Reckoning

Explores the powerful ways in which visual art has long provided its own rich outlet for protest, commentary, escape, and perspective for African Americans.

This important book showcases the potent role of visual art in African American protest history. Featuring Black artists working in a range of media, from photography to sculpture to painting—including Amy Sherald, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Sheila Pree Bright, Bisa Butler, Shaun Leonard, and David Hammons, to name just a few—the book considers art that exemplifies resilience in times of conflict, as well as the ritual of creation, and the defiant pleasure of healing.

Reckoning explores the ongoing struggles Black Americans have faced in their pursuit to enjoy the fundamental rights and freedoms promised in the Constitution to citizens of the United States. Drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, the featured works respond to the dual crises of Covid-19 and systemic racism that shaped 2020, a period that has been called one of reckoning, as the world witnessed the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other African Americans, leading to some of the largest protests in US history.