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Safety in Numbers? Images of African American Identity and Community


2011

This exhibition explores the views of artists concerning the ways in which isolation, community, and the search for identity affected African Americans during the twentieth century and into the present. The years from 1915 to the mid-1970s were especially formative as forty-seven percent of the black population migrated en masse from the rural South to the industrial North in search of the American dream.

While the majority of the artists represented in this exhibition are African American, several non-black artists have been included whose work is especially insightful in its observations of the black community. From the earliest representations of black Americans, the images have revealed both the symptoms of displacement and a search for identity and community through ever more complex socio-political situations. This exhibition examines the often poignant images of displacement and the ways in which they describe the struggle of blacks to forge a new life, both public and private, in the Northern urban centers of the United States.

This multimedia exhibition presents approximately fifty works by important African American artists Jacob Lawrence, Oliver Lee Jackson, Kara Walker, Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas, Carrie Mae Weems, and Michael Ray Charles, among others.

Curated by Jennifer Harper

Details
Exhibition Title

Safety in Numbers? Images of African American Identity and Community

Date

2011

Curated by

Jennifer Harper

Organized by

Portland Art Museum

Begin Date

2011-01-08

End Date

2011-04-17

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