Drawn to progress via an artistic canvas

AMERICAN FEDERATION OF THE ARTS

Whitfield Lovell’s “Deep River” is made up of 56 wooden discs, found objects, soil, video projections, sound, dimensions variable.

A showcase of Black Americans’ social progress from emancipation to the civil rights movement will be on display at the Mint Museum Uptown.

“Whitfield Lovell: Passages” uses drawings, three-dimensional storytelling, assemblages, and multisensory installations to tell undertold Black history that raise questions about identity, memory, and American heritage. The exhibition, organized by the American Federation of Arts and Lovell, will fill galleries on Level 3 and Level 4 of Mint Museum Uptown from June 29–Sept. 22, 2024. Museum admission is free June 29-30.

Charlotte is one of six stops for the national exhibition tour.

Lovell, a 2007 MacArthur Foundation fellowship recipient, is best known for installations that merge Conté crayon portraits and photography of Black Americans between the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Movement. Lovell often pairs his subjects with found objects to spark personal memories, ancestral connections, and the past.

Passages references a central theme of Lovell’s work that explores Black Americans’ fight for equality and agency.

“For Lovell, the design of the exhibition is integral to the experience he wants to transmit to his audiences,” said Jen Sudul Edwards PhD, chief curator and curator of contemporary art at the Mint Museum. “While this is a traveling show, Lovell and his team work closely with each institution, so each iteration best relays the intention of his work.”

The exhibition brings together for the first time a pair of Lovell’s immersive installations: “The Richmond Project” (2001) and “Deep River” (2013). With a combination of video projections, sounds of lapping water and bird calls, a mound of soil, music, drawings, and everyday objects, “Deep River” documents the perils runaway slaves braved crossing the Tennessee River during the Civil War.

The Richmond Project pays homage to the first major Black entrepreneurial community in Richmond, Va.’s Jackson Ward community. Through a series of domestic interior settings, the installation pays tribute to the lives, names, and faces of the people who lived in the neighborhood.

The exhibition also includes works from Lovell’s “Kin” (2008-2011) and “The Reds” (2021-2022), which is presented alongside a pair of telephones that play “Lift Every Voice and Sing” when their receivers are lifted.
Lovell joins Edwards June 27 at the Mint to discuss “Whitfield Lovell: Passages” and the process and motivations behind Lovell’s work. The forum is free.

The exhibition is free for Mint Museum members and people age 18 and younger; $15 for adults; $10 for seniors ages 65 and older and college students with ID. Admission is free 5-9 p.m. on Wednesdays. Purchase tickets at mintmuseum.org.

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