Ann Tanksley, Canal Builders II, 1989, Oil on linen
Bank of America presents The Hewitt Collection of African American Art. The Hewitt Collection - fifty-eight works assembled over a half-century, from 1949 to 1998, by John and Vivian Hewitt - is one of the world's largest and most diverse collections of African American art. The exhibition offers not only important twentieth-century art but also a survey of African-American culture and society.
The exhibition includes works by Romare Bearden, regarded as one of the greatest American artists of his generation, and Henry Ossawa Tanner, one of the first African American artists to achieve acclaim in both America and Europe. Contemporary artists are also represented, among them Jonathan Green, a 1980's graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits
March 21, 2009 – June 14, 2009
“Let your Motto be resistance! Resistance! RESISTANCE! No opposed people have ever secure Liberty without resistance” – abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet, 1843
Garnet’s words have found their way into the title – and the essence – of the inaugural exhibition of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Presented by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, “Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits” opens at MoAD on March 21 and will be on view until June 14, 2009. The exhibition consists of 70 modern prints selected from the National Portrait Gallery’s collections highlighting 150 years of African American resistance in the U.S.
In the context of photographs, resistance took many forms. Working with a growing circle of African American intellectuals and professionals, photographers often challenged the prevailing view of blacks as intellectually and socially inferior. Dramatic images of labor leader A. Philip Randolph (1948) and activist Malcolm X (1963) spotlight those who confronted racism and social injustice head-on. Other highlights include images of boxing legend Joe Louis (c. 1935), Josef Breitenbach’s image of singer Sarah Vaughan (1950), Dan Weiner’s photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. (1956) and Irving Penn’s image of opera icon Jessye Norman (1983).
“Let Your Motto Be Resistance” was organized by the National Museum of African American History and Culture in collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery and the International Center of Photography in New York and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. The exhibition, national tour and catalog were made possible by a generous grant from lead sponsor MetLife Foundation. Additional support was provided by the Council of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
“Let Your Motto Be Resistance” is based on the exhibition of the same name that featured 100 original photographs, and was presented at the International Center of Photography (May 11 - Sept. 9, 2007) and the National Portrait Gallery (Oct. 9, 2007 – Mar. 2, 2008).
The Art of Richard Mayhew
October 19, 2009 – January 10, 2010
The Art of Richard Mayhew will represent three separate exhibitions organized chronologically and presented concurrently at three San Francisco Bay Area institutions: the de Saisset Museum, the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), and the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz. Together, the three presentations will provide a complete retrospective exhibition for Richard Mayhew, a nationally recognized, Aptos-based painter.
The exhibition of Mayhew's work at MoAD will be the first part of a three-part chronological retrospective of the artist's career. In this exhibition, Mayhew's paintings from the late 1950's through the 1970's, consisting primarily of landscape with some figurative works will be featured. In 1957, Mayhew enjoyed his first solo exhibition as an academically trained artist and announced his unique style of presenting the natural milieu to the New York art world. During the tumultuous period of social and cultural transformation of the 1960s, Mayhew worked as an artist and an activist most notably as a founding member of Spiral, the legendary group of Black artists including Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, and Hale Woodruff, organized in 1963 to address issues of civil rights and racial equality through their art.
Through the 1960s and 1970s, Mayhew establishes his career as an artist tirelessly working with a sense of spiritual depth and freedom of color, form, and space. The MoAD exhibition will explore the personal and professional foundations of Mayhew’s style as a young man of African and Native American descent coming of age in New York during the 1950s explosion of Abstract Expressionist art.
It will gather together the best of Mayhew's paintings that combine his unique style, philosophy for painting, and synthesis of artistic and social influences that set the trajectory of his artistic career.
