A Picture Gallery of the Soul

“Rightly viewed, the whole soul of man is a sort of picture gallery, a grand panorama, in which all the great facts of the universe, in tracing things of time and things of eternity, are painted.” -- Frederick Douglass

The history of American photography and the history of Black American culture and politics are two interconnected histories. From the daguerreotypes made by Jules Lion in New Orleans in 1840 to the Instagram post of the Baltimore Uprising made by Devin Allen in 2015, photography has chronicled Black American life and Black Americans have defined the possibilities of photography. Frederick Douglass, a former enslaved person and nationally prominent abolitionist, recognized the quick, easy and inexpensive reproducibility of photography. He presciently developed a theoretical framework for understanding the implications of photography on public discourse in a series of four lectures he delivered during the Civil War. Frederick Douglass was the subject of photographic portraits 160 times; he was the most photographed American of the 19th century.

Sampling a range of photographic expressions from traditional photography to mixed media and conceptual art and spanning a timeframe that includes the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, A Picture Gallery of the Soul honors, celebrates, investigates, and interprets Black history, culture, and politics in the United States. The exhibition title comes from the Lecture on Pictures, delivered by Frederick Douglass in Boston in 1861.
 

RELATED EVENTS
Virtual Keynote | Thursday, Sept 15 | 6:30 pm CDT | Online
    Presentation with Prof. Deborah Willis, New York University
    Registration required: https://z.umn.edu/Prof_Deborah_Willis

Public Program | Thursday, Sept 22 | 6:00 – 7:00 pm CDT | InFlux Space, Regis Center for Art
    Presentation with the exhibition curators and visiting guests
    Mining the Archive of Black Life and Culture, Prof. Cheryl Finley, Cornell University
    Adger Cowans, Photographer and Co-founder of the Kamoinge Workshop
    Registration required: https://z.umn.edu/RegisRSVP

Public Reception | Thursday, Sept 22 | 7:00 – 9:00 pm CDT | Katherine E. Nash Gallery
    Come celebrate with the curators and visiting guests
    Registration required: https://z.umn.edu/RegisRSVP

Spoken Word Event | Wednesday, Oct 12 |12:15 pm CDT | InFlux Space, Regis Center for Art
    Program with Ty Chapman, Keno Evol, and Andrea Jenkins (read bios)
    Registration required: https://z.umn.edu/RegisRSVP

Walkthrough | Wednesday, Oct 12 | 2 pm CDT | Katherine E. Nash Gallery
    Exhibition walkthrough with Herman J. Milligan, Jr. and Howard Oransky, curators of A Picture Gallery of the Soul as part of TC Art Week. More info.

Writers Reading Event | Thursday, Nov 17 | 12:15 pm CDT | InFlux Space, Regis Center for Art
    Program with Mary Easter, G.E. Patterson, and Davu Seru
    Registration required: https://z.umn.edu/RegisRSVP
 

GALLERY HOURS
    Tuesday and Friday, 11 am – 5 pm
    Wednesday and Thursday, 11 am – 7 pm
    Saturday, 11 am – 3 pm

ARTISTS
    Salimah Ali, Devin Allen, The Rev. Henry Clay Anderson, Jean Andre Antoine, Thomas E. Askew, Radcliffe Bailey, J. P. Ball, John L. Banks, Anthony Barboza, Ronald Barboza, Miranda Barnes, C. M. Battey, James “Jimmy” Baynes, Endia Beal, Arthur P. Bedou, Hugh Bell, Dawoud Bey, Mark Blackshear, Kwame Brathwaite, Sheila Pree Bright, George O. Brown, Nakeya Brown, Kesha Bruce, Crystal Z Campbell, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Micaiah Carter, Charles Chamblis, Vanessa Charlot, Albert Chong, Tiffany L. Clark, Mark Clennon, Tameca Cole, Florestine Perrault Collins, Bill Cottman, Adger Cowans, Gerald Cyrus, Louis Draper, Barbara DuMetz, Mara Duvra, John Edmonds, Dudley Edmondson, Cydni Elledge, Awol Erizku, Nona Faustine, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Al Fennar, Alanna Fields, Lola Flash, Krista Franklin, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Russell Frederick, Tia-Simone Gardner, Courtney Garvin, Bill Gaskins, John F. Glanton, Tony Gleaton, Goodridge Brothers, Kris Graves, Walter Griffin, Allison Janae Hamilton, Lucius W. Harper, Charles “Teenie” Harris, Daesha Devón Harris, L. Kasimu Harris, LeRoy Henderson, Jon Henry, Chester Higgins, Bobby Holland, Mildred Howard, Earlie Hudnall, Ayana V. Jackson, Frank Jackson, Leslie Jean-Bart, Rashid Johnson, Caroline Kent, Dionne Lee, Fern Logan, Stephen Marc, Robert H. McNeill, Ozier Muhammad, Nancy Musinguzi, Bruce Palaggi, Gordon Parks, Ebony G. Patterson, Howardena Pindell, John Pinderhughes, Carl Robert Pope, Jr., Deborah Roberts, Herb Robinson, Bobby Rogers, Keris Salmon, Keisha Scarville, Addison N. Scurlock, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Jamel Shabazz, Harry Shepherd, Coreen Simpson, Lorna Simpson, Marvin and Morgan Smith, Ming Smith, Jovan C. Speller, Bruce W. Talamon, Elnora and Arthur Chester Teal, Hank Willis Thomas, Richard A. Twine, James Van Der Zee, Shawn Walker, Augustus Washington, Carrie Mae Weems, Carla Williams, Deborah Willis.

Image: Kwame Brathwaite, Untitled (Kwame Brathwaite Self Portrait at AJASS Studios), 1964 c., printed 2016, Archival pigment print, mounted and framed, 30 x 30 in, 76.2 x 76.2 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles.

This exhibition is proudly part of TC Arts week October 12-16, 2022. Learn More.