KNOWING WHO WE ARE: The Rise of Abstraction at The Ogden Museum

KNOWING WHO WE ARE: THE RISE OF ABSTRACTION, VERNACULAR ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY
OGDEN MUSEUM OF SOUTHERN ART, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

ON VIEW APRIL 1, 2023 – MARCH 3, 2024

The art of the American South has never existed in isolation. It has – since the earliest moments of the American experience – run concurrent with dominant academic art movements and popular trends, while maintaining a distinct regional identity. On the 4th floor of Ogden Museum’s Goldring Hall, Knowing Who We Are will explore the rise of Abstraction, Photography and Vernacular Art.

While Modernism and Abstract Expressionism developed in the first half of the twentieth century, many artists working in the American South incorporated these new ideas into their practice after World War II. This section of the exhibition traces the development of abstraction in Southern Art through examples by leading figures including Fritz Bultman, Dusti Bongé, Sam Gilliam, Ida Kohlmeyer, Robert Reed, Eugene Martin, Minnie Evans, John T. Scott, Kendall Shaw and Dorothy Hood, among others.

As photography developed in the 20th century, Southern artists were deeply involved in bringing lens-based studio practices from the realm of commercial portraiture and journalism into contemporary art dialogue. Photographers include Marion Post Wolcott, Roland Freeman, Eudora Welty, William Christenberry, Kael Alford and L. Kasimu Harris, among others.

Art in the South came to the forefront of international attention, as when the art world embraced the freedom and innovation of Self-Taught and Visionary art in the late-20th century, and vernacular artists from the South arose as leading figures in that national dialogue. Works by Thornton Dial, Bessie Harvey, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Helen Burkhart Mayfield, Clementine Hunter, Roy Ferdinand, George Andrews and more are featured on this floor in conversation with abstraction and photography.

Linked (to India), 2003, oil on canvas, 54 x 48 inches