The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art was founded in 1996 and the mission is to uplift art by and about women of the African diaspora. After two years of closure, the Spelman Museum reopened with a permanent collection exhibition marking its 25th anniversary, Silver Linings: Celebrating the Spelman Art Collection. The exhibition was on view at Spelman March 1 – June 30, 2022.

Silver Linings celebrates the legacy of artists of African descent spanning the twentieth century through the contemporary moment. It includes Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Christ and His Disciples Before the Last Supper (1908 – 1909) and the museum’s recent most acquisition of Carrie Mae Weems’s Color Real and Imagined (2014). Silver Linings includes an array of media spanning sculptural works by Elizabeth Catlett and Selma Burke, and photographic works by Lorna Simpson and Renée Cox. It also displays the museum’s holdings of abstract paintings by Sam Gilliam and Betty Blayton, as well as works on paper by Samella Lewis and Herman “Kofi” Bailey. This exhibition is critical to understanding the importance of art collecting within Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and includes work by Black artists across genders who were overlooked by mainstream art museums.

Silver Linings features approximately 40 works by Amalia Amaki, Emma Amos, Benny Andrews, Firelei Báez, Herman “Kofi” Bailey, Romare Bearden, Betty Blayton, Beverly Buchanan, Selma Burke, Elizabeth Catlett, Floyd Coleman, Renée Cox, Myra Greene, Sam Gilliam, Samella Lewis, Glenn Ligon, Howardena Pindell, Lucille Malkia Roberts, Deborah Roberts, Faith Ringgold, Nellie Mae Rowe, Lorna Simpson, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Lina Iris Viktor, Carrie Mae Weems, and Hale Woodruff.