When Living is a Protest - McEvoy Foundation for the Arts

Image Gallery

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Stephen Shames Angela Davis, who was a Black Panther for six months, speaks at a Free Huey Rally in De Fremery Park, Oakland, California, November 12, 1969, 1969 Gelatin silver print McEvoy Family Collection — Stephen Shames, *Angela Davis, who was a Black Panther for six months, speaks at a Free Huey Rally in DeFremery Park, Oakland, California, November 12, 1969*, 1969. gelatin silver print. McEvoy Family Collection. Courtesy of the artist

Lorraine O’Grady Art Is… (Girlfriends Times Two), 1983/2009 C-print in 40 parts 16 x 20 in. McEvoy Family Collection Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York © Lorraine O’Grady/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York — Lorraine O’Grady, *Art Is… (Girlfriends Times Two)*, 1983/2009, c-print in 40 parts. McEvoy Family Collection. Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York. © Lorraine O’Grady/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Carrie Mae Weems Untitled (man smoking), 1990 Gelatin silver print McEvoy Family Collection © Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. — Carrie Mae Weems, *Untitled (man smoking)*, 1990, gelatin silver print. McEvoy Family Collection. © Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

Rosalind Solomon After the Funeral, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1992 Gelatin silver print McEvoy Family Collection © Rosalind Fox Solomon. Courtesy of the artist and Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York — Rosalind Solomon, *After the Funeral, New Orleans, Louisiana*, 1992, gelatin silver print. McEvoy Family Collection. © Rosalind Fox Solomon. Courtesy of the artist and Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York

Ruddy Roye Black Today (When Living is a Protest Series), Union Square, New York, NY, May 1, 2015, 2015 Archival pigment print on metallic paper McEvoy Family Collection — Ruddy Roye, *Black Today (When Living is a Protest Series), Union Square, New York, NY, May 1, 2015*, 2015. archival pigment print on metallic paper. McEvoy Family Collection. Courtesy of the artist

This exhibition of photography from the McEvoy Family Collection, on view within Lessons of the Hour, is organized chronologically from 1935 to 2015. This temporal sequencing foregrounds the long struggle of social justice movements and connects the viewer to both celebrated and ephemeral moments with works such as Dan Weiner’s Bus Boycott, Montgomery Alabama 1956, Griselda San Martin’s Untitled (from the Wall) (2015), and Annie Mae Merriweather (1935), Consuela Kanaga’s classically composed portrait of a woman mourning the loss of her husband who had just been lynched. The timeline ends with Ruddy Roye’s Black Today (2015) from his When Living is a Protest series. All the images find echoes in the life and work of Frederick Douglass. And, as the Black Lives Matter movement reminds us, the struggle continues.

Curated by Mark Nash.

SELECTIONS FROM THE MCEVOY FAMILY COLLECTION

Susan Berger
Larry Fink
Lee Friedlander
Ed Kashi
Consuelo Kanaga
Builder Levy
Carrie Mae Weems
Carl Mydans
Lorraine O’Grady
Ruddy Roye

Griselda San Martin
Martin Schoeller
Allan Sekula
Stephen Shames
Chris Smith
Ming Smith
Rosalind Solomon
Lewis Watts
Dan Weiner

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Mark Nash is an independent curator, film historian and filmmaker with a specialization in contemporary fine art moving image practices, as well as avant-garde and world cinema. He has curated or co-curated moving image exhibitions at the Museo Civico Archeologico and Artefiera Bologna; Minsheng 21st Century Art Museum, Shanghai; ZKM, Karlsruhe; and MUSAC, Leon. He collaborated regularly with the late Okwui Enwezor, including on Documenta11 and on The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994 at MoMa PS1, New York. Nash previously served as Head of Department for Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art in London and is currently a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he founded the Isaac Julien Lab with Julien, his partner and long-time collaborator. He holds a PhD from Middlesex University, a MA from Cambridge University, and lives and works in London and Santa Cruz, CA.

LESSONS OF THE HOUR

Isaac Julien’s Lessons of the Hour—Frederick Douglass (2019) explores the life of the visionary Black writer, abolitionist, statesman, and freed slave. Incorporating excerpts from Douglass’ speeches and dramatizations of his private and public milieus, the immersive ten-screen film installation offers a contemplative, poetic journey into Douglass’ zeitgeist and a forceful suggestion that the lessons of the abolitionist’s hour have yet to be learned. The installation is joined by Julien’s tintype portraits and mise en scènes photographs of the film’s subjects. New Labor Movements, a resonant original program of film and video shorts curated by Leila Weefur, explores contemporary visions of America and concepts of transnational Blackness. A series of online conversations with these artists and invited thinkers and scholars take place throughout the run of the exhibition.

Lessons of the Hour—Frederick Douglass (2019) was originally commissioned by the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester in partnership with Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and with generous support from: Deborah Ronnen and Sherman Levey; Mark Falcone and Ellen Bruss; the Zell Family; Lori Van Dusen; Ford Foundation; VIA Art Fund; Linda Pace Foundation; Carol Weinbaum and Outset Contemporary Art Fund / CAF Canada; and University of California Santa Cruz. Special thanks to Jessica Silverman, San Francisco; the McEvoy Family Collection; Metro Pictures, New York; Victoria Miro, London/Venice.

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