A Culture Preserved (in the Black Experience)
A Culture Preserved (in the Black Experience)
Museum of Art Fort Collins
201 S. College Avenue, Fort Collins, CO 80524
July 29-October 16, 2022
Curated by Louise Cutler
Admission: Adults: $5, Students & Seniors: $4, Youth Ages 7-17: $1, Members & Kids Ages 6 and Under: Free
Review by J. Benjamin Burney
It’s late in the summer but the heat has yet to wane, so to find a little relief from the sweltering heat of Denver I head north to visit the Museum of Art Fort Collins. The stone building sits back from the main promenade of College Avenue, which is bustling with students back for the first week of classes at Colorado State University.
A view of the façade of the Museum of Art Fort Collins featuring a banner for the exhibition A Culture Preserved (in the Black Experience) with a reproduction of Gerald Griffin’s painting Tiana Too. Image by J. Benjamin Burney.
A rare gaze stares across the sidewalk and deep into the streets, greeting and questioning all in its sights. This is the gaze of the subject of Gerald Griffin’s Tiana Too—a reimagining of the well-known image of Audrey Hepburn from the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s with a beautiful Black woman in her place. It’s featured on the large banner which graces the outside of the Museum and is a powerful statement for the exhibition A Culture Preserved (in the Black Experience).
Louise Cutler, Septima Poinsette Clark, pen, ink, and pastel, 20 x 24 inches. Image by DARIA.
Louise Cutler is a Fort Collins-based artist, vocalist, and writer. Her work is motivated by her desire to create beauty that cultivates truth, peace, and harmony. [1] Her role in A Culture Preserved (in the Black Experience) is twofold: both artist and curator. Like her mixed media works, she blends the two roles into a collage of story and aesthetic. She tirelessly works to affirm and preserve the Black American narrative in art and history.
An installation view of the exhibition A Culture Preserved (in the Black Experience) at the Museum of Art Fort Collins. Image by DARIA.
A Culture Preserved (in the Black Experience) features ten artists, four of whom are Colorado-based: Efilaf Art, Louise Cutler, Thomas Lockhart, and Jim Wider. With nationally-known artists Karen Drewry, Gerald Griffin, Joyce Owens, Charly Palmer, Deborah Shedrick, and Kevin Wak Williams as well, this exhibition displays the nuance and minutiae of the Black American experience through drawing, painting, and sculpture, and a number of perspectives.
A view of the title wall for A Culture Preserved (in the Black Experience). In the foreground: Karen Drewry’s Black and White Heads, 2020, gypsum plaster and acrylic, 1.5 x 1 x 1 feet. Image by J. Benjamin Burney.
The exhibition opens with a bright red title wall, in front of which stands a vitrine housing two faces: one black and one white, staring at each other. Their chins are up and a strange intimacy comes across in this sculpture by Karen Drewry. As this work appears at the very beginning of the exhibition, it sets the tone for the show and calls to mind the contradictions of being a Black American—what the great writer and scholar W.E.B. DuBois called “twoness.” DuBois asserted: “One ever feels his twoness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” [2]
Thomas Lockhart, Passing Generations, 2019, mixed media on canvas. Image by DARIA.
Being Black and American is an enigma that this exhibition only begins to explore. Venturing further into the gallery space, one encounters a variety of subjects, including celebrities, symbolic imagery, political statements, imaginative portraits, and abstraction in different forms. The art becomes a window into Black experience through which history and catharsis flow. The unique touch of the curator is evident in the wall text throughout, which is teeming with historical quotes, poetry, and even the provenance of these artists’ works.
Gerald Griffin, Tiana Too, 2016, oil on wood, 60 x 72 inches. Image by DARIA.
The poem Tiffany Too on display next to Gerald Griffin’s painting Tiana Too. Image by DARIA.
One artwork that stopped me dead in my tracks was the same one that greeted me with a profound stare on the street: Gerald Griffin’s oil painting Tiana Too. One of the larger works in the exhibit, we see a moment where Black culture is represented in the light it was destined for. The tones of indigo and black melt seamlessly into bright ivory and warm taupe browns. More than anything it is the gaze which arrests you and claims a space in time and place for the Black story. And what a story it is: decadence, wealth, and elegance wrapped in pearls, leaving anyone, no matter their background, feeling like royalty.
Kevin Wak Williams, A Vote for Shirley, 2021, oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches. Image by DARIA.
Charly Palmer, Erase and Yellow, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 inches. Image by DARIA.
In speaking with Louise Cutler, I learned her hope for A Culture Preserved (in the Black Experience) is to turn it into a traveling exhibition. She desires to take the narrative of Black Americans around the country to inspire and instill cultural pride and edification for many populations and for years to come. Thanks to the rich and wide spectrum of Black experience this exhibition depicts, all one must do is look to know that Black culture is worthy of being preserved and that the Black story is art.
J. Benjamin Burney is an MFA & MBA candidate at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He specializes in creating immersive installations using performance and mixed media works. He is the Creative Director of Zoid Art Haus, a design house based in Denver, Colorado that uses storytelling to create experiences, products, and services geared toward making a more inclusive, equitable, and empathetic society.
[1] From the pamphlet that accompanies the exhibition which includes a profile of each artist.
[2] W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches (Chicago: A.G. McClurg, 1903; New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1968).
