Imagine the year is 1952 and you’ve just arrived at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to see the then-critically panned “15 Americans” exhibition. You wander through galleries, each dedicated to a single artist and generously displaying numerous works. The “15 Americans” exhibition highlighted works by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still, along with 12 other white male artists whose dominance went on to influence the modern art historical canon.
Now let’s skip forward in time to 2021. The traveling version of the “30 Americans” exhibition is on view at the Arlington Museum of Art in a post-lockdown Texas after a year of unprecedented firsts, most of them brutal, for an audience craving in-person experiences. Arlington Museum of Art president and chief executive Christopher Hightower says the museum wants to exhibit “30 Americans” to “tell the story of identity as it relates to race, gender, sexuality and how those things intersect from the viewpoint of contemporary African American artists.”
When “30 Americans” debuted at the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, Fla., in 2008, it winked at the historical large-format group shows of the ‘50s and ‘60s with the title, while also offering positive revisions through the inclusion of major women artists such as Kara Walker, Wangechi Mutu, Mickalene Thomas and Shinique Smith, to name a few, and focusing on excellence among artists of color. Installed in a massive former DEA building, “30 Americans” featured more than 250 works from 31 Black artists across 27 galleries.
The Arlington iteration features 54 works by 30 artists across roughly 5,500 square feet. While one could say the show is powerfully compressed, the key adjective is powerful. While you won’t see all of the Basquiat paintings present in the original show, nor the entire suite of Nina Chanel Abney’s paintings, you will experience major works, often rare early pieces, by some of the most important artistic voices of our time. Many local collectors and museums own works by the 30 Americans, but many of these artists will be fresh new discoveries for the general public.
The introductory gallery hosts iconic photographic works by artist Carrie Mae Weems, three vibrant and bedazzled Nick Cave figurative soundsuit sculptures and an oversized Rashid Johnson photograph. The grouping of these artists offers a visual and emotional preview of what’s to come.
Weems opens the show with four photographs from her “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried” (1995-96) series of appropriated historical daguerreotypes taken of slaves from the American South. One image of an exposed nude woman in profile set in a red toned roundel bears etched text on glass reading “You Became a Scientific Profile.” Images of this nature made in the 1850s were stereotypes rooted in racism and used to propagate colonial narratives. Weems’ series unearths these heartbreakingly difficult images and attempts to restore each subject’s history, dignity and voice.
Another standout series, “Wigs (Portfolio)” by Lorna Simpson, features subtle lithograph portraits on felt of individuals imaged through Black hairstyles, a platinum wig, doll hair and text. Presented in an almost scientific grid, these surrogate portraits speak to issues of transformation and gender. Some of the text panels recount tongue-in-cheek commentary from wig wearers, while another recounts former slaves Ellen and William Craft escaping to the North by transforming their appearances.
Many visitors to the exhibition will recognize Kehinde Wiley’s work from seeing reproductions of his iconic 2018 portrait of President Barack Obama. Wiley’s Triple Portrait of Charles I (2007) formally references Sir Anthony Van Dyck’s 1635 work Charles I in Three Positions. While this triptych showcases Wiley’s trademark fusion of Baroque, urban and contemporary references, it would have been magnificent if his monumental 25-foot-long painting of an angelic sleeping Black male model from the original show could have been shown instead. The poetry of his larger-than-life paintings invites viewers to immerse themselves in otherworldly realms.
Viewers who saw the show in Miami may also be looking for Glenn Ligon’s America (2008) neon; after all, the show is called “30 Americans.” Alas, the show culminates with a very theatrical presentation of Gary Simmons’ Duck, Duck, Noose. The placement of this installation of chairs with white hoods encircling a suspended noose as the last work in the show — on the top floor, in a darkened room — is a heavy note to end on. The difficult emotions this work evokes are hard enough to confront in natural lighting.
Perhaps this is one of the Arlington Museum of Art’s points. The collective viewing of these works brings to mind unsettling but important social issues, memories and abhorrent human conditions that are as relevant today as they were in 2008. May the revisiting of these deconstructed narratives and focus on intergenerational artistic dialogue take us to a new and more inclusive American art landscape.
Details
“30 Americans” continues through Sept. 5 at the Arlington Museum of Art, 201 W. Main St. Open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. $15 for adults, $10 for seniors and students, and $5 for children 12 and older. 817-275-4600. arlingtonmuseum.org.
