Three exhibitions highlighting the work of Benny Andrews opened in Atlanta, Georgia in 2023
Crisscrosses: Benny Andrews and the Poetry of Langston Hughes curated by Nadia Scott for Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum fall 2023. The exhibition features a selection of illustrations that Andrews created a year before his passing for the publication Poetry for Young People: Langston Hughes.
At the Crossroads with Benny Andrews, Flannery O’Connor and Alice Walker at the Emory University’s Robert W. Woodruff Library from October 16, 2023 - July 12, 2024. The exhibition by the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives & Rare Book Library uses rare archival photos, journals, letters, original manuscripts and artwork, and personal artifacts to examine how Andrews, O’Connor and Walker overlap geographically as Georgia natives, chronologically during their lifetimes, and creatively through their work.
The Andrews Family Legacy: Rooted in the Agriculture and Arts of Morgan County at the Madison-Morgan Cultural Center opening October, 2024 to their permanent exhibition, on loan from The Benny Andrews Estate. The exhibition showcases the artistic and literary contributions of members of the Andrews Family, including artist George ‘Dot Man’ Andrews, his wife Viola and their sons, artist and activist Benny and noted author, Raymond.
The work of Andrews is explored in new University of California Press publication.
November 1, 2022
In her essay in Expanding the History of American Art: The Unforgettables Melanee C. Harvey explores the art and activism of Andrews. She says:
"Benny Andrews was an integral catalyst in redefining American Art during the last quarter of the twentieth century. As a painter, collagist, artist-activist, arts administrator, teacher and author, he was an interlocutor across several artist communities, cultivating his leadership skills in artist-activist groups like the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition and the Art Workers' Coalition."
By Chad Dawkins
October 17, 2022
In this article, Chad Dawkins, recipient of the 2022 Benny Andrews Award, summarizes the founding and activities of the BECC. He focuses on the creation of the Attica Book as well as the start of the Prison Arts Program as a response to the 1971 Attica prison riot.
The Ruth Foundation for the Arts is a newly formed grant-making organization that is dedicating to meeting the evolving needs and lived experiences of artists, communities, and arts organizations. Read more about the Ruth Foundation in Art News Magazine here.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art features essay on Andrews and the documentary The 24 Hour A Day Life of Benny Andrews.
“Benny Andrews: Looking for that ‘Bigger Thing’”
By Kyle Williams
April 3, 2022
This essay looks at the recently restored 1974 documentary “The 24 Hour A Day Life of Benny Andrews” and what it shows about Andrews’s overlapping roles as an artist, activist and educator. The essay was written by Andrews-Humphrey Family Foundation director, Kyle Williams.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “From the Vaults” program restores and shares The 24 Hour A Day Life of Benny Andrews
The 24 Hour A Day Life of Benny Andrews, 1974
Directed by John Wise
This 1974 film documents Andrews’s reflections on his roles as artist, educator and activist. The documentary features interviews with Andrews and captures him at work in his studio, teaching at Queens College, and leading classes in the Manhattan Detention Center as part of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition’s prison arts program.
New York Times Features Roberta Smith’s Review of Benny Andrews: Portraits, A Real Person Before the Eyes at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
By Roberta Smith
December 3, 2020
(in print December 4, 2020)
In her review of the solo exhibition of paintings of Benny Andrews at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, Roberta Smith notes:
“Benny Andrews once defined his artistic ambition as a desire to represent ‘a real person before the eyes.’ The phrase is the subtitle of a momentous exhibition at the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery [which] brings together 28 of the artist’s imposing depictions if friends, family and artists, the most ever shown together.”
Arts Magazine video review of Benny Andrews: Portraits, A Real Person Before the Eyes at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
By Rob Colvin
November 10, 2020
”In the recent show, Benny Andrews: Portraits, A Real Person Before the Eyes at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, the images in the paintings are a result of wresting with materials, not the execution of pre-formulated pictures. If people are not preconceived, what does recreating them physically look like? It is reciprocal. The tangibility of things mingles with what they depict.”
Watch the review
As the museum continues to make its collection increasingly accessible online, in this selection of “Highlights” viewers are asked to consider the intersection of art and politics: “Communicating new perspectives, questioning the status quo, speaking out about beliefs, and inspiring others to take action—art and activism often share some of the same underlying motivations.”
See Highlights: Art and Activism here and learn more about Flag Day at the Art Institute Chicago here.
AMONG OTHERS: BLACKNESS AT Moma. Edited by darby english and charlotte barat, published by The Museum of Modern Art, NY, Ny. 2019
Benny Andrews’ No More Games, 1970, featured in Among Others: Blackness at MoMA
Essays by Darby English, Charlotte Barat, and Mabel O. Wilson
Edited by Darby English and Charlotte Barat
Fall 2019
Among Others: Blackness at MoMA offers an expansive examination of the museum’s relationship to black artists, black audiences, and art about blackness throughout its history. Darby English, who oversaw the book’s project with Charlotte Barat, also authors an essay reflecting on Benny Andrews’ 1970 painting No More Games, which was recently installed in the newly renovated and expanded museum.
Exhibition explores Black Emergency Cultural Coalition's 1971 Rebuttal to the Whitney
Fall 2018
In 1971, Benny Andrews and more than a dozen other artists withdrew from the Whitney Museum's exhibition Contemporary Black Artists in America in protest over the Whitney's refusal to hire an African American curator. In response to the exhibition, Andrews and the BECC mounted a rebuttal show at the artist-run Acts of Art gallery in Greenwich Villiage. Hunter College's Leubsdorf Gallery's current exhibition showcases the artists, artwork, and archival material from this historic show.
FROM THE BENNY ANDREWS ESTATE ARCHIVES: A NEWSPAPER ARTICLE IN THE WICHITA TIMES, FEATURING BENNY ANDREWS (LEFT) IN CONVERSATION WITH DR. MARTIN BUSH OF WSU, PHOTOGRAPHED IN FRONT OF ANDREWS' SYMBOLS. THE PAINTING, WHICH MEASURES 8 X 36' WAS ACQUIRED BY WICHITA STATE'S ULRICH MUSEUM IN 1977, THE YEAR OF THIS PUBLICATION.
Two Bicentennial Series masterworks to be exhibited in 2018
Spring 2018
Andrews' Bicentennial Series was a six year project, begun in 1970 in anticipation of the American bicentennial of 1976. Each year was dedicated to the production of a single monumental painting, with dozens of drawings and painting studies made in the planning process. Two major works from the series will be shown this coming year, the McNay Museum will exhibit Sexism, 1974; and the Ulrich Museum will exhibit Symbols, 1970.
Hyperallergic highlights the protest history of the BECC and Ad Hoc Women's Committee
By Caroline Wallace
April 27, 2017
Wallace's essay documents the BECC's and Ad Hoc's protests and negotiations with the Whitney Museum, and analyzes their strategies for the current moment of activism and resistance. Wallace's takeaways: 1) Be persistent and clear, 2) Use counter-exhibitions and demonstrations to show rather than tell your views, and 3) Aim for change at the center, not the margins, of institutions.
The Telegraph features Benny Andrews and Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in its coverage of African American artists at London Frieze
By Colin Gleadell
October 3, 2017
Benny Andrews is in good company in Colin Gleadell's look at 20th Century African American artists at Frieze London. Andrews, Jack Whitten, Martin Puryear, William T. Williams, and Melvin Edwards are all standouts at the fair.
CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: BARKLEY L. HENDRICKS' MY MAN SUPERMAN (SUPERMAN NEVER SAVED ANY BLACK PEOPLE – BOBBY SEALE), 1969; EMORY DOUGLAS' WE SHALL SURVIVE WITHOUT A DOUBT, 1971; EMMA AMOS' EVA THE BABY SITTER, 1973; BENNY ANDREWS' DID THE BEAR SIT UNDER A TREE?, 1969
Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power Opens at the Tate Modern in London
July 12, 2017
The Tate Modern's exhibition Soul of a Nation highlights the powerful contribution of African American artists working in the era of Civil Rights and Black Power. The exhibit showcases 150 works created by 60 artists between 1963 and 1983. Benny Andrews' Did the Bear Sit Under a Tree?, 1969, is featured in the exhibition alongside works by other exceptional artists like Barkley L. Hendricks, Emory Douglas, Emma Amos, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Jack Whitten, and William T. Williams.
Learn more about the exhibition
Read a review from The Times of London
Read a review from ArtNet
Read a review from The Telegraph
1971: A Year in the Life of Color
By Darby English
University of Chicago Press, 2016
Darby English's new book explores color, cultural politics, and modernism through the context of two exhibitions in 1971: Contemporary Black Artists in America at the Whitney and The DeLuxe Show in Houston. English brings new perspective to the Whitney show, which Andrews and the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC) famously protested.
Hyperallergic Reviews 'Southern Accent: Seeking the American South in Contemporary Art'
By Brian Howe
September 24, 2016
Reviewed during its first run at the Nasher Museum, Southern Accent, which includes Andrews' artwork, recently began its second run at the Speed Museum in Louisville.
"The harder you look for a clear, monolithic South, the less likely you are to find one, and therein lies the brilliance of Southern Accent ... In a land with a history of violence so heinous it obliterates nuance, a land still reckoning with unpardonable crimes, and a land that is lushly layered with projections, the exhibit is an exploded diagram of how it feels to be Southern from the inside, with all the diversity, idiosyncrasy, and conflict that it entails"
Hyperallergic Features Benny Andrews in Review of Collage: Made in America at Michael Rosenfeld
By Melissa Stern
March 22, 2017
"In the rear of the gallery, one entire wall is filled by the monumental “Circle (The Bicentennial Series)” (1973) by Benny Andrews, a huge, searing indictment of racism in America. [...] It’s an overtly angry and political work of art, one that has continuing resonance today."
Benny Andrews included in Roberta Smith's New York Times Review of "The Human Image: From Velázquez to Viola" Richard L. Feigen & Co
"The Human Image: From Velázquez to Viola"
By Robert Smith
February 10, 2017
"Velázquez, Hyacinthe Rigaud, and Thomas Eakins represent social order with sober, strikingly realistic, even sympathetic portrayals of gentlemen across several centuries. Benny Andrews wrenching painting-collage Study for Portrait of Oppression (Homage to Black South Africans), from 1985, reminds us that the costs of such order are often dehumanizing."
Read the review
New York Times Includes Benny Andrews' Bicentennial Series at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in Its List of "10 Things to Do Now in NYC"
"Notes on 2016, From Four Decades Ago"
By Holland Cotter
December 16, 2016
"[Benny Andrews] would have had strong views on the resurgent racism and sexism of this election year. And he basically expressed those views some 40 years ago in six fantastically caustic groups of paintings and drawings called 'The Bicentennial Series,' . . . Truly art for now."
Read the review
New York Times Reviews "The Bicentennial Series" at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
By Holland Cotter
November 25, 2016
"This is the message of the 'Bicentennial Series' as a whole: Far from being a fantasia on what makes American great, it's a vision - as the election was - on what makes America America."
PHOTO BY PAULA COURT
Matana Roberts at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
November 12, 2016
Award-winning composer, saxophonist, and mixed-media practitioner Matana Roberts performed at the Benny Andrews exhibition, The Bicentennial Series, at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery. Her new piece, written for a chorus of seven saxophones is called "its all a damn game," and was created in conversation with Andrews' artwork and writing.
Mounting Frustration: The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power
By Susan E. Cahan
Duke University Press, 2016
Mounting Frustration chronicles African American artists' struggle for inclusion in the museum system and the historical canon during the 1960s and 70s. Cahan offers a detailed account of Benny Andrews' work co-founding the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC), protesting exclusionary museum exhibitions, and negotiating for a greater voice for African Americans in New York's art world.
