Installation view, Black American Portraits, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA (November 7, 2021–April 17, 2022). Courtesy of LACMA. Photo credit: Museum Associates/LACMA.

Celebrating Black joy, abundance, and agency, Black American Portraits reframes the history of portraiture to center Black American subjects, sitters, and spaces. Featuring over 100 works drawn primarily from LACMA’s permanent collection, the exhibition spans more than two centuries and includes nineteenth-century studio photography; portraits from the Harlem Renaissance; images from the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Lives Matter eras; pictures of Black celebrities and political figures; and artists’ self-portraits. At Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the exhibition was co-organized by Kim (formerly Curator of Contemporary Art, LACMA) and Dr. Andrews (formerly Executive Administrator, Director’s Office, LACMA) as a companion to their exhibition for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, The Obama Portraits Tour.
 

Derek Fordjour, Highstep Double, 2019. Oil pastel on newspaper, mounted on canvas. Collection of a Friend of the Brooks. Courtesy of the artist and Petzel Gallery, New York.

Led by Dr. Daigle, the presentation of Black American Portraits at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (MBMA) will be integrated into the local context of the city of Memphis, where 64% of the population identifies as Black or African American. In addition to presenting the main body of works on loan from LACMA, the Memphis edition will highlight the city’s vibrant legacy of visual art, incorporating artworks held in the MBMA’s permanent collection as well as loans of historical and contemporary works by Black artists with Memphis connections such as Kenturah Davis, Derek Fordjour, and Ernest Withers. Also included is a selection of portraits from the prolific Memphis-based and Black-owned Hooks Brothers Photography Studio (1907-1979) whose photographs are a rich visual record of Black, middle-class life in Memphis during the twentieth century.


Ernest C. Withers, Booker T. Jones of Booker T. & The M.G.'s, Memphis, ca. 1972. Gelatin silver print, printed from original negative in 1999. Collection of Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Courtesy of Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

The MBMA will employ a collaborative model to organize Black American Portraits and its accompanying programs, with an Exhibition Advisory Committee of local artists, researchers, and representatives from community organizations. The Advisory Committee will guide the museum’s approach and work with the MBMA to develop and conduct staff, board, and docent training for the exhibition.

After its presentation in Los Angeles, Black American Portraits traveled to the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art in Atlanta (February–June 2023). The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog produced by LACMA and DelMonico Books, edited with text by Kim and Dr. Andrews, alongside contributions from Hilton Als, Mary Schmidt Campbell, Bridget R. Cooks, Ilene Susan Fort, Michael Govan, Naima J. Keith, Dhyandra Lawson, and Jeffrey C. Stewart. 

Dr. Patricia Lee Daigle is the Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Her recent projects include Harmonia Rosales: Master Narrative (2023), touring to Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, and Tommy Kha: Eye is Another (2023), presented as part of the Tennessee Triennial for Contemporary Art. Prior to this, she was Director of The Martha and Robert Fogelman Galleries of Contemporary Art at The University of Memphis, organizing solo exhibitions featuring the work of Virginia Overton, Jefferson Pinder, and Umar Rashid (Frohawk Two Feathers), among others. She also worked at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art as Curatorial Assistant in Contemporary Art, curating the exhibitions Living in the Timeless: Drawings by Beatrice Wood (2014) and Myth and Materiality: Latin American Art from the Permanent Collection (2013). She holds a Ph.D. in the History of Art and Architecture from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

 
Christine Y. Kim is the Britton Family Curator-at-Large (North American Art) at Tate Modern, where she works to acquire North American works for the Tate collection; forges new relationships with artists, scholars, and curators in the region; broadens Tate’s approaches to modern and contemporary art; and contributes to curating exhibitions. Previously, she was a curator of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), where she organized exhibitions such as Julie Mehretu (2019-22), Isaac Julien: Playtime (2019), Diana Thater: The Sympathetic Imagination (2015-16), and James Turrell: A Retrospective (2013-14). Most recently, she co-curated Black American Portraits (2021-22), covering two centuries of African American portraiture, coinciding with the Obama Portraits Tour (2021-22). Before joining LACMA in 2009, Kim worked at The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, where she was responsible for putting artists such as Wangechi Mutu, Mickalene Thomas, and Kehinde Wiley in their first US museum exhibitions.

Dr. Liz Andrews is Executive Director of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art. Prior to this, she spent five years as the executive administrator in the Director’s Office of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), where she expanded her role to collaborate on projects and priorities across museum departments, including diversity and inclusion efforts and curating exhibitions. Together with co-curator Christine Y. Kim, Dr. Andrews curated the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s Obama Portraits Tour (2021-2022) and a companion exhibition, Black American Portraits (2021-2022). Her other curatorial projects at LACMA included Alex Prager: Farewell, Work Holiday Parties (2020), and two Augmented Reality Monuments: Glenn Kaino’s No Finish Line (2021) and Ada Pinkston’s The Open Hand is Blessed (2021). She holds an M.A. in Arts Politics from the Tisch School of the Arts, and a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from George Mason University.

Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick, Puʻuhonua Society