About The Art

The exhibition, A Spark of Genius: Legacy & Lineage, African American Art from the Butler, opens February 22 at The Butler Institute of American Art. The event showcases art by African American artists drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection and is curated by Dr. Dee Banks.

Purchased in 1989 by then director Dr. Louis Zona, the Sam Gilliam piece, “Mars at Angles,” measures 232×186” and is considered by experts to be one of his masterpieces. The painting was rediscovered in the basement in the Museum’s climate-controlled storage area, where it sat untouched for approximately 30 years.

“We are thrilled to be able to showcase some of the great works by African American artists from the permanent collection of the Butler,” stated Larry W. Jones, Interim Director. “We are especially excited for people to see the Sam Gilliam piece, which is incredibly impressive by its size but also because of its importance. We will be the envy of every major museum in the U.S.”

This exhibition explores historic and postwar American art from the Black perspective. In addition to the Sam Gilliam, featured will be Fall Fisherman by Robert Scott Duncanson (1821-1872), the first African American artist to achieve international recognition in the fine arts. Included in the story of African American art are such remarkably talented artists as Chicago sculptor Richard Hunt, who is celebrated as one of the most prolific public sculptors in the U.S., Boston’s multi-talented John Wilson, and Elizabeth Catlett whose activist work was profoundly personal and political.

Other significant artists include the popular portraitist D. Norman Tilllman, Horace Pippin whose works would one day inspire Jackson Pollock, and Romare Bearden whose art was inspired by his life in Harlem. Also, nationally known Alfred Bright, Youngstown legends Bill Dotson and Maple Turner III, will be featured along with many major visual artists.

In celebration of the show’s opening, the Butler has commissioned a limited-edition Jacob Lawrence t-shirt available in the museum store.

About Sam Gilliam

Sam Gilliam (b. 1933–d. 2022) was one of the great innovators in postwar American painting. He emerged from the Washington, D.C., art scene in the mid-1960s with works that both elaborated upon and disrupted the ethos of Color School painting. A series of formal breakthroughs led to his canonical Drape paintings, which expanded the tenets of Abstract Expressionism in entirely new ways. By suspending lengths of unstretched painted canvas from walls and ceilings, Gilliam transformed the ways paintings could occupy space. For an African American artist working in the nation’s capital at the height of the Civil Rights movement, this was not merely an aesthetic proposition but a redefinition of art’s role within a society undergoing dramatic change. Throughout his career, he remained committed to experimentation, drawing inspiration from the improvisational spirit of jazz; his lyrical abstractions embody a wide variety of forms, moods, and materials.

LOCATION: Davis Gallery, second level.