Art for the People: Emory Douglas

Throughout America’s history, there have been figures and movements that have asked us to reevaluate the limited breadth of our liberty. Through peaceful protests and angry shows of force, they have exposed our hypocrisy and inequality, our segregation, intolerance, and oppression. And although the American experiment in freedom has not yet fully succeeded, we have seen changes and reforms as a result of their powerful example.

Through “dangerous pictures [. . . that] were meant to change the world” this exhibit calls us to remember and relive the process of change through the perspective of Emory Douglas, former Minister of Culture of the Black Panther Party (BPP), 1966–1980.¹ The original exhibit is curated by Los Angeles artist Sam Durant and is housed at the New Museum in New York City through October 18, 2009. The Emory Douglas: Black Panther exhibit includes nearly 165 prints from Douglas’s active involvement in the BPP, as well as audio recordings, excerpts from essays and interviews about the artist, and a mural by Rigo 23 commemorating Douglas’s work.

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Notes
1. Permission to publish gallery images granted by the New Museum; installation views photographed by Benoit Pailley. The quotation is also from the New Museum: The New Museum, “Emory Douglas: Black Panther,” Exhibitions, http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/415/emory_douglas_black_panther.