BLACK MATRIARCH
Clementine Hunter (1886/87–1988)
This exhibition explores through the museum’s rich holdings of the range of artistic expressions by self-taught African American artists from the rural South and the urban North, highlighting complex and vibrant quilts, paintings, works on paper, and sculpture. With approximately nine quilts and nearly thirty works of art in various media, “Ancestry and Innovation” includes paintings by an elder generation of creators, such as David Butler, Sam Doyle, Bessie Harvey, and Clementine Hunter; works by contemporary masters such as Thornton Dial Sr.; and provocative pieces by emerging artists such as Kevin Sampson and Willie LeRoy Elliot. Juxtaposed with richly patterned and graphically exciting quilts, the exhibition celebrates the ongoing contribution of black artists to the kaleidoscope of American cultural and visual experience.
Strip Variation Quilt
Mozell Benson (b. 1934)
Waverly, Alabama
1991
Cotton and wool with synthetic yarn
70 1/2 x 89 in.
American Folk Art Museum purchase made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, with matching funds from The Great American Quilt Festival 3, 1991.13.9
Photo by Scott Bowron
Saturday Night
Clementine Hunter (1886/87–1988)
Melrose Plantation, Natchitoches, Louisiana
c. 1968
Oil on board
16 x 24 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Mary Bass Newlin, 1989.9.1
Photo by John Parnell
Diamond Strip Quilt
Lucinda Toomer (1888/90–1983)
Macon, Georgia
c. 1975
Cotton corduroy, flannel, velvet, and wool
79 1/2 x 66 1/4 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of William Arnett, 1990.7.1
Black Matriarch
Clementine Hunter (1886/87–1988)
Melrose Plantation, Natchitoches, Louisiana
c. 1970s
Oil on cardboard
24 x 16 1/2 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Mrs. Chauncey Newlin, 1991.23.4
Photo by Gavin Ashworth
Hens Quilt
Pearlie Posey (1894–1984)
Yazoo City, Mississippi
1981
Cotton and synthetics
71 x 69 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Maude and James Wahlman, 1991.32.2
Photo by Matt Hoebermann
Peacock
David Butler (1898–1997)
Patterson, Louisiana
c. 1980–1982
Paint on tin with plastic and satin bow
13 x 25 x 7 in.
American Folk Art Museum, gift of Elizabeth Ross Johnson, 1985.35.9
Photo by Gavin Ashworth
