré artist Jan Müller (1922–1958), whose figurative style pointed him toward new expressive possibilities.

Bob Thompson, "Blue Madonna," 1961. Oil on canvas. 51 1/2 × 74 3/4 in. (130.8 × 189.9 cm). The Detroit Institute of Arts. Gift of Edward Levine in memory of Bob Thompson. © Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York. Photo: The Detroit Institute of Arts, USA / Bridgeman Images

Thompson soon settled in New York City, where he joined fellow artists Allan Kaprow and Red Grooms in some of their first so-called “Happenings,” multimedia performance events. A devotee of jazz, Thompson frequented downtown clubs such as Slugs’ Saloon and the Five Spot Café, where legendary performers including Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Charlie Haden played. These musicians materialize in many of Thompson’s paintings and drawings including Ornette (Birmingham Museum of Art, 1960–61) and Garden of Music (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 1960). This pivotal period was marked by Thompson’s first solo New York City exhibition, and within the next few years his work entered some of the preeminent modern art collections in the United States.

In 1961, Thompson and his wife, Carol, made their first trip to Europe together, spending time in London and Paris and eventually settling in Ibiza. Thompson was able to fully immerse himself in the traditions that formed the core of his practice. While in Spain, he deepened his study of Francisco de Goya (1746­–1828), and canvases such as Untitled (Colby College Museum of Art, 1962) demonstrate his heady dialogue with Los Caprichos, the Spanish artist’s mordantly satirical print series. On a second trip to Europe, the couple settled in Rome, where Thompson died tragically on May 30, 1966, of complications following gall bladder surgery.

Memorial exhibitions at the New School for Social Research (1969) and the Speed Art Museum (1971) celebrated his life and career. In 1998, Thelma Golden and Judith Wilson mounted a foundational scholarly retrospective of his work at the Whitney Museum of American Art. More recently, paintings by Thompson have featured in group exhibitions such as Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties; The Color Line: African-American Artists and Segregation; and Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power. The Estate of Bob Thompson is represented by Michael Rosenfeld Gallery.

Bob Thompson, “Homage to Nina Simone,” 1965. Oil on canvas. (Minneapolis Institute of Art/John R. Van Derlip Fund/© Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York)

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African American Art in the 20th Century

 

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 Exhibition Opens at the Hudson River Museum in October

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Sargent Johnson, Mask , ca. 1930 - 1935, copper on wood base. Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of International Business Machines Corporation.

Felrath Hines, Red Stripe with Green Background , 1986, oil on linen. Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of Dorothy C. Fisher, wife of the artist. © 1986, Dorothy C. Fisher

Hudson River Museum will present African American Art in the 20th Century, an exhibition of exemplary paintings and sculptures by thirty-four African American artists who came to prominence during the period bracketed by the Harlem Renaissance starting in the 1920s and the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. Drawn from the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the exhibition includes masterworks by iconic artists such as Romare Bearden, Beauford Delaney, Jacob Lawrence, and Loïs Mailou Jones, ranging in style from modern abstraction to stained color to the postmodern assemblage of found objects. The exhibition will be on view October 15, 2021–January 16, 2022; this will be the only New York venue for the exhibition.

The subject matter of the works are diverse. Benny Andrews, Ellis Wilson, and William H. Johnson speak to the dignity and resilience of people who work the land. Jacob Lawrence and Thornton Dial, Sr. acknowledge the struggle for economic and civil rights. Sargent Johnson, Loïs Mailou Jones, and Melvin Edwards address the heritage of Africa, and images by Romare Bearden celebrate jazz musicians. Sam Gilliam and Felrath Hines conduct innovative experiments with color and form. 

“It is an absolute honor to have these outstanding paintings and sculptures at the Hudson River Museum,” said Director and CEO Masha Turchinsky. “We are thrilled to introduce our audiences to one of the most significant national collections of African American art. This is a pivotal opportunity for the public to experience powerful works by these American luminaries at the exhibition’s only New York venue.”

Laura Vookles, Chair of the HRM’s Curatorial Department, added, “I can’t wait to see the exhibition galleries filled with these amazing works by such a large grouping of exceptional and influential artists. It has been a privilege to collaborate with my colleagues to plan the presentation here, and I believe people will find visiting the exhibition similarly meaningful.”

These artists worked at significant social and political moments in American life. The Harlem Renaissance, World War II, the Civil Rights movement, and the forces for freedom around the world shaped their lives and worldviews. Family and personal history became subtexts for some. Others interpreted the syncopations of jazz in visual form, still others translated observation into powerful emotional statements. In styles that range from painterly expressionism to abstractions that glow with color, they explore myth and memory and acknowledge the heritage of Africa.

Norman Lewis, Evening Rendezvous , 1962, oil on linen. Smithsonian American Art Museum, museum purchase.

Palmer Hayden, The Janitor Who Paints , ca. 1930, oil on canvas. Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of the Harmon Foundation.

The words of scholar, writer and political activist W.E.B. Du Bois, Howard University philosophy professor Alain Locke, author Zora Neale Hurston, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and their contemporaries provided insight and inspiration. In response, the artists affirm community and individuality. For them art is a vehicle for understanding the complex, conflicting, and sustaining facets of the American experience. As featured artist Jacob Lawrence stated in 1951, “My pictures express my life and experience… the things I have experienced extend to my national, racial, and class group. I paint the American scene.”

The full list of artists in the exhibition: Benny Andrews, Romare Bearden, Frederick Brown, Hilda Wilkinson Brown, Claude Clark, Eldzier Cortor, Allan Rohan Crite, Emilio Cruz, Beauford Delaney, Joseph Delaney, Thornton Dial, Sr., Melvin Edwards, Herbert Gentry, Sam Gilliam, Palmer Hayden, Felrath Hines, Richard Hunt, Malvin Gray Johnson, Sargent Johnson, William H. Johnson, Loïs Mailou Jones, Jacob Lawrence, Hughie Lee-Smith, Norman Lewis, Whitfield Lovell, Keith Morrison, Delilah Pierce, Charles Searles, Renée Stout, Bob Thompson, Ellis Wilson, Hale Woodruff, Kenneth Victor Young, and Purvis Young. 

Delilah Pierce, DC Waterfront, Maine Avenue , 1957, oil on board. Smithsonian American Art Museum, museum purchase made possible through Deaccession Funds

Exhibition Catalog
The related catalog, African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond, celebrates modern and contemporary artworks in the Smithsonian American Art Museum collection by African American artists. The book, co-published with Skira Rizzoli in New York, is written by Richard J. Powell, the John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University; and Virginia Mecklenburg, chief curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum; with contributions from Maricia Battle, curator in the prints and drawings division at the Library of Congress. It will be available in the Museum Shop ($39.95 for softcover).

Emma Amos

 

Bold mixed-media paintings by a trailblazing artist who challenged society regarding race, gender, and privilege will be showcased in “Emma Amos: Color Odyssey,” on view June 19 through September 12 in the Museum of Art, Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute.

“Emma Amos: Color Odyssey” is a major retrospective of the artist’s distinguished six-decade career. The exhibition features more than 60 artworks Amos created from 1958 to 2015.

Though Amos is best known for her large-scale paintings incorporating African fabrics, she also embraced multiple types of materials, innovative printmaking techniques and photo-transfer, weaving, and collage. Her compositions reveal personal narratives about art, historical figures, and the representation of people of color, particularly women. Amos combined her interests in painting, printmaking, weaving, and collage into vibrant stories that present a layered understanding of what it meant to be a woman and artist of color during the era of Civil Rights and the feminist movements of the past 50 years.

Like many women, especially for women of her generation, Amos kept a demanding schedule as a wife, mother, artist, and art professor, while being a powerful voice for social change. Later in her life, Amos eventually revealed she was a member of the “Guerrilla Girls,” a group of anonymous women artists advocating for parity in the art world through activism and protest. In a 2011 interview, Amos reflected, “It was tough…But I did it, you know. I just felt like it was necessary.”

Amos was interested in art from a young age in her hometown of Atlanta, GA, even though segregation prevented her from being able to fully enjoy and experience the arts in museums and other public “separate-but-equal” spaces. “Emma Amos: Color Odyssey” demonstrates her presence and growth as an artist, and highlights the social change for which Amos fought so vigorously. Amos had an activist’s spirit throughout her career. As a young artist in New York City, she was the only woman in Spiral, a group of Black artists who came together to examine their relationship with art and activism. Amos did not like separating “Black” art from all other art; being Black was a political statement, but she wanted to address various issues including race, gender, class, and power within the art world and in society as a whole. Amos actively fought against male chauvinism in the art world and evolved as a feminist artist sensitive to the nuances of race, age, and class-oriented politics of her time through her teaching at Rutgers University and writing, but most importantly, through her art.

Emma Amos, (American, 1937 - 2020), “Equals,” 1992, Acrylic on linen canvas with African fabric borders, 76 × 82 inches, Private collection.

A companion exhibition, “Call & Response: Collecting African American Art,” on view June 19 through November 28, explores the Munson-Williams Museum of Art’s efforts to diversify its collection during the past 30 years. Included in the exhibition are works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Romare Bearden, Robert Blackburn, Lorna Simpson, Dread Scott, Kara Walker, and Carrie Mae Weems. “Call & Response” will be interpreted by seven community commenters who will contribute a collection of responses to the art via a multi-media app, using music, personal history, and comparative works of art.

“Emma Amos: Color Odyssey” is organized by Shawnya L. Harris, Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art, the Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia. Remarking on the exhibition, Harris observed, “Amos is one of several Black women artists whose contribution to art history deserves attention and critique. Putting together several decades worth of her work provides a special opportunity to learn more about her career, techniques, and ideas, inviting re-evaluation and new audiences in relation to her artistic progression.” Amos died in May 2020, but her legacy lives on in the art she created and the contributions she made to a better society. 

The Georgia Museum of Art has published a scholarly exhibition catalog to accompany the show, with essays by Harris; Lisa Farrington of Howard University; artist LaToya Ruby Frazier; Laurel Garber, Park Family Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; artist Kay Walkingstick; and Phoebe Wolfskill, associate professor in the departments of American studies and African American and African Diaspora studies at Indiana University.

Emma Amos (American, 1937-2020), “Sandy and Her Husband,” 1973, oil on canvas, 44 ¼ x 50 ¼ in., Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 2018.24

Exhibition admission is free to Munson-Williams members and SNAP/EBT cardholders. There is also free admission on Sundays for all City of Utica residents. General admission is $12 adults and $6 students. Children 12 and under are free.

“Emma Amos: Color Odyssey” is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, the W. Newton Morris Charitable Foundation and the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art.

Bill Traylor

 

Bill Traylor (American, 1853-1949), Nothin’ to Somethin’ – Freedom, undated. Collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, gift of B.K. Fulton and Jackie Stone

Bill Traylor (American, 1853-1949), Dance, undated. Collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, gift of B.K. Fulton and Jackie Stone

 

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) has announced the gift of nine captivating works on paper created with paint, graphite and colored pencils by the iconic African American artist Bill Traylor. This generous donation is from the collection of B.K. Fulton and Jackie Stone.

“These two groups of artworks are significant additions to VMFA’s collection,” said Alex Nyerges, VMFA’s Director and CEO. “We are striving to expand the museum’s collection of art by African Americans, and Traylor’s work documents the Black experience in the South. We are appreciative of these invaluable additions.”

Bill Traylor was born into slavery in Benton, Alabama in 1853 and spent much of his post-emancipation life as a sharecropper on a plantation. He moved to Montgomery, Alabama in 1928 where at the age of 85, he began creating abstract, stylized drawings of people in his community and of recollections of his past experiences using materials at hand — crayons and paint on discarded cardboard and poster paper. Traylor told unique and complex visual stories through silhouetted figures, animals, plants and symbols. The artist was prolific, producing nearly 1,500 works between 1939 and 1942.

“I am delighted to be able to donate these significant works of art to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,” said B.K. Fulton. “My hope is they will shed new light and add more content to our interpretations of the African American South.”

Works from the two series, Dance and Nothin’ to Somethin’ – Freedom, will be on view in VMFA’s upcoming exhibition The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse.“Traylor is an iconic artist whose works provide a glimpse into the African American South of his day. The multimedia works have their own visual tonality that pulsates with a vibrant energy. They are significant additions to VMFA’s collection,” said exhibition organizer Valerie Cassel Oliver, VMFA’s Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. “This collection of art will also serve as foundational markers that show the influences of such artists in the capturing and shaping of Black southern sensibilities.”

B.K. Fulton and Jackie Stone

On view from May 22 to September 6, 2021, The Dirty Southexplores the aesthetic legacies and traditions of Black culture in the African American South as seen through the lens of contemporary Black musical expression. With more than 140 works of art, the exhibition features an intergenerational group of artists working in a variety of genres from sculpture, painting and drawing to photography and film as well as sound pieces and large-scale installation works. More information about the exhibition The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse can be found at www.VMFA.museum.

The Kinsey African American Art & History Collection

 

Charles Alston (American 1907-1977), Portrait of Girl, 1940. The Kinsey African American Art & History Collection.

The Gathering Place and Greenwood Cultural Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, will host artworks from the Kinsey collection, beginning May 22 through June 2021 in the ONEOK Boathouse. The collection then travels to Tacoma Art Museum in Washington this summer.

The widely acclaimed exhibition, The Kinsey African American Art & History Collection, celebrates the achievements and contributions of Black Americans from 1595 to present times. Considered one of the most comprehensive surveys of African American history and culture outside the Smithsonian Institution, the exhibition features over 150 of the shared treasures amassed by Shirley and Bernard Kinsey during their five decades of marriage. The collection includes masterful paintings and sculpture, photographs, rare books, letters, manuscripts and more. The exhibition will run at Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) from July 31 – November 28, 2021.

Garnering national media attention and experienced by more than 15 million people, the groundbreaking exhibition has toured 30 cities in the U.S. and internationally, including the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, EPCOT Walt Disney World, California African American Museum, the Norton Museum of Art, the University of Hong Kong Museum and Gallery, and The African American Museum, Dallas, to name a few. The exhibition has been cited in three national awards, including the National Medal for Museum and Library Service.

Representing the intersection between art and history, the exhibition covers the lives, accomplishments, and artistry of African Americans from the 16th century through the years of slavery and emancipation, to the civil rights movement and modern day. Important examples include bills of sale, advertisements, letters, and legal papers documenting the slave trade; hand-colored tintypes from the Civil War era; art and literature from the Harlem Renaissance; and items spotlighting key moments in the civil rights movement, including the Woolworth store boycotts and the 1963 March on Washington.

Shirley and Bernard Kinsey, Floridians by birth and graduates of Florida A&M University, began collecting to remember their travels. Soon their collection became a repository for African American intellectual, historical, and artistic works. The Kinseys believe their collection helps give a well-rounded look at the African American experience and the integral roles African Americans played in building this country, providing new perspectives on chapters of the nation’s history which have been ignored. The collection is a family affair, with the Kinsey's son Khalil serving as General Manager and Chief Curator.

Robert S. Duncanson, (1821-1872) Landscape, Autumn. Circa 1865. The Kinsey African American Art & History Collection.

“The Kinsey Collection strives to give our ancestors a voice, a name, and a personality, enabling the viewer to understand the challenges, obstacles, triumphs, accomplishments and extraordinary sacrifice of African Americans in building this country,” said Bernard Kinsey. Khalil adds, “This is a family story, illustrating what our family has done to tell its story. But it’s also about America. Most people only know half of the story.”

A history of African Americans in art is charted through works by numerous celebrated artists, including Alma Thomas, Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Aaron Douglas, Sam Gilliam, Charles White, Augusta Savage, Lois Mailou Jones, Artis Lane, Robert S. Duncanson, and many more.

Other items include the earliest-known Black baptism record and Black marriage record, from 1595; a 1773 first-edition copy of poems by Phillis Wheatley and a copy of the 1857 Dred Scott Decision. Other noteworthy items include an early version of the Emancipation Proclamation; an illustration of the “first colored senator and representatives” in the 41st and 42nd U.S. Congress; a letter from Malcolm X to Alex Haley, author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family; and a signed copy of the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, a landmark legal decision made in 1954 by the Supreme Court ending school segregation and creating legal barriers to Jim Crow laws.

While this exhibition has been shown in numerous locations covering the Eastern Seaboard, the Midwest, the South, the Mid-South, the Southwest, and the West Coast, this will be the first time the exhibition has been presented in the Pacific Northwest. According to Bernard Kinsey, “Our collection has been front-page news all over the world, from Hong Kong, to Colombia, to Dallas, Texas. It represents an opportunity for people in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho to see books, manuscripts and paintings that they will never have a chance to see again, outside of our nation’s capital."

David F. Setford, TAM’s Executive Director, said, “When I travelled to Dallas in September 2019 to see this exhibition and meet the Kinseys, I was overwhelmed. I was amazed by the power of the documents, and works of art on display, by their ability to tell an untold story, and by the commitment of the Kinseys to share that story. I resolved that we needed to tell this story at TAM. Then, as 2020 rolled in, the relevancy of the choice of this exhibition to our region and to the Museum’s DEIA work became even clearer.”

Alma Thomas, (1891-1978) Untitled. The Kinsey African American Art & History Collection.

The exhibition’s presentation at TAM and related community programming is being developed in collaboration with a Kinsey Collection Advisory Committee, comprised of 18 Black leaders, artists, educators, and activists from the greater Tacoma area. Special tours, performances, talks, youth programs, and more will be hosted at TAM and virtually during the exhibition.  Additionally, a richly illustrated book with a foreword by Douglas A. Blackmon, the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, accompanies the exhibition and will be available for sale in the TAM Store along with other items related to the Collection.

Nellie Mae Rowe

 

Nellie Mae Rowe, Untitled (Dandy), 1978–1982, crayon and pencil on paper, 24 x 18 inches, gift of Harvie and Charles Abney.

High Museum of Art

Nellie Mae Rowe (American, 1900-1982), "When I Was a Little Girl," 1978, crayon, marker, colored pencil, and pencil on paper, 19 x 24, inches, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with Folk Art Acquisition Fund, 2002.73. © 2021 Estate of Nellie Mae Rowe/ARS, NY.

Melinda Blauvelt, Nellie Mae Rowe, Vinings, Georgia 1971, printed 2021, silver gelatin print, 20 x 24 inches, gift of the artist.

High Museum of Art

Nellie Mae Rowe, Real Girl, 1980, color photograph, crayon, ink, and pencil on cardboard, 14 x 11 inches, gift of Judith Alexander.

High Museum of Art

This fall, the High Museum of Art will present "Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe" (Sept. 3, 2021-Jan. 9, 2022), featuring nearly 60 works drawn from the High Museum’s folk and self-taught art collection, which has the largest public holdings of Rowe’s art. The exhibition chronicles the life and work of Rowe (1900-1982) through her imaginative works on paper and sculptures made from found and experimental materials and an artful reconstruction of her “Playhouse,” the striking art environment she created in her home and yard, which was located on a busy thoroughfare just outside of Atlanta. “Really Free” is the first major presentation of her work in more than 20 years and the first to consider her practice as a radical act of self-expression and liberation in the post-civil rights-era South. The exhibition will be accompanied by an expansive print catalogue and will be the inaugural project featured on the High’s new interactive digital platform to debut this fall. “Really Free” marks the High Museum’s first partnership with the Art Bridges Foundation, an organization dedicated to expanding access to American art, which will allow the exhibition to travel nationally into 2023.

“The High was among the first American museums to establish a department dedicated to self-taught art, and today we hold the foremost collection of work by artists without formal training from the American South, including Nellie Mae Rowe,” said Rand Suffolk, the High’s Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr., director. “We are incredibly proud of this distinction and honored to celebrate Rowe’s life and work through this exhibition. Her art has been a fixture in our collection galleries for decades, and this exhibition allows a much-needed deeper look into her bold artistic production.”

Katherine Jentleson, the High’s Merrie and Dan Boone curator of folk and self-taught art, added, “The exuberant color and imaginative design that characterize so many of Rowe’s drawings—which comprise most of her surviving work—is so aesthetically pleasing that her work is often taken at face value. This show will really explore her drawing practice, tracing its emergence and relationship to the installations of her Playhouse, as well considering the artistic path she blazed for herself as a radical act undertaken at a time when Black, women and self-taught artists struggled for respect and visibility.”

Rowe began making art as a child in rural Fayetteville, Georgia, but only found the time and space to reclaim her artistic practice in the late 1960s, following the deaths of her second husband and members of the family for whom she worked. Although she did not speak much about politics or social movements, she purposefully embraced her creativity and devoted her life to making art during a time when civil rights leaders and Black feminist politicians and artists were igniting great change across the country.

Nellie Mae Rowe, Untitled (Really Free!), 1967–1976, marker and crayon on book page, 5 x 7 ½ inches, gift of Judith Alexander.

High Museum of Art

As she filled it with drawings and sculptures, Rowe’s Playhouse became an Atlanta attraction, which fostered her growing reputation and public reception. She began to exhibit her art outside of her home, beginning with “Missing Pieces: Georgia Folk Art, 1770-1976,” a bicentennial exhibition that brought attention to several Southern self-taught artists, including Rowe and Howard Finster, and traveled to venues throughout Georgia. In 1982, the year she died, Rowe’s work received a new level of acclaim, as she was honored in a solo exhibition at Spelman College and included as one of three women artists in the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s landmark exhibition “Black Folk Art in America: 1930-1980.”

The High began collecting her drawings in 1980. Between 1998 and 2003, major gifts totaling more than 130 works from trailblazing Atlanta art dealer Judith Alexander, a friend and ardent supporter of Rowe, solidified the High’s holdings as the largest public repository of Rowe’s art. Recently, the Museum announced another major gift of 17 drawings by Rowe from Atlantans Harvie and Charles Abney. Selections from this gift, as well as recent gifts and pledges of Rowe’s drawings and photographs of the artist and her Playhouse taken by Lucinda Bunnen and Melinda Blauvelt, will be presented as part of the exhibition.

“Really Free” will feature the colorful, and at times simple, sketches Rowe made on found materials in the 1960s and reveal their relationship to her most celebrated, highly complex compositions on paper of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Other sections of the exhibition will explore themes in Rowe’s work such as depictions of women, her childhood, images of her garden, and her experimentation with materials, including recycling cast-offs to make handmade dolls and chewing gum sculptures. The final galleries will focus on her career breakthrough and ruminations on death and the afterlife.

Nellie Mae Rowe, What It Is, 1978–1982, crayon, colored pencil, and pencil on paper, 21 x 21 ¼ inches, gift of Judith Alexander.

High Museum of Art

In addition to works on paper and sculptures, the exhibition will feature photographs as well as components and footage from the experimental film on Rowe’s life to be released by Opendox in 2022, “This World is Not My Own,” which includes an artful reconstruction of her Playhouse. Through these elements, visitors can experience the lively art environment she created in and outside of her home.

“Really Free” will be presented in the lower level of the High’s Wieland Pavilion.

Exhibition Publication
“Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe” is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue co-published by the High and DelMonico Books that reproduces the High’s vast Rowe collection and features a lead essay by Jentleson with contributions from documentary producer Ruchi Mital, scholar Destinee Filmore and award-winning artist Vanessa German. The High also will publish a suite of online content, including author videos, a virtual tour and additional interpretive material, as part of a new library of collection-focused digital resources that launches with “Really Free.”