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The First American Flag, English worsted wool bunting, and cotton, stitched 1813

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The First American Flag, English worsted wool bunting, and cotton, stitched 1813

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In 1813, a thirteen-year-old servant girl named Grace Wisher, helped stitch the first American Flag. During the War of 1812, commander Fort McHenry asked the Pickersgill family to make the largest flag to make a statement of strength and unity to British soldiers. In the span of six weeks Caroline Pickersgill, her mother, grandmother, and Grace Wisher, who is often erased from this history, stitched the American flag together. Soon after, during the War of 1812 when the British attacked, the flag inspired Francis Scott Key to write “The Star-Spangled Banner”. This information is a crucial part of African American Women’s history because it pushes forth the notion that black women have literally stitched our way into American History.
Additional Links to learn more about Grace Wisher and how she helped make the American Flag: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/star-spangled-banner-back-on-display-83229098/

https://open.spotify.com/track/5qByPJHfbssZpbUzhgpDCG

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Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt, Cotton, 1885 – 1886

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Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt, Cotton, 1885 – 1886

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Harriet powers is known as one of the best quilters in the 19th Century South. She was born into slavery and learned to stitch quilts using a method called appliqueed which comes from African textile expertise. The quilt below features various biblical stories from Adam and Eve, Cain killing Abel, and Jacob’s ladder dream. Powers’ quilting techniques closely resemble African appliqueed textiles from West Africa. Some similarities include elements like the hand, eye of god, and the snake in the garden (Cillie, 1999).

Additional links to learn more about Harriet Powers:
https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_556462

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The Death of Cleopatra, marble, carved 1876

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The Death of Cleopatra, marble, carved 1876

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Edmonia Lewis receives all the credit for this shocking portrayal of Cleopatra’s death. Many art pieces of Cleopatra during this time show Cleopatra contemplating death, whereas Lewis shows the Egyptian Queen after she commits suicide. Many people of the time objectified the image as “ghastly” and “repellant”. Edmonia Lewis was known as one of the greatest American sculptors, yet the popularity raised from the sculptor was short lived. For several decades, this sculptor was found in rugged places until it was found in a salvage yard in the 1980s and given to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The art sculptor represents how black women artists constantly push the envelope in whatever specialty they have. But at the same time, they are not given the same due credit as their white counterparts.

Additional Link to learn more about the great American Sculptor, Edmonia Lewis: https://americanart.si.edu/artist/edmonia-lewis-2914

https://womenshistory.si.edu/news/2019/12/podcast-episode-finding-cleopatra

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The following work was created by Loïs Mailou Jones who is an American artist from Boston. In this painting, 5 masks are overlapped conveying a spiritual and mysterious ritual dance. Jones often spent summers in France where she created art with her peers. Jones also taught at Howard University and encouraged her students to visit Africa to investigate the art scene there.

Additional Links to view more works by Lois Mailou Jones

https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/les-fetiches-31947

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The sculpture, "Realization," is by Augusta Savage, who was a leading artist during the Harlem Renaissance. Savage studied art at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. After graduating, she was commissioned to create a bust of W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey and other black leaders of the time.  Many of Augusta Savage’s work did not survive due to the lack of finances to cast her sculptures in permanent material. There are no records of Savages explanation of this work, however, several biographies explain that the sculptor is a representation of a female and male slave who are confronted with the horrors of slavery. The female is topless and covering her chest, while the male figure is shown crouched down in what seems to be a fetal position.

Additional resources:

https://carolyngage.weebly.com/blog/realization-by-augusta-savage

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The artist of this captivating portrait of the famous contralto singer, Marian Anderson, was painted by Laura Wheeler Waring. Waring was born on May 16th, 1887 in Hartford, Connecticut. Although she diverted from the public eye most of the time, her portraits of famous African American leaders like W.E.B du Bois and Mary Church Terrell astonished many people. Waring was an artist and educator at Cheyney University. She also won a scholarship to continue studying art in Europe in 1914. During this time, it was common for many black artists in America to move to Europe to progress their careers. At the age of 60-years-old Waring died in Philadelphia.

Additional Links to view more of Waring’s works:
https://americanart.si.edu/artist/laura-wheeler-waring-5235

https://www.cwhf.org/inductees/laura-wheeler-waring

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Relief of Franklin D. Roosevelt, bronze, 1944

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Relief of Franklin D. Roosevelt, bronze, 1944

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Selma Burke first grew an interest with sculpture as a kid, using clay to make imprints on her hand. At that point, she realized that she could make art on her own. Born in North Carolina in 1900, Burke was both an artist and art educator. She enjoyed using wood and limestone to make sculptures. Burke is best known for designing the bronze profile of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The United States adapted the art to put on the coin. Although Burke made the relief, credit if often given to the engraver named John Sinnock. Burke’s life journey illustrates her underrated contribution to United States culture. This is due to the deliberate erasure of her involvement.

Additional Link to view more of Selma Burke’s works:
https://americanart.si.edu/artist/selma-burke-27983

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This vibrant and colorful representation of the solar eclipse that happened on March 7, 1970 was created using acrylic paint on canvas. The artist, Alma Thomas began her journey in painting after retiring from a 38-year career as an art teacher in Washington D.C public schools. Growing up in a Victorian Home, she marveled at the luscious greenery outside of her window. In an article by Princeton University, she stated that she preferred to keep her art non-representational because it would be difficult to determine if the artist was white or non-white.

Additional Links about this piece and Alma Thomas:
https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/eclipse-24007

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Initiation, Liberia, acrylic on canvas, 1983

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Initiation, Liberia, acrylic on canvas, 1983

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The title of this work is called Initiation, Liberia by Lois Mailou Jones. The type of medium is acrylic on canvas. Lois Mailou Jones was born on November 3, 1905 in Boston Massachusetts. Jones was most known as a painter and educator. Her art featured traditional landscapes to African-themed abstraction. Jones’ art was particularly important during the Harlem Renaissance which was a period defined by trailblazing black artists. Her art was attractive to the African diaspora in the U.S since it incorporated African themes within it. Her artwork was important because it encouraged African Americans to explore a distant culture that was robbed for them.

Additional links:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lois-Mailou-Jones

https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/initiation-liberia-76336

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The End of Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven, paper, 1995

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The End of Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven, paper, 1995

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Kara Walker is famously known for one of her earlier works titled The End of Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven. This piece in particular forces the audience to stop for a second and comb out the different meanings from the group of silhouettes. In this piece, we see a perspective about how black, but also white people experienced slavery.  The art piece is explicitly striking and has clear themes about sexual violence against men, women, and children. I chose this silhouette landscape because it represents how Black women present history in a way that you cannot turn a blind eye to.

Additional Link to learn more about how to interpret this silhouette
https://content.ucpress.edu/chapters/13091.ch01.pdf

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We Came to America, acrylic on canvas, 1997

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We Came to America, acrylic on canvas, 1997

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Faith Ringgold is an artist, author, poet, mother, daughter, and more. Ringgold was born in 1930 in Harlem New York during the Harlem Renaissance period. Ringgold’s bold portraits of black life and politics were unique during the time because many black artists were frowned upon for doing so. This art piece is called We Came to America. This piece is a part of a series called American and was also written and illustrated in a children’s book called We Came to America.
Additional Links about the artist:

https://youtu.be/NelWFXbprk4

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The following image features a sculpture created by the renowned artist Elizabeth Catlett. Elizabeth was an African American artist who created art for black people and to reflect black peoples lived experiences. She often dealt with themes concerning race and feminism in her sculptures, paintings, and prints. This piece centers the black female body and provides a fluid representation of the body. The medium used is called bronze with dark blue patina which has mirrored look to it. This makes it so that the onlooker can see their reflection in the sculpture. This piece challenges representations of the black female body during this time. The sculptor is in direct opposition of the caricatures like the mammy or jezebel figures which were often representations of black women. Many other sculptures feature unclothed black female bodies in different body positions, shapes, and sizes. The work is highly inclusive of body shapes and is liberatory in essence. Other art pieces depict sharecroppers and activists. Catlett also received a scholarship to attend Carnegie Institute of Tech and traveled to Mexico which inspired her art pieces.
Additional Links about the female torso:
https://artintheblackdiaspora.wordpress.com/2014/05/01/elizabeth-catlett-female-torso/

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A Silent Protest against Mob Violence, painted plaster, 2000

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A Silent Protest against Mob Violence, painted plaster, 2000

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The following work was painted by Meta Warrick Fuller. The intended audience of this art piece is for non-black audiences to recognize the horror of violence against black women. As mentioned in the resource, the artist, Meta Warrick Fuller created this sculpture to confront the violence black women have been subjected to and disrupt the violence enacted against black women in life and representation.  The sculpture pay homage to a tenant farmer who dared to speak out against the lynching of her husband. She was hung from a tree upside down while 8 months pregnant, burned, disemboweled, and riddled with bullets. The female figure in the sculpture holds an infant in her hands while tortured hands and faces rise in flames at the base of the sculpture. The art piece also uncovers the idea of violence against black women are often ignored, yet art can preserve the untold stories.

Additional links to learn more about Meta Warrick Fuller:
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/fuller-meta-warrick-1877-1968/

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/694053

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Karen Johnson Wyatt is a nationally recognized fine artist who began painting over 60 years ago. Her style of painting shows brown figures dressed in vividly colored clothes. The type of medium include oil on canvas and acrylic on linen. She also created her own type of art called “Wyatt’s Brushes” and “Wyatt Gone Green”. Wyatt believes that all art should be accessible to everyone, even if you don’t have the money to purchase critically acclaimed art. Wyatt often depicts jazz scenes and personalities like Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and Tina Turner.

Additional Links to View Karen Johnson Wyatt’s work:
https://www.kjohnsonwyatt.com/gallery

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A Subtlety, or Marvelous Sugar Baby, polystyrene foam and sugar, Spring 2014

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A Subtlety, or Marvelous Sugar Baby, polystyrene foam and sugar, Spring 2014

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This momentous piece was created by Kara Walker in the Spring of 2014. The piece highlights many different themes, a few include: the horrors of institutional slavery, the role black women played in the production of sugar and therefore the economic boom in the U.S, and reclaiming the black body in art. The sculptor features a sugar coated woman-sphinx. Walker states that the sculptor is, “an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant” (Walker 2014).  During the showcase, this sculptor was free to the public and encouraged onlookers to participate in conversations about the role of black women and children in the sugar industry.
Additional Link to read different perspective about the piece:
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/arts/design/a-subtlety-or-the-marvelous-sugar-baby-at-the-domino-plant.html

https://youtu.be/W2sedoeOiB8

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Mama Goma, Gemena, DR Congo, Photograph, Inkjet print, 2014

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Mama Goma, Gemena, DR Congo, Photograph, Inkjet print, 2014

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The author of this work is named Deana Lawson, an American born in 1979. The title of this work is called Mama Goma, Gemena, DR Congo, 2014. Deana Lawson is a photographer most known for her portraits of black men and women around the world. The photography provides a narrative of black cultural tropes. Currently Deana Lawson lives in Brooklyn, New York where she continues to be inspired by people around Bedford Stuyvesant.

Additional Links to view more of Deana Lawson’s works:
www.artnet.com/artists/deana-lawson/mama-goma-gemena-dr-congo-a-fxm9N-hVKTcTO-KwPaqd8w2.

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B.I.T.C.H or Black Imagery to Counter Hegemony, canvas painting, 2017

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B.I.T.C.H or Black Imagery to Counter Hegemony, canvas painting, 2017

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This title of this work is called B.I.T.C.H or Black Imagery to Counter Hegemony. The original painting is called The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, created in the 1480s. Thid painting by Harmonia Rosales replaces all the white figures with gracious dark skin black figures. The painting of Venus at the center has patches of gold flakes sprinkled atop her skin magnifying her beauty. The painting forces the audience to reflect on the representation or lack thereof blackness in media especially within classical art.

Additional links to view more works by Harmonia Rosales:
https://www.harmoniarosales.com/

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New World Consciousness, canvas painting, 2018 

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New World Consciousness, canvas painting, 2018 

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New World Consciousness, canvas painting, 2018

The title of this work is called New World Consciousness. The painting is by an artist named Harmonia Rosales who has Afro-Cuban heritage. Her art focuses on black female empowerment in Western culture. Many of her paintings replace white figures, yet Rosales aims to create a sense of harmony in her work instead of simply copying earlier works. Many of the figures in her work have silver and blue hues in the skin to add depth and contrast to the background. Rosales’ works claim to, “… serve as conduits to an inner struggle within our society which the artist depicts using metaphorical crowns and deities” (Rosales, 2017). This painting features the duality of The Virgin Mary and Eve. Both women have been created under the gaze of patriarchy and act as binary gender constraints that have unrealistic judgements about women.

Additional Links to view more works by Harmonia Rosales:
https://www.harmoniarosales.com/

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Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, oil on linen, 2018

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Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, oil on linen, 2018

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Amy Sherald is a highly respected artist in the United States and around the world. Sherald received her MFA in painting from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2004 and has since expanded her art painting in many cities across the U.S. More notable to the common public, her portrait of Michelle Obama features an elegant and composed representation of the former first lady of the United States back in 2018.

Additional Links to view more oil paintings by Amy Sherald:

http://www.amysherald.com/

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80 days (from Nessun Dorma series), Paper, acrylic, graphite, and pastel on canvas, 2018

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80 days (from Nessun Dorma series), Paper, acrylic, graphite, and pastel on canvas, 2018

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Deborah Roberts uses her art to convey themes of black masculinity in black boys and black femininity through beauty and power. This collage showcases George Stinney Jr. a fourteen-year-old boy who was wrongly convicted of murder and executed by the electric chair. This art piece showcases his fragile child-like body under the weight of a large prison jumpsuit. His laces are untied to illustrate his innocence. Other photos in the Nessun Dorma (None Shall Sleep) series show collages of other black boys whose lives were robbed from them by the peculiar systems of racism in the United States. This image is strikingly beautiful to me since it showcases black boys in a natural, yet cartoon character form which forces the audience to embrace the boy’s child-like self.

Additional Links about the work and artist:

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/80-days-from-nessun-dorma-series-deborah-roberts/wAGaOab6ljzGoA?hl=en

https://cvonhassett.medium.com/deborah-roberts-explores-the-fragility-of-black-masculinity-in-native-sons-3f6628e1fa69

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Portrait of Breonna Taylor, Digital Art (Photoshop/Procreate), 2020

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Portrait of Breonna Taylor, Digital Art (Photoshop/Procreate), 2020

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Portrait of Breonna Taylor, Digital Art (Photoshop/Procreate), 2020

The following image is a portrait of Breonna Taylor whose physical life was stolen in March 2020 after three police officers raided her apartment and murdered her. The lack of accountability and action taken after the insensitive murder sparked protests across the nation. People from all over the world called for immediate action. Many artists like Alexis Franklin used their art skills to portray the young Breonna Taylor is a beautiful light. This imagery is intentional to represent her in a realistic way compared to the often-insensitive ways the mass media/news show black people. The portrait was made by Alexis Franklin and was then featured on the Oprah Magazine. Alexis Franklin is a 24-year-old digital artist (photoshoot/procreate). Franklin lives in Dallas, Texas and often posts their art on Instagram for the world to see.

Additional Links to view more of paintings by Alexis Franklin:
https://www.instagram.com/alexis_art/?hl=en