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We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85

We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 is an exhibition held in the Brooklyn Museum of Art from April 21, 2017 through September 17, 2017. Exhibition surveys in the last twenty years of black female art and presents more than forty artists and activists who decided to dedicate their work to the fight against racism, sexism, homophobia, and class injustice. It is not organized chronologically or by authorship, but thematically.

Black Lunch Table: We Wanted A Revolution Roundtable. Dindga McCannon explains her work and her archive at the Brooklyn Museum at the exhibition We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 after a roundtable discussion with other black women artists at Black Lunch Table event.

Black Lunch Table: We Wanted A Revolution Roundtable. Women visual artists of the African Diaspora meet at the Brooklyn Museum to discuss their work and the world in honor of the exhibition, We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85. not in order: Coreen Simpson, Chanel, Thervil, Marilyn Nance, Vivian Crockett, Nicole Charles, Alva Rogers, Kathe Sandler, Michelle Archange, Aisha Cousins, Shalewa Mackall, Jasmine Sykes-Kunk, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, Ming Smith, Dindga McCannon, Aisha Tandiwe Bell, Lehna Huie, Noelle Flores Theard, Maren Hassinger, Roxanna Allen, IfeMichelle Gardin, Jae Jarrell, Julie Dash, Sia Mensah, Margaret Rose Vendryes, Janet Olivia Henry, Clarivel Ruiz, Kecia Jefferson, Sana Musasama, Heather Hart

An exhibit

We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 is organized by Catherine Morris, Sackler Family Senior Curator for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, and Rujeko Hockley, former Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, with Allie Rickard, Curatorial Assistant, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition is part of A Year of Yes: Reimagining Feminism at the Brooklyn Museum, a yearlong series of exhibitions celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Leadership support is provided by Elizabeth A. Sackler, the Ford Foundation, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Anne Klein, the Calvin Klein Family Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Mary Jo and Ted Shen, and an anonymous donor. Generous support is also provided by Annette Blum, the Taylor Foundation, the Antonia and Vladimir Kulaev Cultural Heritage Fund, Beth Dozoretz, The Cowles Charitable Trust, and Almine Rech Gallery.

Within the varieties of medias are conceptual art, performance, film, and video, printmaking, photography, and painting. Despite the huge differentiation between the mediums, the goal of the vocalizing back female artist and bringing up the notion of oppression of black female or non-binary artists in art world and in culture unites the artworks of the exhibition.We Wanted a Revolution consists of nine sections, where each section is referring to a specific theme or media.

Spiral and The Black Arts Movement

Spiral is a group of the black artists that was active between 1963 and 1965. It was formed by Romare Bearden,Norman Lewis, Hale Woodruff and Charles Alston on July 5, 1963.

Emma Amos, born 1938

Emma Amos was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1938. She is an African American postmodernist painter and printmaker. Some of her works were exhibited including:

• Flower Sniffer, 1966
• Sandy and Her Husband, 1973

Elizabeth Catlett, 1915–2012

Elizabeth Catlett was an Mexican-American Modernist sculptor whose subject was ofter concentrated on black female experience. Elizabeth was born in Washington, D.C.

• Homage to My Young Black Sisters,1968

Jeff Donaldson,1932–2004

Jeff Donaldson was an African-American visual artist of the Black Arts Movement.

• Wives of Shango, 1969
• "Africobra: African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists; 10 in Search of a Nation" Black World 19, no. 12 (October 1970)

Rudy Irwin (Baba Kachenga), d. 1969

• WEUSI Art Creators, undated

Jae Jarrell, born 1935

• Ebony Family, 1968
• Urban Wall Suit, 1969

Wadsworth A. Jarrell, born 1929

• Revolutionary, 1971

Lois Mailou Jones, 1905-1998

• Ode to Kinshasa, 1972
• Ubi Girl from Tai Region,1972

Lary Neal, 1937-1981

• "Any Day Now: Black Art and Black Liberation", Ebony (August 1969)

Faith Ringgold, born 1930

• Early Works #25: Self-Portrait, 1965

Jeanne Siegel, 1929-2013

• "Why Spiral?" Artnews 65, no.5 (September 1966)
• First Group Showing: Works in Black and White, 1963
• Jet, 1971
• Weusi Group Portrait, 1970s
  

Prints and Posters

Emma Amos, born 1938

• Summer 1968, 1968

Kay Brown, 1932-2012

• Sister with Braids, late 1960s - early 1970s
• Willowbrook,1972

Elizabeth Catlett, 1915–2012

• Malcolm X Speaks for Us, 1969
• Harriet, 1975
• There Is a Woman in Every Color, 1975
• Madonna, 1982

Barbara Jones-Hogu, born 1938

• I'm Better Than These Motherfuckers, 1970
• Nation Time, 1970
• Relate to Your Heritage, 1971
• Unite, 1971
• Black Men We Need You, 1971

Carolyn Lawrence, born 1940

• Uphold Your Men, 1971

Samella Lewis, born 1924

• Family, 1967
• Field, 1968

"Where We At" Black

Public Programs

Symposium was held in the Brooklyn Museum of Art on April 21, 2017. As a part of the exhibition events, the acknowledged art historian Kellie Jones, author and feminist theory scholar Aruna D'Souza and black cultural studies academic Uri McMillan gave speeches and participated in a panel discussion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_kSzPMoPNI

Reception and Criticism

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/arts/design/review-we-wanted-a-revolution-black-radical-women-brooklyn-museum.html

The several dozen artists whose work is featured in this superlative survey did not conform to one style, but they did share urgent concerns, often addressing issues of bias and exclusion in their art—and in their art-world organizing. The Just Above Midtown Gallery (JAM), a crucial New York institution of the black avant-garde, was instrumental to the careers of a number of them, including Lorraine O’Grady, whose sardonic pageant gown made of countless white gloves—the artist wore it in guerrilla performances at gallery openings—is a wonder. There is much powerful photography on view, from Ming Smith’s spontaneous portraits of Harlemites in the seventies to Lorna Simpson and Carrie Mae Weems’s poignant pairings of image and text, from the eighties. But the ephemera—the fascinating documentation and spirited newsletters—provide the exhibition’s glue, presenting the women not as anomalous achievers but as part of a formidable movement. — The New Yorker

Morris and Hockley, co-editors and curators, describe their exhibition as “a timely historical corrective: a presentation of radical approaches to feminist thinking that were developed by women of color simultaneously with, and often in opposition to, the more widely acknowledged views promoted by second-wave feminism.” This point of opposition that Morris and Hockley describe is acutely driven through Toni Morrison’s 1971 essay “What the Black Woman Thinks About Women’s Lib,” included in the Sourcebook. Morrison dismantles the motivations and goals of the Women’s Liberation Movement, which was largely comprised of second-wave, middle class white women feminists.

Publications

Two books were publish as a part of the scholarship program for the exhibition.

Black Radical Women, 1965–85: A Sourcebook

The book was first published in 2017 as an exhibition catalogue. It contains thirty-eight reproductions of articles, poems, interviews and other texts by or about the artists of the exhibition. The book provides the reader with the perspectives of the black female art and black culture in general that were most prioritized by the exhibition. The publication was intended for the scholars or students of art history, however, is accessible to a general reader.

We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85: New Perspectives

This book is a compilation of creative works from the second wave of feminist persuasion. The featured contributors embrace the intersection of gender bias, social injustice, and racial hatred. The narratives highlight the challenges, triumphs, and the human spirit of African American women in their journey to be heard, seen, and appreciated for their contributions to the world of art.

Sponsorship and Funding

The exhibition was funded by the Ford Foundation, the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation, the Brooklyn Museum’s Contemporary Art Acquisitions Committee, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, and the Barbara Lee Family Foundation.