8 F THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2020As museums are reopening this fall, the
work of Black artists is prominently on dis-
play around the country, one result of a
broad-based movement to feature diverse
creators in a systemic and lasting way.
A sense that institutions are making up
for lost time has added an element of urgen-
cy to the push.
As Erica Warren, an associate curator of
textiles at the Art Institute of Chicago, put
it: “We are overdue.”
Ms. Warren organized “Bisa Butler: Por-
traits,” opening Nov. 16 at the Art Institute.
Ms. Butler, based in New Jersey, works in
fabric, creating complex quilted textile por-
traits of what she calls the Black American
story. It’s the museum’s first textile solo
show for a Black female artist.
Ms. Butler shares a dealer, Claire Oliver
Gallery of Harlem, with the artist Barbara
Earl Thomas, who is having the most sub-
stantial show of her work yet at the Seattle
Art Museum, in her hometown.
“Barbara Earl Thomas: The Geography
of Innocence” features her striking and
graphic cut paper works and opens Nov. 20,
just a week after Ms. Butler’s show. It looks
at how race informs our perception of inno-
cence.
Both exhibitions — from artists who ex-
amine similar subjects, rendered in very
different media — are evidence of how the
art world is striving to spotlight diverse
voices, and how museums and galleries
have come in to alignment to support that
goal.
The critical role of a gallery, nurturing
and promoting artists and helping to sus-
tain them during lean times so they can
keep working, has only gotten more impor-
tant.
Ms. Warren of the Art Institute said she
discovered Ms. Butler’s work at Ms. Oliver’s
booth at the Expo Chicago fair in 2018.
“I thought it was by far and away the best
work at the fair,” Ms. Warren said.
Ms. Oliver, 56, is the first to say that her
gallery is no Gagosian or Hauser & Wirth —
the global powerhouses whose artists are
frequently featured in museum shows, and
who work to make that happen.
“We’re stealthy,” she said. “We fly under
the radar.”
She founded her gallery 29 years ago in
Philadelphia, and spent two decades in New
York’s Chelsea before moving in February
to Harlem. From the beginning, Ms. Oliver
had a firm idea about whose work she
wanted to show.
“When we started, I vowed to have more
than 50 percent women,” she said. “And
we’re about 75 percent now.”
Ms. Oliver has added to her goals over
time. “We’ve also made a concerted effort to
bring in more Black voices,” she said, espe-
cially since the Black Lives Matter move-
ment has accelerated.
In these priorities, Ms. Oliver finds her-
self in alignment with prestigious museums
that set the tone for the entire art world.
“I’ve talked to so many curators about
this,” she said. “We see we have these big
gaping voids in the collections, in the canon
of art history, and they are trying to remedy
that.”
Ms. Thomas, 71, has been featured in
many exhibitions over the years and her
profile is growing. She has a commission to
design a set of windows for the dining hall of
Grace Hopper College at Yale University
that will go on view next year.
The Seattle Art Museum show is an apo-
theosis of sorts.
“What’s different is that I’m directing
what it’s going to be,” Ms. Thomas said, al-
luding to the level of input she has had while
working with the curator Catharina Man-
chanda. “I told them: ‘I have an idea and I
want you to help me realize it.’ ”
The subjects depicted are all Black chil-
dren and Ms. Thomas knows most of them.
The show includes three portraits on sand-
blasted glass, 10 cut-paper portraits and
three handcrafted candelabras. There’s
also a hanging sculpture made of hand-cut
Tyvek, surrounded by Tyvek panels.
“How do we read faces — and what has
culture put into our cup?” Ms. Thomas saidof the show’s theme. “My stories are not
epic. They are about the everyday.”
She cuts the paper works with a razor and
then hand-tints them, and the effect is strik-
ing.
“I’m about the dazzle,” Ms. Thomas said.
“I want to seduce with the figure. I don’t
apologize for being graphic.”
She started working with Ms. Oliver in- Though she was already known to the
Seattle Art Museum, having a dealer based
in New York, and a forthcoming project at
Yale, will help give her “street cred, given
that I’m not in the East,” Ms. Thomas said,
referring to the art world’s center of gravity.
“Claire saw something in my work that
people in my region haven’t always picked
up on,” Ms. Thomas said. “She has an eye
for people with a power mechanism.”
She added that there was a commonality
between her own work and that of other art-
ists that Ms. Oliver shows, including the
textile work of Ms. Butler.
“There’s a devotion to materiality, and to
really building things,” Ms. Thomas said.
Ms. Butler’s Chicago show, with 22 of her
quilts and works by other artists who have
influenced her, including the photographer
Gordon Parks, is an ode to that city.
“I’m the ultimate Chicago fan,” said Ms.
Butler, 47, who is based in West Orange, N.J.
“My heroes are people like Charles
White,” she added, referring to the Chicago-
born painter who was the subject of a 2018-
19 posthumous traveling museum retro-
spective that many felt was long overdue. “I
feel like the granddaughter to these artists.”
Her interest in textiles started early. “I
grew up sewing,” said Ms. Butler, who
learned from her mother and grandmother
during her New Jersey childhood. “My Bar-
bies were decked out.”
After Howard University and a period of
making works for friends and family, she
became a professional artist around 2003.
From the beginning, she wanted a wide au-
dience for her work.
“When you’re in a segregated art world,
you don’t realize it right away,” Ms. Butler
said. “But I didn’t want to make art exclu-
sively for Black people. My subject matter
is Black, but I don’t only want to be in Afri-
can-American museums or fairs.”
Things broadened for Ms. Butler “only
when I met Claire,” she said. “It seems like
the years before that didn’t count. Some
people were saying, ‘Oh she’s an emerging
artist.’ But I had been working for 20 years.”
In the Chicago show, “The Safety Patrol”
(2018) — depicting a group of children who
could have starred in one of Ms. Thomas’s
works — was fashioned from cotton, wool
and chiffon that has been quilted and ap-
pliquéd.
Ms. Butler’s projects often begin in black
and white photographs, where she seeks a
compelling image. The origin may be sur-
prising, given how much color is in the fin-
ished work, but she said she preferred to be-
gin with pure form, and then to add her own
hues.
Ms. Warren of the Art Institute said that
the use of textiles — not a dominant medi-
um for contemporary artists, and one asso-
ciated with women’s work — has additional
meaning.
“She interrogates the history of the mar-
ginalization of her subjects, and she does it
in a medium that has been marginalized,
too,” Ms. Warren said.
Like Ms. Thomas, Ms. Butler has a hu-
manistic approach that doesn’t dwell on
conflict.
“I want to tell the story of Black America
from the inside out,” Ms. Butler said. “My
work is like a Black family’s photo album.
You’re not going to see images of the worst
day of life.”
With the opening of both the Chicago and
Seattle shows, Ms. Butler said she recog-
nizes a feeling of things clicking into place.
She’s felt that before with Ms. Oliver.
“When Claire moved to Harlem, it just fit
right,” Ms. Butler said. “It’s like when I
touched a fabric, it felt right. Paint was not
for me. Things align in the right time and
space.”Telling Black Stories
For two artists, major exhibitions mean a
spotlight that many feel is long overdue.
By TED LOOSClockwise, from top: “The
Safety Patrol” (2018) by
Bisa Butler; Ms. Butler,
whose textile art will be
featured at the Art
Institute of Chicago; the
artist Barbara Earl
Thomas at her studio in
Seattle; “Color Wheel”
(2020), a cut-paper work
by Ms. Thomas.“We’re stealthy,”
Ms. Oliver said. “We
fly under the radar.”
GIONCARLO VALENTINE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESBISA BUTLERVIA CLAIRE OLIVER GALLERY; SPIKE MAFFORD JOVELLE TAMAYO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES.