ATLANTA (December 16, 2024) -- Spelman College Museum of Fine Art presents We Say What Black This Is, an exhibition showcasing mixed media and watercolor paintings by MacArthur award-winning artist Amanda Williams. The new exhibit opens February 7, 2025, and will be on view through May 24, 2025.
We Say What Black This Is challenges reductive definitions of Blackness, instead celebrating its diversity, resilience and depth. The exhibition features works from Williams' series What Black is this, You Say?, created in response to the ‘Blackout Tuesday’ social media moment in 2020. The exhibit will include a new abstract painting by Williams and student-written didactic labels. Each piece explores cultural, social and political dimensions of Black identity, particularly how Black spaces are formed, defined and erased.
“Amanda Williams is one of the most engaging artists of our time -- as a painter, an architect and someone focused on culture and community,” said Dr. Liz Andrews, executive director of the Spelman Museum. “The Spring 2025 Spelman Museum exhibition We Say What Black This Is will engage the depths of Williams’ abstract paintings alongside works by other artists and words from students of Spelman and the HBCUs in Atlanta.”
Curated by Curator in Residence Karen Comer Lowe, We Say What Black This Is will explore the richness of Williams' abstract paintings, featuring contributions from Spelman College students and the students from the AUC Art Collective in Atlanta.
At the core of We Say What Black This Is is a collaboration of students from Spelman College, Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University. The students, who participated in a course on Williams’ work in Spring 2024, helped develop thematic frameworks and engaged with the artist’s studio practice. Their unique and fresh perspectives added an innovative and creative touch to the exhibition. The class was taught by Spelman’s Inaugural Director of Arts and Visual Culture Dr. Cheryl Finley, and Dr. Lowe.
The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art will also show a recently acquired painting by Williams. This key work, What black is this you say?—"El Español es tu lengua materna pero estás orgullosa de tus raíces Africanas."—black,” is an abstract painting that will be shown publicly for the first time. It encapsulates the intersection of African and Latinx identities, emphasizing the complexity of Blackness.
The exhibition showcases Williams’ abstract paintings alongside works by prominent artists from Atlanta collections, including Beverly Buchanan, Deborah Roberts, Sheila Pree Bright, and Ming Washington, among others. This presentation provides diverse perspectives of Black identity. Through Williams’s mastery of space, color, and language—and in dialogue with both historic and contemporary African American artists—the exhibition invites viewers to reflect on the multifaceted nature of Blackness in America.
To learn more about the Spelman College Museum, visit museum.spelman.edu.
About the Artist
Amanda Williams (b. 1974, Evanston, IL) lives and works in Chicago, IL. Williams received a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University, NY in 1997. Amanda Williams' practice deconstructs the physical and psychological systems of inequity. Informed by her architectural background, Williams’ command of space shapes her meditations on race, color, and value. Drawing from an array of source material and using color as an operative logic to interpret the elusive meaning of ‘blackness,’ Williams complicates readings of our spatial surroundings. With a multidisciplinary practice that spans painting, works on paper, photography, sculpture and installation, Williams communicates through a chromatic language of abstract and material means.
Williams has exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale; MCA Chicago, IL; MoMA, NY; and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, among others. Her work resides in public collections including MoMA, NY, The Art Institute of Chicago, IL and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, NY. Williams serves on the boards of the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and is a founding member of the Black Reconstruction Collective. Williams is co-author of a forthcoming permanent monument to Shirley Chisholm in Brooklyn, NY and is the recipient of the USA Ford Fellowship, a Joan Mitchell Foundation award, a Chicagoan of the Year, and most recently was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow.
Media Contact:
Denise Ward, Associate Vice President for Public Relations and Communications, Spelman College : 404.270.5899, deniseward@spelman.edu
Brandy Pettijohn, PhD, Curator of Exhibitions, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art : 404.270.3533, brandypettijohn@spelman.edu
Press Preview:
Thursday, February 6, 2025
6 – 8 pm
Please RSVP to publicrelations@spelman.edu. Please note that Spelman College will close for Winter Break on December 18, 2024, and will reopen on January 2, 2025.
On View:
February 7 - May 24, 2025, at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, on the first floor of the Camille Olivia Hanks Cosby, Ed.D., Academic Center
Public Opening:
February 7, 2025
6 – 8 pm
Museum Hours:
Sunday Closed
Monday Closed
Tuesday Closed
Wednesday 12 pm - 5 pm
Thursday 12 pm - 5 pm
Friday 12 pm - 5 pm
Saturday 12 pm – 5 pm
Featured:
Painting 1:
Amanda Williams - What black is this you say?—"El Español es tu lengua materna pero estás orgullosa de tus raices Africanas."-black (08.05.20) v2. Oil, mixed media on wood panel 60" x 60". Collection of Spelman College Museum of Fine Art. Photo by: Mike Jensen
Painting 2:
Amanda Williams: What black is this you say?—"You secretly believe praying over your smothered pork chops reduces the risk of hypertension and calories" - black, (study 06.06.20). Oil, mixed media on wood panel 20" x 20". Collection of Mark J. Bevington. Image courtesy of the artist, Rhona Hoffman Gallery and Casey Kaplan, New York