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This exhibit is inspired by the 2021 documentary, ‘Black Art: In the Absence of Light’ an HBO released American film, directed, and produced by Sam Pollard. The film was inspired by a single 1976 exhibition, “Two Centuries of Black American Art,” the first large-scale survey of African-American artists. Organized by the distinguished University of Maryland University Professor Emeritus of Art, artist, art historian, collector, curator and philanthropist David C. Driskell  (June 7, 1931 – April 1, 2020). The exhibit included some two hundred works dating from the mid-18th to the mid-20th century, and advanced a history that few Americans, including art professionals, even knew existed.

Like, Two Centuries of Black American Art, Black Art: In the Presence of LIGHT challenges the status quo of the art-historical canon that represents ideals of beauty and knowledge based on a biased LIGHT in favor of art created by those who have occupied the most socially, politically, and economically powerful positions in culture.

This exhibit represents a body of work designed to enLIGHTen the mainstream to understand that the label of “Black American Art” isn’t itself a form of self-imposed isolation but that of self-awareness and preservation of culture.  As David Driskell eloquently stated “Isolation isn’t, and never was, the Black artist’s goal. He has tried to be part and parcel of the mainstream, only to be shut out.” 

This exhibit also answers Artist Theaster Gates' challenge to all Black and African-American Artists “Are you willing to make [art] in the absence of light?”  The work in this exhibit is their collective responses, their LIGHT.

This exhibit is partially funded by MSAC.