Tales from The b.a.SKET: Black Art Sketches for the Contemporary Art Lover

By D. Amari Jackson

This week, we reach into the b.a.SKET and pull out Elizabeth Catlett’s 1975 work, There Is a Woman in Every Color…

There Is a Woman in Every Color. Yet, when it comes to art, few would believe this given the ongoing lack of representation of Black women in American institutions of art.

For the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, located in Brunswick, Maine, it is more of the same.

“Black women represent less than 1 percent of the permanent collection,” said Elizabeth Humphrey, a Bowdoin graduate and former curatorial assistant and manager of student programs at the museum. In an August 2021 interview with the Portland Press Herald, Humphrey, now pursuing her doctorate in art history at the University of Delaware, pointed out that “this is a pervasive issue in a lot of mainstream museums, where representation of people of color in art is significantly less.”

That said, the Bowdoin alum did more than just talk about it. As curator of the recent exhibition, There Is a Woman in Every Color: Black Women in Art, Humphrey pulled from the limited collection of art by Black women at the Bowdoin College Museum and from Elizabeth Catlett’s 1975 work of the same name to draw attention to the woeful underrepresentation of African American women in art. The recent exhibit, which will likely tour in the coming year, covered the artistic contributions of Black women artists over two centuries, containing over 40 pieces from the likes of Edmonia Lewis, Alma Thomas, Carrie Mae Weems, Betye Saar, Faith Ringgold, Kara Walker, Mickalene Thomas, Ja’Tovia Gary, LaToya Ruby Frazier, and Nyeema Morgan.

Elizabeth Catlett, There is a Woman in Every Color, color linoleum cut, screenprint, and woodcut. Museum Purchase, Lloyd O. Marjorie Strong Coulter Fund, Bowdoin College Museum of Art. ©2021 Catlett Mora Family Trust/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photo: Luc Demers.

But it all began with Catlett’s There Is a Woman in Every Color, a piece that continues to be interpreted widely. Some suggest the image of a woman, shown in both positive and negative form as if an original and its carbon copy, is a reference to a universal duality and racial equity. Others have pointed to the primacy of the Black original as foundational to a carbon copy, humanity, and our mostly Black universe, with all other colors and life forms emerging from it.

Whatever the story, the image certainly has a tale to tell, as does the exhibit. Look and listen at Humphrey’s recent presentation of There Is a Woman in Every Color: Black Women in Art at the Bowdoin College Museum:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdLxZ1E5k_M&t=64s

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Amari Jackson is a creator, author, TV/web/film producer, and award-winning journalist. He is author of the 2011 novel, The Savion Sequence; creator/writer/coproducer of the 2012-2014 web series The Book Look; writer/coproducer of the 2016 film Edge of the Pier; and current writer/coproducer of Listen Up! on HBCU GO/Roku TV. He is a former Chief of Staff for a NJ State Senator; a former VP of Communications & Development for the Jamestown Project at Harvard University; and a recipient of several writing fellowships including the George Washington Williams Fellowship from the Independent Press Association. An active ghost writer, song writer, martial artist, and journalist, his writings have appeared in a wide variety of national and regional publications.

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