New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
African roots of American art
‘Afrocosmologies’ opens at Wadsworth Atheneum art museum with several New Haven connections
One of the things you notice in the skylit, multistory Gray Court of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art these days is an ambiguous metal sculpture by Melvin Edwards, an African American pioneer artist. While you may not get the meaning of “Across the Limpopo” (I didn’t), there is more to notice from above, where a striking new exhibit takes up much of the second and third floors.
The exhibit is called “Afrocosmologies: American Reflections,” a better indication of the subject matter, although you might be stuck on “Afrocosmologies.”
“It’s a word that we definitely pulled together for this show,” says Frank Mitchell, executive director of The Amistad Center for Art & Culture and curator of the exhibition.
“But I’m sure if you tried hard, you would find other examples of it.”
Curator and artist Berrisford Boothe of the Petrucci Family Founda
tion, which is lending 68 of the 130 displayed objects in the exhibition, says museums are curators of fine culture but also have a responsibility to shape scholarship. So the partners at the Atheneum, Amistad Center and the Petrucci Foundation came up with a word, and “we’re now going to use the currency of that word to talk about a particular kind of new modernism which is reflected in the works in this exhibition.”
“The art from the diaspora ... is now beginning to shape things based on influence of both America and Africa through the eyes of the Africans, not the Europeans who borrowed from that and created a great 20thcentury movement.” Curator and artist Berrisford Boothe of the Petrucci Family Foundation
Hmm, talk about big ideas. Cosmology is all about the origins and development of the universe. In this case, it’s being used to explore the art of African American artists mainly from the 20th and 21st centuries. It’s quickly apparent they have some deep things to say about origins and passage and suffering and faith.
As we get off the elevator during a preview last week, Boothe (who grew up in Jamaica and Hartford but is based in Pennsylvania) sighs in awe at the sight of one of his foundation’s paintings framed and mounted on a wall. “Frank, this is wonderful,” he says to Mitchell, whose Amistad group is based at the Atheneum in a long partnership there.
The exhibition features artwork by Romare Bearden, Dawoud Bey, Elizabeth Catlett, Willie Cole, Titus Kaphar of New Haven, Lois Mailou Jones, Kerry James Marshall, Alison Saar, Hale Woodruff, Shinique Smith and Kehinde Wiley.
Four sections of the exhibition — nature, gods and humanity, ritual, and origins — are “ways of guiding people as they think about the major idea of ‘Afrocosmologies,’ which is the ways in which folks moving from the diaspora into the middle passage and into the Americas have used spirituality and religion ... to guide and orient and think about who they were in the new world. The bulk of this art wrestles with that in some way,” according to an exhibition release.
Atheneum Director Thomas Loughman joined the preview and said the exhibition is inspiring. The idea began two years ago, when an old instructor of his had him meet Jim Petrucci, who started his foundation before he became a collector but now has a passion to share the artwork widely. Which led to Boothe and the exhibition.
The Wadsworth Atheneum, says Loughman, “is where the art of African Americans has been part of our American art collecting story for a very, very, very long time” (the Amistad partnership being the most obvious example of that).
In this accessible show, says Loughman, “We’ve gone to a different voice than art museums often take . ... It’s about a longer horizon, a much more nuanced and rich story” that the usual collections of AfricanAmerican art often wouldn’t include, such as emerging artists.
Brooke added, “It’s really about welcoming people to the idea of the African Americans who came from multiple countries and a continent ... reshaped as African Americans who have been driving the aesthetic and music worldwide. And now for the first time, in this historical moment, the art from the diaspora ... is now beginning to shape things based on influence of both America and Africa through the eyes of the Africans, not through the eyes of Picasso and Bach ... the Europeans who borrowed from that and created a great 20thcentury movement. But it really didn’t elevate the notion of the Africans who did it.”
A key aim here? A more accurate look at the contributions of African American artists will help “pave the way for corrective legitimacy and complete the canvas of American history,” says the release.
Some highlights:
⏩ Free black artist Robert Scott Duncanson’s landscape from the 1870s, in the European tradition, contrasts with Bob Thompson’s colorful, wallsized “Garden of Music” from 1960, in which the landscape is full of people of color and musical instruments.
⏩ Carl Joe Williams’ “Waiting,” a 2016 mixedmedia work on the front of a used mattress, features a Holy Familylike trio at a bus stop, complete with halos around the heads.
⏩ “Portrait of Taks Adewetan,” by Yale MFA Kehinde Wiley (who painted the portrait of former President Barack Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery), also has allusions to Christ in lighting and symbolism.
⏩ Another Yale alum, Howardena Pindell, has a couple of pieces, including the largescale “Autobiography,” complete with outstretched arms, many pairs of eyes and a slave ship.
⏩ The rice paper/incense ink portrait “Namesake” is by Kenturah Davis, also a Yale MFA grad, who is involved with arts incubator Next Haven in New Haven.
But back to the Melvin Edwards sculpture, named after an African river and described online as a “lyrical flowing threedimensional drawing in space,” which the Atheneum bought in 1973 when Edwards was a visiting professor at UConn. It was displayed outdoors for years before getting restored for the purpose of this show, which runs until Jan. 20.
“To be able to do that, with Mel now 82 ... means a lot,” said Loughman. “It’s (about) who lives here now and cares about art; it’s who was living here temporarily 45 years ago and inspiring generations of art.”
The Atheneum, at 600 Main St. in Hartford, does charge for admission, but free passes are available at most local libraries, an official said.