In summer 2023, the Barnes Foundation will present “William Edmondson: A Monumental Vision,” the first major East Coast exhibition dedicated to the work of self-taught American sculptor William Edmondson (c. 1874–1951) in decades. Though Edmondson was considered one of the most important Black artists of the American South in the early 20th century, in-depth attention to his work has been sporadic. Co-curated by the Barnes’s James Claiborne, curator of public programs, and Nancy Ireson, deputy director for collections and exhibitions and Gund Family chief curator, this exhibition sheds new light on Edmondson’s practice and artistry and explores the artist and his oeuvre within the context of African American social history.
Major support for “William Edmondson: A Monumental Vision” has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Additional support is provided by Comcast NBCUniversal, the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, and the Henry Moore Foundation. This exhibition will be on view in the Roberts Gallery from Sunday, June 25, through Sunday, Sept. 10.
Edmondson made carving his vocation around 1932, having previously worked as a hospital orderly in Nashville, Tenn. Inspired by a vision, described by the artist as a divine calling, he developed a career making headstones for the city’s Black cemeteries. Soon he expanded his repertoire to include freestanding figurative sculptures, depicting nurses, teachers, angels, and preachers. Following a solo exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1937, the institution’s first show dedicated to a Black artist, he increasingly found buyers beyond his immediate community, attracting the attention of East Coast intellectuals and collectors. As Edmondson found fame beyond Nashville, media coverage of the artist played into racialized stereotypes about the Southern Black experience, with many journalists framing Edmondson’s sculptures as the work of a “modern primitive.” Such readings may have been encouraged by how white photographers, including Louise Dahl-Wolfe and Edward Weston, captured the artist at work in the 1930s and 1940s.
More than 80 years later, “William Edmondson: A Monumental Vision” presents over 60 works by Edmondson. Acknowledging the complexities of his early critical reception, the Barnes exhibition also presents a selection of Dahl-Wolfe’s and Weston’s photographs, not as documentary evidence of Edmondson’s practice but as independent works of art that at once celebrate and romanticize their subject. The show reassesses the artist as more than a passive actor in an unfolding drama, a self-taught sculptor “discovered” by white patrons and institutions, and explores how Edmondson’s identity and position within history influenced his life and work.
This exhibition also examines the complex relationship between Black cultural production and the American museum. To further investigate this theme, acclaimed visual and movement artist Brendan Fernandes, who works at the intersections of dance and visual art, addressing cultural displacement, migration, and labor, has been commissioned to create a new work, which will activate the exhibition on select dates throughout the summer.
“Across our programs, we extend and grow Dr. Albert C. Barnes’s commitment to racial equality, social justice, and education. ‘William Edmondson: A Monumental Vision’ is representative of our commitment to presenting under-researched and under-represented artists, and to demonstrating the contemporary relevance of historic works of art,” says Thom Collins, Neubauer Family executive director and president at the Barnes. “This exhibition expands our understanding of William Edmondson as a major figure in American art and marks the first in a series of collaborations that elevate the role of performance in exhibitions. Recognizing the interpretive potential for performance to build new pathways into historical art, we are expanding and deepening our program, developing our capacity for collaboration and placing performance at the heart of exhibition development.”
Arranged thematically, the works in this exhibition are on loan from museums and private collections across the U.S., including many from the Cheekwood Estate and Gardens in Nashville, which holds the largest collection of Edmondson’s work.
“Recognizing the gaps in Dr. Barnes’s collection, we focus on presenting the voices and work of women and artists of color in our exhibition program,” added co-curator Nancy Ireson. “Through this exhibition, we seek to recontextualize William Edmondson, reinstating the importance of community in his work and rejecting narratives that oversimplify his life and practice. As we highlight Edmondson’s position in art history, questions about equity in the cultural sector arise that still resonate today, making the exhibition a space for important discussions.”
“This exhibition is our first to draw a holistic connection between the Barnes’s performance and exhibition programs,” continued co-curator James Claiborne. “By bringing Brendan Fernandes’s performance directly into the exhibition, we hope to create new and compelling points of entry for audiences and engage visitors in an active dialogue about multifaceted Black experiences across time and place. We are excited to showcase Fernandes’s new work, ‘Returning to Before,’ and witness how it brings Edmondson’s sculptures, and the stories they tell, to life in new ways.”
Catalogue
The 160-page illustrated exhibition catalogue, “William Edmondson: A Monumental Vision,” is published by the Barnes Foundation in association with Yale University Press.
The Barnes Foundation is located at 2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia.
To learn more, call 215-278-7000 or visit www.barnesfoundation.org.