• If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections

2 September 2011 - 8 January 2012

Mint Museum Uptown 

 Image only available during run of exhibition Image only available during run of exhibition

Blaine Waller

Bearden's Studio on Canal Street, NYC, 10/23/76

Photography ©Blaine Waller/Licensed by VAGA, NY, NY

Falling Star.  1979

Collage with paint, ink and graphite on fiberboard

Private Collection

Art © Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, NY, NY

 

 

Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections celebrates the nearly half-century career of Charlotte-born Bearden at the centennial of his birth. Born in 1911 on Graham Street, Bearden’s childhood memories of Charlotte and the South gave inspiration to his art throughout his life. This landmark exhibition demonstrates Bearden’s mastery and illustrates his explorations of the South through more than 70 works of art drawn from public and private collections. Organized by The Mint Museum, the exhibition will travel nationally and is accompanied by a fully-illustrated exhibition catalogue. In addition, the Family Guide and Gallery Guide created by Mint Museum staff may be downloaded.

 

Participate in the MEMORY TRAIN video talkback project!  (No longer active)

 

Bearden on Bearden 

  • Interview with Bearden, 1979
    •  The interview shown below was conducted just prior to Bearden's exhibition at The Mint Museum in 1980 and is referenced in his introduction. Bearden's 1980 retrospective at the Mint was a landmark exhibition for the museum. This video is also being shown in the Bank of America Resource Center adjacent to the exhibition.

 

  

Romare Bearden Interview, Inside New York's Art World, Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel Collection, 1976-1999,

Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

©Dr. Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel

 

  • Romare Bearden Papers, 1937-1982, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
    •   Bearden's personal papers are available digitally from the Archives of American Art website and include over 2,000 images of photographs, documents, correspondence, and sketches. 
  • Bearden talks about themes and symbolism in his work in this video from SFMoMA.

 

Others on Bearden

 

Charlotte Roots 

  • Bearden visited Charlotte during the Mint Museum exhibition Romare Bearden: 1970-1980 and among other activities, visited Charlotte Country Day School and spoke with the students there. The students wrote thank you notes to Bearden following the visit. Below are images of the letter Bearden wrote in reply. The original letter is on display at Charlotte Country Day School. Many thanks to them for providing us with a copy.
 
  •  
 

  

 

Moving to New York 

Bearden's parents moved to New York City when he was just a toddler. They were just one family out of over three million African-Americans who moved from the rural South to the industrial North between 1911 and 1930. This event was know as

The Great Migration

 

Bessye Bearden 

College-educated Bessye J. Bearden became a prominent figure in Harlem society and New York politics.  She died in 1943.

 

Illustration by Charles Alston

  • A biographical sketch accompanies the finding aid to her personal papers archived with the New York Public Library. 
  • The Afro American newspaper of Baltimore is making their archives available online. Searching "Bearden" at  http://www.afro.com/afroblackhistoryarchives/  reveals over a hundred references to the activities of Bessye Bearden and her son, Romare.
  • Bessye was the New York correspondent for The Chicago Defender, one of the nation's most influential african american weekly newspapers, for several years. Their archives are available here. 

 

Young Bearden

 

Portrait of Romare Bearden by Carl Van Vechten (taken April 15, 1944)

Public domain photograph from the Library of Congress' American Memory

 

Harlem Renaissance 

  • Bearden grew up in the cultural explosion of 1920s Harlem. The Bearden home became a meeting place for Harlem Renaissance luminaries including writer Langston Hughes, painter Aaron Douglas, and musician Duke Ellington.
  • Influenced by these experiences, Bearden studied art in the 1930s, worked as a cartoonist, and became a member of the Harlem Artists Guild which devoted itself to sharpening the focus of black artists on issues of racism, poverty, and unemployment.  The Guild was started in 1935 by sculptor Augusta Savage.
  • Charles Alston, a relative of Bearden also from Charlotte, created a community art program, the Harlem Art Workshop.  Studio 306, or just “306,” became the gathering place for artists, writers, and musicians in Harlem and the heart of the second Harlem Renaissance.  Both Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden studied with Alston at 306.
  • Correspondence between Alston and Bearden. 

 

Social Activism 

  •  In 1963, Bearden formed the Spiral Group, composed of African American artists who sought to make a contribution to the civil rights movement. Other artists in the group included Hale Woodruff, Norman Lewis, Felrath Hines, Alsvin Hollingsworth, Reginald Gammon, Merton Simpson, Richard Mayhew, William Majors, Earl Miller, Perry Ferguson, Calvin Douglass and Emma Amos.  It was during this time Bearden developed his collage technique.
  • Invitation for the first Spiral exhibition, Works in Black and White, in 1965.  Bearden had suggested the exhibition's black-and-white theme because it comprised both socio-political and formal concerns.
  • Curator from Birmingham Museum of Art Emma Hanna discusses the exhibition, Spiral: Perspectives on an African-American Art Collective.  
  • Until his retirement in 1969, Bearden worked as a social worker with the New York City Department of Social Services specializing in cases within the gypsy community, working on his art at night and on weekends.
  • In 1964 Bearden was appointed the first art director of the newly established Harlem Cultural Council, a prominent African-American advocacy group, and served as an active spokesman and writer on artistic and social issues.
  • He was involved in founding several important art venues, such as The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Cinque Gallery which supported young minority artists.

 

Learning about Bearden

 

Notable Exhibitions

  • The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition Romare Bearden: The Prevalence of Ritual ran from March 25 - June 7, 1971 and was the first retrospective of his work. A press release about the exhibition may be viewed here.
  • Romare Bearden 1970-1980 was The Mint Museum's first major Bearden exhibition. The exhibition focused primarily on Bearden's collages, which exploded into full expression in the seventies.  Following this exhibition, Romare Bearden in Black and White: The Photomontage of 1964 was shown in 1998, which provided insight into Bearden's earliest uses of collage. The most recent exhibition at The Mint Museum was Recollections of Charlotte's Own: Romare Bearden in 2002. 
  • In 2003, the retrospective The Art of Romare Bearden was exhibited at the National Gallery of Art.  This exhibition, the most comprehensive retrospective of Bearden's work ever, explored the complexity and scope of Bearden's art.  

                                   

   

Exhibition catalogues for Romare Bearden 1970-1980 and Charlotte's Own: Romare Bearden 

                

 

Selected Print Resources from The Mint Museum Library

Co-authored with Harry Henderson, the book details the lives of major black artists and is arranged chronologically and by artistic similarities.  Although there is no specific section of Bearden and his work, he is mentioned in reference to the artists included as influenced by and influential to them.

The catalogue for the exhibition of the same name includes essays by Albert Murray and Dore Ashton, reproductions of the images in the exhibition, and a complete list of all Bearden's works produced from 1970 through 1980. 

        The catalogue for the exhibition, includes contributions by Carla M. Hanzal, curator of the exhibition; Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Jae Emerling, Leslie King-Hammond,

        Mary Lee Cortlett, Ruth Fine and Myron Schwartzman.  Also includes color images and a chronological list of works in the exhibition.  

Published to accompany the 2003 retrospective at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, it includes examples of Bearden's works; collages, photostats, paintings, book illustrations, murals, and his only known sculpture, as well as essays by Ruth Fine, the curator of the exhibition, among others. 

 

Other print resources can be accessed through MARCO, the Mint Art Research Catalog Online. 

 

 

                    

 

Romare Bearden:Southern Recollections is made possible with generous support from Duke Energy and Wells Fargo.  Additional funding is provided by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Organized by The Mint Museum.

Media Sponsor: Our State Magazine.

___________________________