"Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today" October 13, 2017 - January 21, 2018. National Museum of Women in the Arts.

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Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today 

"Featuring work by twenty-one artists born between 1891 and 1981, Magnetic Fields places abstract works by multiple generations of black women artists in context with one another—and within the larger history of abstract art—for the first time. Evocative prints, unconventional sculptures, and monumental paintings reveal the artists’ role as unrecognized leaders in abstraction."

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Post Review

"A new exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts confronts two false assumptions embedded in the art world. First, that women should make feminine art, and second, that African American artists should make figurative and “activist” art, works that confront issues of race, inequality, injustice and the long history of violence against black people.

“Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today” focuses on black female artists who work beyond or outside those dictates. The work includes fiery abstractions made with clotted oceans of paint and delicate prints with hues of pink and refined tracery. Some paintings burst off the walls and dominate the space; others intimate silence and draw the viewer ever closer to their enigmatic reticence. But all defy aesthetic expectations rooted in the arbitrary categories of race and gender."