MONTGOMERY, AL.- The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts is considering how art has been used to protest, process, mourn and memorialize racially motivated attacks against African Americans in A Site of Struggle: American Art against Anti-Black Violence, on view Aug. 13-Nov. 6. Organized by The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, the exhibition includes more than 50 works in a wide range of media that span more than a century.

Conceived in 2016, A Site of Struggle takes a new approach to looking at the intersection of race, violence and art by examining how American artists have grappled with anti-Black violence from the anti-lynching campaigns of the 1890s to the founding of Black Lives Matter in 2013. The current national reckoning on racial violence continues to inform this project.

Montgomery, Alabama is a city with a deep civil rights history that currently acts as a national and international forum on racial injustice. Since the 1980s, the MMFA has offered exhibitions and programs meant to push the institution in the direction of diversity and inclusion. More recently, the MMFA has aligned its priorities to address engagement and sustainability along with the Museum's new DEAI initiatives, said Angie Dodson, MMFA's director.

Among the artists included in A Site of Struggle are Laylah Ali (b.1968), George Bellows (1882-1925), Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012), Darryl Cowherd (b. 1940), Ernest Crichlow (1914-2005), Melvin Edwards (b. 1937), Theaster Gates (b. 1973), Ken Gonzales-Day (b. 1964), Norman Lewis (1909-1979), Kerry James Marshall (b. 1955), Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), Howardena Pindelll (b. 1943), Carl and Karen Pope (b. 1961), Paul Rucker (b. 1968), Alison Saar (b. 1956), Lorna Simpson (b. 1960), Dox Thrash (1893-1965), Carrie Mae Weems (b. 1953), Pat Ward Williams (b. 1948) and Hale Woodruff (American, 1900-1980).




A Site of Struggle is curated by Janet Dees, the Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum curator of modern and contemporary art at The Block, with the assistance of Alisa Swindell, associate curator of photography at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, and former curatorial research associate at The Block.

The exhibition explores how art history can help inform the understanding of the deep roots of racial violence. "From realism to abstraction, from direct to more subtle approaches, American artists have developed a century of tools and creative strategies to stand against enduring images of African American suffering and death. Contemporary artists taking on this subject are doing so within a long and rich history of American art and visual culture that has sought to contend with the realities of anti-Black violence," Dees said.

In the creation of A Site of Struggle, Dees convened a national group of established and emerging scholars and museum professionals to consult on the themes, content and format of the exhibition. Critical discussions about the gallery installation of the exhibition centered around how to responsibly present this challenging material and offer a structure of care for audiences. These best practices include limiting the number of works in the space to provide visual and psychological rest, controlling the sight lines to the most graphic works and offering numerous opportunities for respite and quiet reflection. Additional resources will provide information about community support and access to social justice organizations.

Partnerships with various community groups and leaders along with planned actions allow the MMFA to engage with the community at its heart and to have them involved more fully in the life of the Museum. Projects like A Site of Struggle reflect the core values of the MMFA: generating partnerships, elevating voices that express multiple points of view and uncovering different stories through new interpretations of American art.

"We are grateful to The Block Museum of Art for creating - so very thoughtfully - A Site of Struggle and for their above-and-beyond commitment to bringing it to Alabama to inform southern audiences' understanding and inspire our active reflection," said Dodson. "Our intention is that this transformative exhibition serves as an important stepping stone in the institution's social justice journey, one that creates opportunities to strengthen our ties to the community and unite our work with that of other kindred organizations engaged in equity and inclusion."