🗓 Mark Your Calendar

Coming soon to LSU Museum of Art …

#Repost @LSUMOA • “State of the Art: Record,” an exhibition organized by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, will be on view March 10–June 19, 2022 at LSU MOA.

Through objects and installations, 20 artists represent a sample of American art created in recent years. The approaches, backgrounds, and details of these artists’ practices vary widely, but the echoes across works and sections of the show speak to broader trends in contemporary art in this country. Organized around the theme of “record,” this focused exhibition invites visitors to consider how these artists put this theme into action. For example, Marcel Pardo Ariza’s "Linda, Lee & Dorsey, Louis" (pictured) selects fragments of bodies—legs, arms, feet, hands—from contemporary and historical images of queer people in the San Francisco Bay Area to link them across time and generations. Other artists explore the concept of "record" in various ways that visitors will be able to view and experience during this exhibition.

State of the Art: Record is organized by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. The national tour of State of the Art 2020 is sponsored by Bank of America with additional support from Art Bridges. Additional support is provided by generous donors to the Annual Exhibition Fund.

🎨: #MarcelPardoAriza, Linda, Lee & Dorsey, Louis (1988, 2018), 2018, mounted inkjet print, ash artist frame, Twilight Blue paint, 58 x 29 in., Courtesy of the Artist.

#ArtBridges ...

Harriett and Ricardo Romo are among the most important collectors of Chicano art in the United States. Both are lifelong educators, and began collecting at the beginning of their teaching careers in East Los Angeles in the 1970s.

The Romos understood that collecting Chicano art was a means of supporting the movement as well as championing greater pride in the unique culture and history of the Chicano community. They gifted works from their collection to the @McNayArt Museum. The collection constitutes one of the largest and most important collections of this material in the United States.

The exhibition “Estampas de la Raza: Contemporary Prints from the Romo Collection” is organized from works in this collection and is available for loan via our Exhibition Marketplace. It includes this 2007 work pictured here by #EsterHernandez—“Sun Raid” (screenprint, 19 3/4 x 15 in.).

Link in bio to learn more. #ArtBridges

Image Credit: Collection of the McNay Art Museum, Gift of Harriett and Ricardo Romo, 2009.58. Image courtesy of the McNay Art Museum. © Ester Hernandez ...

“I will preach with my brush.”—#HenryOssawaTanner

Though this quote is often attributed to the artist, historians have debated whether or not Tanner actually spoke these words. What is fact is that Tanner was raised by a minister father who encouraged his son to follow in his footsteps. While Tanner decided to pursue a career as an artist rather than a preacher, biblical stories became abundant in his paintings and his distinct way of depicting religious scenes made him famous.

His 1894 painting “The Thankful Poor,” pictured here, was created just before he began to paint explicitly religious material, but captures an older man and young man in prayer over a meal they are about to eat. The painting celebrates the domestic dignity of daily Black American life in the 19th century and the spiritual practices that punctuated the daily lives of many.

This work is part of the #ArtBridges collection and is currently en route to our partners at the @BrooksMuseum, where it will be on view beginning March 1.

Pictured: Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Thankful Poor, 1894, oil on canvas, 35 1/2 × 44 1/4 in. (90.2 × 112.4 cm). AB.2020.16. Art Bridges. ...

🗨️ "Not only was the movement organized, but it was prepared for the worst at all times. That gave new context to all the photographs I saw of police and National Guardsmen occupying this neighborhood in Delaware. I wanted to highlight them both, and so I printed in black-on-white the text of the Survival Guide and then I printed white-on-white the photographs that I collected. I printed on a material called retroreflective vinyl, which allows the viewer to see both images when you take a flash photograph. So to the naked eye it’ll look like black text on white, whereas if you take a flash photograph a latent image is exposed."—Hank Willis Thomas to @Hyperallergic

In 2018, @DelArtMuseum commissioned #HankWillisThomas to respond to the public response that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968. Protests were held throughout the nation, and the world, and the civil disturbances in Wilmington were followed by a nine-month-long occupation by the National Guard that left an indelible mark on the community.

For this project, Thomas combined archival “News Journal” photographs with the historic pamphlet “Black Survival Guide, or How to Live Through a Police Riot.” Informed by the uprisings of 1967, Cold War-era nuclear fallout pamphlets, and guides published for African Americans to navigate institutional racism during segregation, the booklet serves as a practical manual for surviving an occupation.

For Thomas, this is how the past remains current, and how the “holes of narrative history” are exposed.

This exhibition is available to tour museums (via our online Exhibition Marketplace) and is on view at the @TweedMuseum through January 25. #ArtBridges

Image: Installation view of "Black Survival Guide, or How to Live Through a Police Riot," currently on view at the Tweed Museum. Courtesy the Tweed Museum. ...