A new exhibition that opens this weekend at the Mint Uptown brings to life many aspects of African American history, struggles, migrations and success stories, dating back to the 1860s.
Whitfield Lovell, a 2007 MacArthur Fellowship recipient, allows visitors to not only see his many life-size portrait drawings on reclaimed wood, but he uses sounds, smells and video projections to portray the African American experience. The exhibition, "Whitfield Lovell: Passages," encompasses two floors of the Mint.
WFAE's Gwendolyn Glenn took a tour of the exhibition with Mint CEO and President Dr. Todd Herman and the museum’s chief curator, Dr. Jen Sudul Edwards. The tour began in a long hallway lined with individually framed pictures of every card in a deck, paired with charcoal pictures Lovell drew of anonymous African Americans.
Dr. Jen Sudul Edwards: Whitfield was given a deck of vintage cards in the early 2000s, and he also has amassed this collection of over 3,000 photographs. A lot of his photographs were from 1850-1950. And he's built his artwork over the last couple of decades out of pairing objects with images of people.
And while we may look at this three of diamonds with this portrait of a man looking down and think that there is some sort of intense meeting and that Lovell may have meant, that there is supposed to be some interpretation that we should pull from this, it's not necessarily that.
It's really supposed to have this poetic kind of ambiguous reading, so that all of us look at these works and make our own interpretations, have our own emotional reactions to it. And so, by having these objects that clearly have had this other life, have clearly experienced use — I mean, look at all the staining from fingerprints, all that oil over centuries that’s in that playing card. And then this beautiful, gentle portrait that Lovell made with contact crayon, a very malleable, very soft kind of like an oily, chalky pencil. And he uses his fingers to smooth and to blend and to erase in some sections to get this incredibly beautiful shading.
Gwendolyn Glenn: And you said that there's not a lot of writing about the artwork. Tell me why there's not, because normally you come to an exhibit and under the photo, it's the name. And then there’s the year it was painted. Why not here?
Sudul Edwards: Lovell wants you to experience the works without any sort of interference at first. So there's a catalog that's rich with information and a very thorough chronology. But the most important thing is that we experience these works unmediated immediately, and then find out more information.
Glenn: A larger-than-life, captivating round portrait painted on honey-colored wood of an elegantly dressed Black woman surrounded by six black crows, is on a wall at the end of the entrance hall. It's titled "Because I Wanna Fly." Around the corner, a thin worn shear-like curtain covers a door that leads to a parlor. CEO Dr. Todd Herman describes it.
Dr. Todd Herman: There are pieces in here from different times, but, you know, certainly the early 20th century in America. And what you'll find when you come into this room is an experience of sight, smell, sound.
You know, it's not an exact replica of any one room, but there are pieces in this room — or it's the sound or it's the smell — that will invoke a memory in anyone. And everyone who comes in here, they'll feel a sense of home and connection, even if there's absolutely nothing in here that is directly associated with their own history. It's the way he's put it together. [It] feels like, sort of, the quintessential memory.
Glenn: Yeah, because I'm looking at the old radio and I'm looking at these end tables and they remind me of some of the pieces my grandmother had. But also people will be able to smell things that would have been happening in this parlor.
Herman: Right, because there is fresh tobacco in a tin in here. There will be poured glasses of bourbon and that smell will permeate, because we know that memory is triggered by sound, smell, sight and touch.
Glenn: And there will be a meal at some point.
Herman: Opening night, in this room, the parlor, which has a table set for four in the middle, there will be a chicken with collard greens and yams, all prescribed by the artist. So that's what he wants. Then after this evening, that will be taken away, because, obviously, that food can't stay here for the length of the show. Again, that smell will linger in this room.
And because this wood is untreated, it's porous. People coming into the exhibition for weeks to come will still be able to detect that meal that has recently been eaten. So, again, memory.
Glenn: The exhibition is a collection of Lovell's works over the years. His latest works are in what's called the Red Room, with an antique chair with a space for an old-style telephone attached. When visitors pick it up, they will hear the beautiful voice of someone singing the Black national anthem, "Lift Every Voice and Sing."
Also included in "Passages" for the first time, two of his well-known installations are displayed together. Lovell's 2013 "Deep River Project," a video projection on the walls of the Tennessee River with natural sounds. More than 50 portraits on wood of different sizes of Black Americans, and a mound of soil in the middle with objects enslaved people may have used to escape to freedom across the river. And the 2001 visitation of "The Richmond Project." It focuses on a once-thriving African American community in Richmond, Virginia. It includes a 22-foot-wide tableau of life-sized charcoal drawings depicting successful Black entrepreneurs.
Herman: "The Richmond Project" is a project that he did that investigates a community in Jackson Ward, which is about four blocks from the state capital (of) Richmond, which was one of the very first robust Black communities after the Civil War. That community was home to the very first female-owned bank, which was also the very first Black-owned bank. Same person [Maggie L. Walker]. She opened the Penny Savings Bank.
It was also home to the very first female Black physician in the United States, [Sarah Garland Jones]. It was the first such community to get the moniker Black Wall Street when desegregation happened. These communities in the South were largely bulldozed, so he's trying to capture that history. What you're hearing coming over the speakers is a person reading the names and addresses of everyone who lived in Jackson Ward.
Glenn: On a different floor is the haunting "Deep River" installation.
Herman: "Deep River," named after the spiritual of the same title. It’s the story of enslaved people escaping to what were called Camp Contraband. And it's evoking the story of the enslaved people looking for freedom who crossed the Tennessee River to Camp Contraband, which was on the other side, which was run by Union soldiers. These were sort of safe spaces for escaping.
And in the drawings, the figure on the far end on the chair — he’s sort of tilted back. And the chair hanging up there in the water video, which is tilted forward, that symbolizes the instability of freedom. It could topple. You know, we have to work at this because it can be taken away at any time.
The exhibition "Whitfield Lovell: Passages" will be at the Mint Museum Uptown through Sept. 22. It is free for all to view this weekend. And it is free to view daily for students K-12 and for college art students.
The museum is a WFAE sponsor. Major support for WFAE's race and equity reporting comes from Novant Health.
