February 19 - May 1, 2021
From the Museum:
“Also opening is Fresh and Contemporary: Moving Forward, which embraces 2021 as a fresh start that draws energy from current but also past contemporary sources and in America’s current attention on race and gender reckoning, uses images that serve as reminders that hope coexists with work to be done. The pieces in the exhibit challenge the viewer to use this moment to reconsider fixed ideas they might have to start an important conversation about what we’ve been told and what we’re telling others regarding race and gender. The exhibition returns HMAAC from the divide of 2020 to freshness in terms of the diversity of artists, race, gender and to acknowledgement once again of a wider world, drawing on the intersection of painting, history, pop culture, with works ranging from figurative to the abstract. There is, of course, a side of the future that is not necessarily a move forward, where challenges to the yearning for a fresh start and reckoning for people of color, sexual orientation and for women continue to have to be worked out. A number of the pieces in the exhibition speak to and acknowledge this reality.
“This exhibition presents the energy of ‘keep hope alive’ along with the reality of a large segment of the country that adamantly opposes any progressive societal reckoning,” according to exhibition curator John Guess, Jr. “Fresh communicates inclusion, exclusion and confusion all existing in one space as they do in our country,” he added.
Fresh and Contemporary: Moving Forward includes work from artists David McGee, Carlos Don Juan, Khaliff Thompson, Delilah Montoya, Kleinveld and Julien, Kevin Thompson, Gavin Benjamin, Molly Gochman, John Singletary, Trenity Thomas, Akihiko Sugiura, Renee Victor, Chris Barnard, Romeo Robinson and the freshness of new twenty something artists Jessica Carroll and Amara Merritt.
HMAAC Board President Cindy Miles indicated the intent of the museum, in addition to presenting art and culture in our building and in the community, “to chronicle more of the African American historical presence in Houston because our absence from the city’s landscape is so striking.”
Vanguard: Black Women Making Lemonade and Fresh and Contemporary: Moving Forward is made possible through the support of The Houston Endowment, HEB, Sara and Bill Morgan, the Houston Arts Alliance, Truist Bank and the Board of Directors of The Houston Museum of African American Culture.”
On View: February 19, 2021 | 1–5 pm
Houston Museum of African American Culture
4807 Caroline St.
Houston, TX
(713) 353-1578
Get directions