With 75 works spanning more than a century, including paintings, prints, photos, sculptures, and mixed media from nearly 60 artists, the current exhibition at The Phillips Collection, in Northwest D.C., is more than a massive undertaking. Based on a research project conducted between 2022 to 2024 by The Phillips, titled “Seeing U.S.,” this exhibition is a bold artistic statement at a time when Black narratives are under attack.
“Out of Many: Reframing an American Art Collection,” brings together works from historic collections of African American art at The Phillips, the Howard University Gallery of Art, and The David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, has resulted in a groundbreaking display of the power of Black art and stories.
Jonathan P. Binstock, The Phillips Collection’s Vradenburg director and CEO, explained the meaning behind “Out of Many,” which is on view until Feb. 15.
“The Phillips has long been at the forefront of collecting and presenting modern and contemporary art of the United States,” said Binstock. “From the start, we wanted to be inclusive and to expand the lens of what modern art is.”
Renowned African American artists included in “Out of Many” are the likes of Benny Andrews, Romare Bearden, William Johnson, and Jacob Lawrence. But the exhibition also highlights contemporary artists worthy of wider recognition, such as Aaron Maier-Carretero, Mary Lee Bendolph, Simone Leigh, and Lex Brown.
The Phillips Collection’s Senior Consulting Curator Adrienne L. Childs and Camille Brown, who serves as associate curator, were tasked with the challenge of shaping an exhibition created from multiple collections.
“We created big buckets of themes covering people, places, and things,” said Childs. “From there, we drilled down and explored some recurring patterns, motifs, and ideas.”
The work of Peter L. Robinson Jr. (1922-2015) was one artist Childs spoke about, whose painting “Rock Creek Park,” created in 2000, is from the Howard University Gallery of Art.
A graduate of Howard and NASA’s former director of graphics and management presentations, Robinson’s view of the storied gathering “place is an abstract look with colorful shapes as if seen from above,” according to the description next to his artwork.
“His work absolutely responds to aerial views of birth from space,” Childs explained. “His relationship with the future fueled his interest in modernism.”
Leigh’s sculpture of a woman’s head, titled “No Face (Crown Heights),” created in 2018, is from The Phillips Collection and composed of a halo of hand-rolled blue terracotta rosettes, atop a black neck. The title alludes to the many years Leigh lived and worked in Brooklyn, New York.
“The tendency when people hear Black women’s stories is to focus on what happened to them, not the intellectual labor and creativity they brought to the situation,” said Leigh. “My work is about what they did from those compromised positions – the labor, the care, the love, the ideas.”
Further, the timing of “Out of Many” coincides with the 250th anniversary of the United States, thus, the exhibition takes part in a nationwide reflection on the country’s evolving cultural and artistic identity.
“This presentation considers the museum’s dynamic history of collecting art of the United States,” said Brown, “while featuring loans that help to expand and enrich the story of American art.”
To learn more about viewing “Out of Many: Reframing an American Art Collection” at The Phillips Collection, visit phillipscollection.org.