Free as they want to be: Artists Committed to Memory

In the Bartels Gallery, Floor 1L

Free as they want to be: Artists Committed to Memory presents contemporary art inspired by historical events, creating a framework in which to honor and contemplate the ongoing fight for freedom and equality in Black America. Working in a range of mediums including photography, video, projection and mixed media, the artists featured in this exhibition address questions of private and public memory as it relates to racism, segregation and slavery.

As innovative as these artists are, many draw inspiration from archival materials, either directly illustrating or alluding to known images or historic sites. By bringing the past into conversation with the present, they reclaim narratives burdened with trauma and tragedy, making history more real, and offering new ways to think about the Black experience. Although the legacy of injustice endures, the pain and suffering experienced by specific individuals in the past can only be approached through reconstruction and reimagination.

Free as they want to be: Artists Committed to Memory is curated by Cheryl Finley, formerly an associate professor in Cornell’s Department of the History of Art & Visual Studies and now the Walton Endowed Professor and Director of the Atlanta University Center Art History + Curatorial Studies Collective at Spelman College; and Deborah Willis, University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. The traveling exhibition is organized by Curatorial Exhibitions, Pasadena, California, having originated as a FotoFocus exhibition at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, on the occasion of the 2022 FotoFocus Biennial.

At the Johnson Museum, this exhibition is supported by an endowment in memory of Elizabeth Miller Francis ’47 and by the Richard Sukenik ’59 Endowment for Photography.