AVANT-GARDES

To make matters worse, representation in museums, galleries, journals and textbooks is essential to the success of an artist. In 2018, Columbia Business School professor Paul Ingram and his colleague Mitali Banerjee examined the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) archives to examine the role of creativity and social networking in critical and commercial success. Artsy’s Associate Director of Content, Casey Lesser, analyzes Ingram and Banerjee’s findings: “artists with a large and diverse network of contacts were most likely to be famous, regardless of how creative their art was.” Without the opportunity to make valuable connections in museum or gallery settings, how can we expect underrepresented artists to succeed? As long as their works are overlooked by arts institutions, Black female artists will lose opportunities for financial and critical success.

That being said, many African American women have made their mark on the avant-garde sphere.

Alma W. Thomas, Lois Mailou Jones, Gwendolyn Knight and Faith Ringgold were all active during the avant-garde movements of the mid-to-late twentieth century. Ringgold is perhaps the most famous of the group for her narrative quilts, but artists such as Howardena Pindell and Suzanne Jackson made works to rival the prominent abstract expressionists of their day. Emma Amos, Mickalene Thomas, Amy Sherald and countless other contemporaries continue the legacy of avant-garde art with work that is just as compelling as that of any white male artist. Their successes show growth (despite limits) in the opportunities for Black women to succeed in the fine arts.

The problem, however, lies in the fact that these great artists are marginalized as Black artists, or women artists, or Black women artists. With so few works of art by Black women in museums and publications, any artwork that does end up in a collection stands out not for its creative merit but for its token role as the diverse work of art. We cannot be satisfied by one or two out of a thousand works of art displayed being created by Black women. Of course, any step towards diversity is a step in the right direction, but including only a few works by African American women is not the win that some think it to be.

The next time you visit a museum, read a chapter of an art history textbook or peruse your local arts magazine, pay attention to who created the works of art. Instead of asking if there is diversity, ask how much diversity is represented and why. Only then can we push arts institutions to be and do better.