Find the Best Things

Exhibition - The Time Is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure

Monday, November 18, 2024 from 10:00am to 05:00pm

Philadelphia Museum of Art

2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway

Philadelphia, PA, 19130

Website

This exhibition features 28 Black and African diasporic contemporary artists who use figurative painting, drawing and sculpture to illuminate and celebrate the nuance and richness of Black contemporary life.

Curated by British writer and curator Ekow Eshun, The Time Is Always Now takes its title from an essay on desegregation by American writer and social rights activist James Baldwin. It highlights a sense of urgency around contemporary artistic expression, while acting as a reminder that Black artists exist within an always-evolving artistic lineage.

The more than 60 contemporary works featured in this exhibition unfold around three core themes: Double Consciousness, The Persistence of History and Our Aliveness. Double Consciousness, a theory first introduced in 1897 by the African American sociologist W.E.B Du Bois, explores concepts of being, belonging and Blackness as a psychological state. The Persistence of History explores the absence of Black figures in many mainstream narratives and shows how artists have responded. Our Aliveness features assertions and celebrations of Black assembly and gathering.

Traveling to the Philadelphia Museum of Art from the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Black and African diasporic artists in this exhibition work in the U.S. and the U.K. They include Michael Armitage, Claudette Johnson, Kerry James Marshall, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Amy Sherald. For the show’s U.S. premiere, additional artists working in Philadelphia, London, and New York have been added, including Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, Robert Lugo, Danielle Mckinney, Deborah Roberts, and Arthur Timothy.

Location: Main Building


Exhibition - The Time Is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure is not affiliated with AmericanTowns Media
Upcoming Events
Select a Pennsylvania town to find
the Best Things To Do and Places To Go around you