Black Expressions exhibit closing reception
Join us on Thursday, May 12, 2022, at Memorial Union’s Class of 1925 Gallery to celebrate Black Expressions: 50 Years of Black Student Artists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The artists and curator will be in community at the gallery.
From 5:30-6:00 p.m., a virtual and in-person artist talk will take place. See below for Zoom link for virtual attendees.
Black Expressions: 50 Years of Black Student Artists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison surveys the work of Black student artists who attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison. These works capture a 20th and 21st-century interpretation of what it means to be a Black artist from 1969 to present-day. Black Expressions: 50 Years of Black Student Artists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison pays homage to Professor High’s 1973 show Black Expressions. The show robustly demonstrates the depth of Black art and analyzes what time and space mean to Black artists who attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Student Historian and curator Sophia Abrams interviewed the selected artists for her University Archives Oral History Project on Black artists in 2021. After interviewing 17 Black student artists who attended UW-Madison, Abrams spent the 2021-2022 school year translating her oral history interviews into exhibitions and documentaries. Black Expressions: 50 Years of Black Student Artists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison features the work of Professor Freida High Wasikhongo Tesfagiorgis, Dr. Jerry Butler, Roger Allan Cleaves, Tanya Crane, Alex Jackson, Jay Katelansky, Anwar Floyd-Pruitt, Shiloah Coley, Taj Matumbi and Sophia Abrams.
Black Expressions: 50 Years of Black Student Artists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is organized and curated by Sophia Abrams, with support from University Archives, WUD Art and the UW–Madison Division of the Arts’ Lyman S.V. Judson and Ellen Mackechnie Judson Student Award in the Creative Arts.
Virtual attendees, join us via Zoom at 5:30 p.m. for the Artist Talk.