Among Others: Blackness at MoMA

Author: Darby English (Author, Editor), Charlotte Barat (Author, Editor), Mabel Wilson (Contributor)
Publisher: The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Year: 2019
Pages: 488
ISBN: 978-1633450349

Among Others: Blackness at MoMA is the first substantial exploration of a major museum's uneven historical relationship with black artists, black audiences, and the broader subject of racial blackness. More than two hundred works from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, produced either by black artists or in response to race-related subjects, are reproduced in this volume, each accompanied by newly commissioned writing from a wide array of acclaimed authors. These plates are preceded by two historical essays: the first, by Charlotte Barat and Darby English, traces the history of MoMA's encounters with race since its founding, from an early commitment to African art, and solo exhibitions devoted to artists such as William Edmondson and Jacob Lawrence, in the 1930s and 1940s, through the Museum's activities during the period of the Civil Rights Movement, to the controversial Primitivism show of 1984 and beyond; the second, by Mabel O. Wilson, scrutinizes MoMA's record in collecting the work of black architects and designers. Among Others confronts two kinds of truth: one factual, the other moral. Equal parts historical investigation and truth telling, this book is a searching examination of MoMA's history in the cultural politics of race.