Today racial disparities in the arts are being brought to the fore, leading to apologies, resignations and firings at the country’s most recognized bastions of art and culture. Margaret Carrigan in June’s Art Newspaper wrote, “Indeed, the silence of most galleries and museums about the protests has been as deafening as the sirens that have echoed through major cities across the nation.” The Black art ecosystem has now been emboldened to speak the truths about these indignities.
A new generation of artists will be the ones to document today’s experiences in a truthful and unvarnished way as Black artists did during Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement. A generation from now when a young person picks up an issue of Time magazine with Charly Palmer’s work, or Kadir Nelson’s cover for the New Yorker, they will know that these were complicated times, fraught times, and that our one goal was to move us closer to an ideal – one nation indivisible. It remains to be seen if we’ll get there.
