A Growing Presence: Art by African Americans
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia
November 22, 2000 - February 25, 2001
This exhibition examines the Academy's historical commitment to collecting the work-paintings, sculptures, and graphics-of African American artists. By focusing on the earliest and latest of such acquisitions, the exhibition provides a measure of the growing presence of art by African Americans in the Academy's permanent collection.
A sculpture by Richmond Barthé and a painting by Horace Pippin (both acquired in 1943) were the first such pieces to enter the collection and are two of three historical works on display that provide a starting point for this review of the Academy's collecting practice. The most recent acquisitions include a group of five objects generously given by Harold A. and Ann R. Sorgenti during the fall of 1999. This cache, which includes works by Romare Bearden, Beverly Buchanan, and Faith Ringgold, is the first body of work to be officially accessioned into the collection as part of the newly established Harold A. and Ann R. Sorgenti Collection of Contemporary African American Art.
African American artists have made valuable contributions to the history of art in the United States since the country's formation. However, not until the protests of the late 1960s, when African Americans-as well as women, Latinos, and other disenfranchised groups-protested their exclusion by establishment museums, did the art world begin to take seriously African American artistic accomplishment. Boasting the largest number of paintings by Pippin of any public collection, and a promised gift of more than fifty works by important contemporary figures such as Benny Andrews, Sam Gilliam, Jacob Lawrence, Howardena Pindell, Betye Saar, and Raymond Saunders, the Academy is, and has long been, an important proponent of African American art. This special installation coincides with the nation's annual February celebration of Black History Month.
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Broad and Cherry Streets, Philadelphia, PA 19102
