CINCINNATI, OH.-The Taft Museum of Art presents an exhibition of contemporary African American art titled Black is a Color: African-American Art from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, on view September 23-November 20, 2005. An exhibition featuring the extraordinary magnitude and diversity of African American art will commence a new season at the Taft Museum of Art in Black Is a Color: African-American Art from the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

The show from the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is on view from September 23 through November 20 and showcases 44 complex and poignant works in a variety of media including paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and photographs by African American artists since the 1960s.

The exhibition comprises a wide range of artistic themes. Some of the featured works were created purely for aesthetics, while others address issues that have historically occupied African American artists: racial and cultural identity, heritage, protest, and spirituality. Many of them pose reoccurring questions that cut across these themes: Is there such a thing as black art? If so, what is it? And, must it obviously reflect African American identity?

The exhibition takes its title from artist Raymond Saunders' 1967 pamphlet, Black Is a Color. In that publication, he asserted that "Racial hang-ups are extraneous to art ...Can't we get clear of these degrading limitations, and recognize the wider reality of art, where color is a means and not the end?" Saunders argued that African American artists should be able to express themselves without being restricted to representational art that celebrates blackness or black identity.

Among the artists whose careers exemplify this approach is the minimalist sculptor Martin Puryear whose work focuses on form, rather than symbolic representation. Puryear's Blue Blood (1979), a polychromed pine and cedar loop, is more concerned with the physicality of the materials than with a black aesthetic or "traditional African American themes."

Black Is a Color provides an opportunity to consider individual works of art within a variety of contexts and from a number of different perspectives.

The exhibition includes such prominent artists as David Driskell, Raymond Saunders, Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker, Sam Gilliam, Robert Colescott, Renée Stout, Martin Puryear, Radcliffe Bailey and Mel Edwards.

Although the Taft Museum of Art does not own a contemporary African American collection, the Museum celebrates the contribution of African American artists in its murals by Robert S. Duncanson. Duncanson was a 19th-century landscape artist, who was one of the first African American artists to win international recognition.

This exhibition is organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art and is supported by the Exxon Mobil Foundations. Black Is a Color is sponsored locally by Warrington Exhibition Endowment, Oliver Family Foundation, and Macys.