Grief & Grievance

As the title indicates, Grief and Grievance:  Art and Mourning in America isn't a crowd pleaser so much as an overdue reckoning by the museum world and its typical patrons.  I can't say that these fabric banners by Hank Willis Thomas meant much until I read the label explaining that each star in "14,719" represents an American life lost to gun violence in 2018.  Even the casual viewer will know that Blacks are disproportionately represented in that group.

If nothing else, the exhibit proves yet again that if museums exhibit works of relevance to the Black community, it will come. 

Nari Ward addresses Black death more sardonically with a hearse in "Peacekeeper."

Henry Taylor lampoons white stereotypes about African Americans in a work he created for the exhibit.

Diamond Stingily grew up on the West Side of Chicago.  Her grandmother kept a baseball bat to protect her home from intruders, a tableau she uses in "Entryways" to symbolize feminist strength.

Welded steel sculptures by Melvin Edwards viscerally conjure the shackles of enslaved workers and their forced labor.

Other works were much harder to read, like "Anton's Organ" by Rashid Johnson, which takes up most of a large gallery.

Also, "Gone Are the Days of Shelter and Martyr" by Theaster Gates.

Oceanic Beloved" by Julie Mehretu

Detail from "Autobiography: Water (Ancestors/Middle Passage/Family Ghosts)" Howardena Pindell (1980)

Kerry James Marshall,  Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kara Walker are among my favorite contemporary artists.  Walker created two "Book of Hours" for the show, hung together.

Marshall and Basquiat are represented by existing works, a reminder of how the show's themes have been timeless for the unprivileged.

Dignity and wariness emanate from Dawoud Bey's photographic portraits.

Video is rarely my preferred fine art medium, but Arthur Jafa does a masterful job of sourcing evidence of adversity and survival from You Tube and blending it in "Love is the Message, The Message Is Death" with a soundtrack by Kanye West.