Full Description
Vivian Browne's
(1929-1993) varied career spanned more than three decades, from her early
portraits and landscapes in the late 1950s and early '60s, her Little Men
series of 1966-69, to her final San Joaquin and King's Canyon paintings of the
very early 1990s, completed just before her death. This highly active career
was framed by Browne's lasting political engagement and activism, that included
being an initial director of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC),
born out of a response to the Metropolitan Museum's failure to include a single
Black Harlem-based artist in its 1969 exhibition, Harlem on My Mind, and her
active memberships of Where We At (WWA), the Women's Caucus for Art (WCA), and
the feminist art collective Heresies, from the early 1970s until her death in
1993.
This volume presents
about 62 paintings, prints, and works on paper across several major bodies of
work, alongside ephemera highlighting Browne's enduring activism and teaching
work. Drawing upon previously unknown works and archives that have recently become
available, this is a significant contribution to the history of twentieth
century American art.
Contents
Director's
Foreword; Acknowledgments;
Illustrated Timeline by Ethel Renia; Portraits; Undated Artist Statement; New
Yorkers Series; Highlights from Vivian Browne's Art and Activism by Amara
Antilla; Little Men Series; Intangible: Vivian Browne and the African
Experience by Adrienne L. Childs; Africa; "The Other Things That Are" by Darby
English; Abstractions; Excerpt from the essay "Vivian Browne and William T.
Williams" by Lowery S. Sims; Artist Statement, 1988; Landscapes; Notes; List of
Works; List of Lenders.
