MEDIA CONTACT: Andria Lisle, Public Relations Manager
(901) 544-6208 or andria.lisle@brooksmuseum.org
Brooks Museum Announces The Soul of a City:
Memphis Collects African American Art
Exhibition To Include Works by Romare Bearden, Radcliffe
Bailey, Carrie Mae Weems, and Glenn Ligon
On View June 9 – September 2, 2012
Memphis, TN (April 4, 2012) – This summer, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art will
showcase the diversity, vitality, and creativity of African American art in The Soul of a
City: Memphis Collects African American Art, an exhibition of more than 100 important
and thought-provoking paintings, photographs, drawings, sculptures and mixed media
works selected from private and public collections in Memphis.
The exhibition surveys great themes in art history as expressed through sections
devoted to landscape, genre, still life, portraiture, folk art, abstraction, religion, music, the
Civil Rights movement, and contemporary art.
“Think of it as an introduction to art history and the traditions and genres that all
American artists work in,” says exhibition curator Marina Pacini, who is Chief Curator
and Curator of American, Modern, and Contemporary Art at the Brooks.
The Soul of a City will include marquee names in American art, including painters
Norman Lewis, Kehinde Wiley, Jacob Lawrence, Sam Gilliam, Radcliffe Bailey, and
Alma Thomas; folk artists Clementine Hunter, Purvis Young, and Elijah Pierce; sculptors
Chakaia Booker and Elizabeth Catlett; collagists Romare Bearden and Wangechi Mutu;
mixed media artists Glenn Ligon and Whitfield Lovell; and photographers James van der
Zee, Lorna Simpson, and Carrie Mae Weems. The exhibition will also feature work by
many regional artists, including the late sculptor William Edmondson, the first African
American artist to be given a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art; self-taught
Alabama artist Thornton Dial; and a wide range of work by established and emerging
Memphians including photographer Ernest Withers; painters George Hunt, Brenda
Joysmith, Twin, Jared Small, Danny Broadway, Anthony Lee, and Dewitt Jordan; mixedmedia artist Kiersten Williams; quilter Hattie Childress; and sculptors Luther Hampton,
Edwin Jeffrey, and Hawkins Bouldin. An interactive space where museum visitors can
explore the creative process will be included in the exhibition.
Lenders to The Soul of a City include Elliot and Kim Perry, Ron and Marianne Walter,
Judge and Mrs. D’Army Bailey, Drs. James and Rushton Patterson, John and Susan
Jerit, Craig Wiener, Robert Bain, the University of Memphis, and LeMoyne-Owen
College.
Press images and credit lines for the exhibition are available here:
http://www.brooksmuseum.org/soulofacitypresspage.
The Brooks will collaborate with various community groups, including Hattiloo Theatre
and the Stax Music Academy, on various educational components, including an Art and
Soul Family Day, sponsored by Macy’s, which is slated for Saturday, June 23.
A concurrent film series, entitled Soul on Film, will be held throughout the run of the
exhibition. A collaboration between the Brooks and the Stax Museum of American Soul
Music, Soul on Film will kick off with a screening of the documentary Wattstax at 7 pm
on Thursday, June 14. Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the landmark 1972 soul music
concert, and presented in conjunction with a Wattstax exhibition on view at the Stax
Museum this summer, tickets for this special screening will be just $1 per person. The
series will also feature the documentaries Thunder Soul, Mr. Dial Has Something to Say,
and Colored Frames, as well as more films TBA.
The Soul of a City: Memphis Collects African American Art is sponsored by SunTrust.
Community Partners: ArtsMemphis, Hyde Family Foundations, Tennessee Arts
Commission, The Jeniam Foundation, and AutoZone.
About the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art:
The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, located at 1934 Poplar Avenue in historic Overton
Park, is one of the leading art museums in the American South. Over 9,000 works make
up the Brooks’ permanent collection including ancient works from Greece, Rome, and
the Ancient Americas; Renaissance masterpieces from Italy; English portraiture;
American painting and decorative arts; contemporary art; and a survey of African art. For
more information on the Brooks, and all other exhibitions and programs, call (901) 5446200 or visit www.brooksmuseum.org.
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