ABSTRACT
Consider three scenarios:
In Charleston, South Carolina, Mary Jane Manigault coils sweetgrass into a basket. “My mother taught me how to make baskets when I was eight years old,” she tells passers-by who ask how she learned this art form. 1 In 1984, she was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship.
The brightly-colored quilts made by women from Gee’s Bend, Alabama, vibrate against the white-walled galleries of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston during a 2002 exhibition. Visitors marvel at their off-kilter visuality while critics contemplate their similarity to Frank Stella’s minimalist paintings (Figure 27.1).
The Wall of Respect in Chicago (1967) is a mural painted by the black artists’ collective, Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC). As artist Jeff Donaldson recalled, OBAC artists sought to create “images inspired by African people … which African people can relate to directly.” 2 Notably, Donaldson addresses neither “black folks” nor “African Americans,” but a group unified by common diasporic ancestry. Though no longer extant, the mural sparked a nation-wide movement of black muralists whose art paid tribute to Black creativity and history with the aim of mobilizing black communities politically.
<italic>Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt</italic>, Exhibition View, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. © Museum of Fine Arts Houston Archives. From left to right: Louisiana P. Bendolph (b. 1960), two <italic>Housetop Variation </italic>quilts, 2003 © 2019 Louisiana Bendolph / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Third through seventh quilts from left are by Loretta Pettway Bennett (b. 1960), <italic>Medallion</italic>, 2005; <italic>Medallion</italic>, 2005; <italic>Two-sided geometric quilt</italic>, 2003; <italic>Blocks and strips (yellow and red)</italic>, 2006; and <italic>Blocks and strips (red and black)</italic>, 2004, © 2019 Loretta Pettway Bennett / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-u.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781351045193/084af8ac-cbf0-4200-b985-a4b4331aa8e7/content/fig27_1_B.jpg"/>