“If we are unaware of Black women in nineteenth-century America, it is not because they were not here […] it is because their lives and their work have been profoundly ignored.”
This quote by Jean Fagan Yelin in 1982, a part of the new gallery, perfectly portrays the purpose of the exhibition “There Is a Woman in Every Color: Black Women in Art,” which will be on display in the Rita Blitt Gallery until Oct. 14. The Mulvane Student Advisory Board hosted a reception on Sept. 13 to encourage students to come and take a look at the new art.
This exhibition is a traveling exhibit on loan from Bowdoin College Museum of art and funded by Art Bridges. It examines Black women’s representation in American art over the past two centuries. The exhibit features over 40 pieces of artwork and has works from several artists.
“We wanted to give students a chance to get to know the exhibition in a casual, low pressure fun environment,” said Sara Stepp, the new academic curator at the Mulvane Art Museum.
The event offered food and drinks for students to enjoy while they viewed a number of art pieces by different creators. One of the creators, William Witt, took nude photographs of Black women to portray the legacy of enslavement over Black bodies. Another creator, Mickalene Thomas, photographed a colorful piece titled “Tell Me What You’re Thinking.”
The exhibition offered a wide variety of photographs, illustrations and sculptures, but they all had one common message: the history of Black women in the United States.
“It’s less of art and more of like a story […] about a slice of life in history,” said Melinda Ingoldsby, a junior English major.
Ingoldsby is a part of the Mulvane Student Advisory Board and is very excited that they got the opportunity to host a traveling exhibition as meaningful as this one.
“Our long term goal is to get more students aware of Mulvane and get more interest in our art,” Ingoldsby said.
Many students at Washburn are already interested in Mulvane’s exhibits. Kahtrena Adkins, a freshman who is undecided on her major, found this exhibit to really speak to her.
“As a Black girl myself whose mother is an artist, I find it really important to look at all these pieces and think critically about what they have to say and what the artist has to say,” Adkins said.
Adkins also stated that it is important for students that want to be artists to explore all areas of art because she finds it is really important to know what you are looking at before you make your own pieces.
She said she was inspired by many pieces, especially her favorite titled “Mrs. Viola Andrews – My Mother.” This piece, created by Benny Andrews, was made by using cloth, corduroy and other fabrics to illustrate his hard-working mother holding a staff that she used while working as a sharecropper in Georgia. Another important note that Adkins added is that it is important to see the history of culture through art.
“It’s really important to see all the art that was made back then to prove that they weren’t miserable people waiting to be saved by the white American masses. My history lessons in elementary school in [South Carolina] told us that we were depicted as these poor, sad people and then one day everything was alright,” Adkins said. “Learning about the art that was created during these times is really important because we get to see the humanity of the people that lived back then. And not just the Black community, but in every marginalized community.”
Connie Gibbons, director of the Mulvane Art Museum, invites students check out the art and see it’s connections to history.
“If you’re interested in the Civil Rights and Brown v Board, and a lot of the work that was done here. There was an activist, her name was Fannie Lou Hamer and she was from Mississippi,” Gibbons said. “She got involved in Civil Rights by helping to register Black people to vote in the early years of voting rights. She is known for the canton this little light of mine.”
The exhibition will be in the Rita Blitt Gallery until Oct. 16, 2023. The curator of the exhibit will also be stopping by Oct. 4 from 6-7:30 p.m. Stay updated on future Mulvane events by following the Mulvane Art Museum on Facebook.
Edited by Aja Carter and Regina Cassell
