Jessica B. Brown, “The Black American Women Who Made Their Own Art World.” Hyperallergic, Aug 7, 2017.
On the heels of the Civil Rights movement, in a 1971 New York Times article, Toni Morrison made a terse assessment of the downstream effects of second-wave feminism, as observed by black women:
What do black women feel about Women’s Lib? Distrust. It is white, therefore suspect. In spite of the fact that liberating movements in the black world have been catalysts for white feminism, too many movements and organizations have made deliberate overtures to enroll blacks and have ended up by rolling them. They don’t want to be used again to help somebody gain power- a power that is carefully kept out of their hands. They look at white women and see them as the enemy- for they know that racism is not confined to white men, and that there are more white women than men in this country, and that 53 percent of the population sustained an eloquent silence during times of greatest stress. (…)
A quiet but equally powerful takeaway from this show is that many of the women represented worked fiercely to champion and safeguard the field of black art history through publishing and establishing their own collections and foundations. The artist and art historian Samella Lewis and the artist and filmmaker Camille Billops both collected and documented African American art and archives while pursuing their own practices. I was touched to know that Los Angeles-based black collector and philanthropist Eileen Harris Norton had loaned to the exhibition O’Grady’s iconic bullwhip and the dress she made of 180 white gloves for her “Mlle Bourgeoise Noire” (1980) performance. The costume accompanies O’Grady’s documentary photographs taken at the New Museum and Just Above Midtown. (…)