The Crocker Art Museum is pleased to announce Black Artists in America: From the Bicentennial to September 11, on viewfrom October 5, 2025, through January 11, 2026.Black Artists in America focuses on the transitional moment from the late 1970s to the dawn of the 21st century, featuring more than 50 artworks by such artists as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Romare Bearden, Camille Billops, Elizabeth Catlett, Barkley L. Hendricks, Varnette Honeywood, Loïs Mailou Jones, Jacob Lawrence, Whitfield Lovell, and Howardena Pindell.

The exhibition picks up where the Dixon Gallery and Gardens’s 2023 exhibition Black Artists in America: From Civil Rights to the Bicentennial (on view at the Crocker in early 2024) left off, the second in a three-part series. This third chapter of the exhibition continues to consider the ways in which Black American artists challenged the cultural, environmental, political, racial, and social issues of the last decades of the 20th century. Featuring paintings, sculptures, and works on paper drawn from public and private collections across the country, the exhibition also highlights recently acquired work by Samella Lewis, Betye Saar, Dindga McCannon, and Kara Walker in the Crocker’s collection.

“We are excited to present the concluding chapter of the Black Artists in America exhibition series,” says Crocker Curator Francesca Wilmott, PhD. “Dr. Jenkins’s extensive research situates key works from the Crocker’s collection within a broader national context, illuminating the vital role that artists played in shaping the cultural landscape of the late twentieth century.”

Buoyed by the civil rights activism of the 1950s and 1960s and the significant legislation that followed, Black artists working between the 1970s and early 2000s saw glimmers of hope for real and lasting change. Encouraged by the modest progress of the last quarter of the 20th century, they maintained pressure on institutions, granting agencies, and the market as never before, pressure that gradually—and finally—began to bring change to the art world.

The exhibition is organized by the Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis and is curated by Dr. Earnestine Lovelle Jenkins, professor of Art History at the University of Memphis. An accompanying catalogue featuring essays by Dr. Jenkins, Dr. Julie McGee, Dr. Ellen Daugherty, and Kevin Sharp will be published in association with Yale University Press and will be available in the Crocker Art Museum Store.