The gesture to include only images of Savage’s sculpture, and not the work itself, is the exhibition’s “most melancholic” one, according to Adusei-Poku. The work, like many others by Savage, was lost, and the only remaining traces of it exist as photographs.
1938 sculpture Realization, which showed a man slumped against a half-nude woman’s leg. The centerpiece of that first gallery is evidence of an object that no longer exists: Augusta Savage’s ca. Sculptures by William Artis and Selma Burke depict figures that clutch their legs, communicating a mixture of mournfulness, anxiety, and agony. (The Piper piece is from the Clark Atlanta University, one of several HBCUs that lent to the show.) Hope for the Future, a 1945 Charles White print, shows a Black mother holding her child as she gazes out a window, toward a noose hanging from a leafless branch in the distance. Rose Piper’s undated painting Grievin’ Hearted shows a Black figure whose face is cradled in his bent arm a Black woman looks on forlornly in the background. Her sensibility is obvious from the jump, when viewers enter an initial gallery that mostly contains artworks from the 20th century. It holds Black subjects and subjectivity within a space of uncertainty, pain, sorrow, and loss, within potentials that are certainly not going to be actualized.” What she ended up with was an idiosyncratic show that spans several centuries, with work by few artists that are well-known to the general public. In an interview, Adusei-Poku said she wanted “to talk about a condition that has existed basically since Enlightenment. But “Black Melancholia” bucks the trend by looking beyond the current moment to explain how past pangs of sadness continue to ripple out toward the present. institutions-consider the case of “ Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America,” one of curator Okwui Enwezor’s final shows, which filled all of New York’s New Museum last year. It’s a bold goal, especially at a time when shows like this one are slowly becoming more common at major U.S. With “Black Melancholia,” Adusei-Poku has set out to redefine how museums convey trauma, grief, and alienation as they are experienced by the Black community.
Although it is only a fraction of the size “Melancholy,” with only 38 works, its ambitions far exceed its scale. More than 15 years on, Adusei-Poku has curated her own exhibition in response, “Black Melancholia,” which is on view at Bard College’s Hessel Museum of Art in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, through October 16. Summer Preview: The Most Promising Museum Shows and Biennials Around the World Crocodile Rock: Painter Leidy Churchman Cedes the Floor to No One in First Museum Survey
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