CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/8/2023

'Black American Portraits' opening at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art

Spreads from Black American Portraits, published to accompany the exhibition currently on view in Atlanta. Presenting more than 140 works from the LACMA collection, this is a celebratory, kaleidoscopic chronicle of the many ways in which Black Americans have used portraiture to envision themselves over the past two centuries—from the earliest aspects of the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter. "Each time you return to this volume," Naima J. Keith writes, "we challenge you to interrogate the systems and injustices that have made—and continue to make—this work necessary and important. We hope the myriad of diverse and moving pieces allows you to imagine a future where Black excellence and joy are not simply responses to the brutal and needless murder of Black people, but standard features of our collective daily existence."

ON THE SPREADS: Artist not recorded, “Portrait of a Sailor (Paul Cuffe?),” c. 1800; Kerry James Marshall, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self,” 1980; Njideka Akunyili Crosby, “I Still Face You,” 2015; Kwame Brathwaite, “Untitled (Carolee Prince Wearing Her Own Designs),” 1964, printed 2018; rafa esparza, “big chillin with Patrisse,” 2021.