NORFOLK, VA..- This fall, the Chrysler Museum of Art will present Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club, the debut museum presentation of Jacob Lawrence’s Nigeria series of paintings and drawings—and the first in-depth look at the international artists who were members of the renowned Mbari Artists and Writers Club, many of whom Lawrence met during an extended stay in Nigeria in 1964. These artists, including Lawrence, contributed to Black Orpheus, a radical arts and culture journal published in Nigeria between 1957 and 1975.

After opening at the Chrysler Museum from October 8, 2022, to January 8, 2023, the exhibition will travel to the New Orleans Museum of Art from February 10 to May 7, 2023, followed by the Toledo Museum of Art from June 3 to September 3, 2023.

“This exhibition explores an incredible moment in the global exchange of ideas, when people and countries around the world were fighting for independence from colonialism and when the civil rights movement was achieving success in the United States,” said Kimberli Gant, Ph.D., the exhibition’s co-curator and the Chrysler Museum of Art’s former McKinnon Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, now Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum. “Traveling to Africa twice in the early 1960s, Jacob Lawrence connected to a vibrant crosscurrent of political and social ideas circulating there, as richly illustrated by the writing and art featured in Black Orpheus. Those artists, in turn, were adapting and integrating modernist theories of art with their local styles, customs, and life experiences. The results can be seen in Lawrence’s less-well known Nigeria series—and in the remarkable array of works in this show that represent the global south during a period of transition.”

The exhibition is organized into five sections to guide viewers from the singularity of Lawrence’s series, to the Jacob Lawrence (American, 1917–2000), Market Scene, 1966, Gouache on paper, Museum purchase, 2018.22 © Jacob Lawrence / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York diversity of the Mbari Club artists, and then further into the artists working in the global south during this period.

● In the first section, named for Lawrence’s Nigeria series, viewers will see the artist’s representation of the country through depictions of its splendid markets, complex communities, and permeable spiritual practices. The section also includes archival images of Lawrence and his wife during their travels and original correspondence from Lawrence about his experiences.

● Artists of Osogbo presents the works of numerous Nigerian artists who are less well-known to American audiences, including Duro Ladipo, Twins Seven-Seven, Muraina Oyelami, Asir Olatunde, Jacob Afolabi, and Adebisi Akanji, all of whom were featured in Mbari Club galleries and in Black Orpheus journals. These artists learned a range of artistic traditions—printmaking, batik textiles and painting—from older generations of both non-Western and Western artists and inspired younger generations.




● The section The Zaria Art Society focuses on a small group of Nigerian artists like Uche Okeke, Demas Nwoko, and Bruce Onobrakpeya who met at the National College of Art & Technology and developed a philosophy called “natural synthesis,” where the artists incorporated local aesthetics and cultural traditions with Western-style art techniques to create a new modern art form. Their work also provided illustrations for short stories featured in Black Orpheus.

The exhibition’s final two sections draw out artistic themes being explored by artists elsewhere on the African continent—and in other parts of the world.

● Across the African Continent features original art from the Black Orpheus journals, which were the nucleus for features and exhibition reviews about modernist artists in the region and around the world. The journals featured incredible works of art created by Mbari Club members and others, either for the cover or inside, including the Kenyan artist Hezbon Owiti, Mozambican artist and poet Malangatana Ngwenya, Ghanaian artist Vincent Kofi, El-Salahi and Ahmed Shibrain, two members of the Sudanese Khartoum School, and the Ethiopian artist Skunder Boghossian. These artists—often trained in European art styles—featured iconography and stories from their own cultures as new modes of artistic expression.

● Beyond the African Continent includes artists working primarily in the global south, whose creations were the result of similar forms of artistic—and political—discovery as their counterparts in Africa, reinforcing the importance of Black Orpheus and the Mbari Artists and Writers Club in the broader exchange of ideas. Presented are works from artists such as Avandrish Chandra from India, Genaro de Carvalho and Agnaldo Mano el dos Santos from Brazil, and William H. Johnson from the United States, highlighting the commonalities of people around the world in the fight for freedom.

“The themes of self-representation, freedom, and independence have been motivating for artists for generations, and they are at the heart of this exhibition, from Jacob Lawrence’s Nigeria series, to the diverse artists of the Mbari Artists and Writers Club,” said Erik Neil, the Macon and Joan Brock Director of the Chrysler Museum of Art. “This exhibition demonstrates that these artists and their works continue to resonate globally today. We are thrilled to co-organize and present this ambitious exhibition, giving Lawrence’s series its long-overdue museum presentation and putting this astounding array of African and other artists in the spotlight.”

JACOB LAWRENCE IN NIGERIA
Jacob Lawrence and his wife, Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence, first traveled to Africa in 1962, starting in Nigeria, to present an exhibition of work from several of his series: Migration, Under the Black Belt, and War. His plan was to introduce Africans to moments in African American history that he hoped would resonate with them, featuring themes of joy and sorrow, oppression and triumph. While there, he met with artists affiliated with the legendary Mbari Artists and Writers Club, from visual artists like Bruce Onobrakpeya and Vincent Kofi, to writers such as Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe, who were themselves exploring and critiquing Western art traditions and publishing their work in the groundbreaking journal Black Orpheus.

In 1964, the Lawrences returned to Nigeria for a nine-month stay, again meeting with contemporaries—and during which time he finalized his more than 25 works Nigeria series. In this series, he explored themes of spirituality and community, often centered on the marketplace, a crucial gathering place in Nigerian culture. After returning to the United States, this series was presented at his New York dealer’s gallery in 1965—but has not been shown together in its entirety since then.

Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club is co-organized by the Chrysler Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art and curated by Kimberli Gant, Ph.D., the Chrysler Museum of Art’s former McKinnon curator of modern and contemporary art who was named the curator of modern and contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum earlier this year, and by Ndubuisi Ezeluomba, Ph.D., the New Orleans Museum of Art’s Françoise Billion Richardson curator of African art.