Michelle Joan Wilkinson, Ph.D.

We have been hearing wonderful things about exhibitions and events at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture Maryland, based in Baltimore.

As we move into African American History Month in February, we invited
Michelle Joan Wilkinson, Ph.D. who is the Director of Collections and Exhibitions at the museum to talk more about the excitement that is brewing in the museum as it celebrates it’s 5th Anniversary this year.

Wilkinson received her Ph.D. from Emory University in Atlanta in 2001 Wilkinson served as an assistant professor at Bard College in New York from 1999-2002. She has worked on exhibitions and publications for the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She also worked for the Studio Museum in Harlem as an Editor and Library Coordinator. Her past curatorial projects at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum include A People’s Geography: The Spaces of African American Life
and East Side Stories: Portraits of a Baltimore Neighborhood, Then and Now

Per her request, we are referring her remarks by her first name, Michelle.

AV: Give us a brief description/history of the Reginald Lewis Museum

Michelle: We’re actually just coming upon our 5th Anniversary this June 2010. We opened our doors in June of 2005. Our museum is a repository and exhibiting collections of all that relate to African American history and culture especially in Maryland. We have over 10,000 square feet of exhibition gallery space. A portion of that is dedicated to special exhibitions, so in those spaces we not only highlight Maryland stories but also do stories of African American History and Culture on a more national level as well as some shows that are connected to the African Diaspora. Reginald Lewis, for those who don’t know, was a Baltimore native and entrepreneur, and a philanthropist. He was actually the first African American billionaire and the head of the TLC/Beatrice Corporation. The museum was named in his honor as a Baltimore native. He passed in 1993.

AV: Tell us about the current exhibition and upcoming Bearden exhibition

Michelle: Right now we have on view an exhibition titled Canvasing the Movement. It’s a small art exhibition and it’s really about the way that artists have been inspired by the Civil Rights Movement. The title of the exhibition and even the concept for it was generated because our museum was hosting an exhibition called 381 Days, about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. That was an exhibition that the Smithsonian organized and we were one of the traveling venues for it. And we wanted to do something here, at our museum that we would create that kind of spoke to the importance of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Civil Rights Movement, and really try to understand other aspects of it that [the 381 Days] exhibition didn’t cover. And we thought that one way to do it was through art.

Image: Walking, by Charles Alston, 1958 (courtesy of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture)

One of the images that was reproduced in the 381 Days exhibition, was the painter, Charles Alston’s work “Walking.” Some of your readers probably know Charles Alston’s “Walking”; it is a painting exactly about the bus boycott in Montgomery. It is a beautiful color image—his kind of geometric abstraction, that period of the 50s work. And we thought why not get the original of this painting and have it on view in our Art’s Wall. And so that’s exactly what we did…we found out that the National Museum of African American History and Culture, that will be open on the Mall, that the Alston painting is part of their collection and they were generous enough to loan the painting to us. It’s actually their first loan to a non-Smithsonian institution, so we were really thrilled that we were able to get this original Alston from 1958. And then we really just built the exhibition around it.

So there’s the Alston painting, there are two small paintings by Alma W. Thomas – her sketches for March on Washington. And this is different work for Thomas, it’s really not like those flora and geometric patterns we’re used to seeing…it’s a bit more gesturial and it has an overtly political theme, and that’s not something we’ve seen typically represented as her work or her style. So those two sketches are in the exhibition.

We also got a Norman Lewis, from Bill Hodges Gallery in New York City. It’s really untitled, but the title that is given is Alabama II or Alabama No. 2. It’s like his work and it’s also unlike his work, you really have to come and see it. It’s a red painting, it’s just really one color and there are some of those kinds of figures that you might see in his works like Processions or Processional. It’s one of those things you have to get close, stand back, get close, stand back to really appreciate.

And then what we did is looked at contemporary artists, we asked who is out there now that is working and inspired by this movement? And the work of Charly Palmer really came to mind….because as you know, he has a whole Civil Rights theme, he does March on Washington, he does boycotts, he does so many themes that are related. So half of the exhibition is work from the period and then the second half is Charly Palmer’s work, about the period, looking back.

The title is really about the way canvas became the place for these artists to really become involved in the Civil Rights Movement by portraying what was happening on the streets on the canvas. So they are “canvasing the movement.”

AV: So you curated this exhibition.

Michelle: Yes I curated this for the Reginald Lewis Museum. [The exhibition] has been open since September and the exhibition actually closes at the end of this month, January 31st. It will be open for a couple more weeks and certainly worth coming out to see.

AV: Now there is another exhibition that is going to be opening this weekend?

Michelle: Yes, on Saturday, January 16th, we’re opening a new exhibition on Romare Bearden. Everybody loves Romare Bearden; certainly I’m one of those folks. People really know his collages, they know him as a master collagist, and he was wonderful, he was a genius in that medium. But he was also an avid printmaker and made tons and tons of prints and different types of prints. And so that is what this exhibition focuses on. The full title of the exhibition is From Process to Print: Graphic Works by Romare Bearden. And it will be on view until March 28th.

AV: What should visitors expect to walk away with as a result of viewing these exhibitions?

Michelle: For me, it really would be two things, and I would maybe say as a curator and also as a viewer, the first is color. The first thing when you walk in before you can read any label, or even get up close to understand the interpretation of a piece of work, you see it from a far. And the color in Bearden’s work is magnificent; the color in Alston’s-magnificent, Charly Palmer’s the same thing. So these are very vibrant, very colorful, very bold exhibitions.

Then when you think about what the content is, with Canvasing the Movement I said a little bit already, these are beautiful pictures many of them, but they are also pictures about things that happened, about our history. One of the Charly Palmer paintings is called The Dream, and it’s actually a kind of montage with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Barack Obama. So, even though he’s looking back on King, he’s also looking at the very present. It’s a 2009 painting, with Obama’s election already being decided at that time. So, there’s a very kind of contemporary feel to our history as well. It’s like you’re reliving by looking at these works, what we have experienced as a people and what we are currently experiencing now, those of us who are here for these historic moments like the election of the first African American president.

With someone like Bearden, a word that comes up a lot is “ritual.” He documents the rituals of African American life. Some these rituals are rural, some of them are urban. He is really a mastermind of conveying really the soul of the Black experience in America. The colors kind of grab you, but then when you start looking what he’s depicting, it’s family life. Baptisms, scenes from the block, the piano lesson, things that happen in the interiors of homes, that we know, but maybe the rest of America doesn’t. I think what you come away with is an appreciation of who we are as a people, and for our traditions. I think Bearden’s show really, whether it is printmaking or collage, is in the end the same. And that is—what his commitment was, as he said—is the telling our story through our own images, making sense of them, kind of giving them their due as universal stories but not shying away from representing the beauty that is that type of blackness.

AV I was pleasantly surprised to learn how much Bearden’s work influenced the work of the renown African American playwright, the late August Wilson.

Michelle: I’m glad that you mentioned August Wilson, because we have some quotes that we use in the gallery. Some of them are Bearden’s, talking about his own process, but we have a quote by August Wilson. And it is saying that when he was introduced to Bearden’s work, he was like “finally THIS is my world.” He was able to understand the world where he came from and to begin creating through his own art form, those worlds for the stage.

AV: What is your perspective of the museum’s key role in society and the community should be?

Michelle: In general, I see museums as sites for public engagement. I think for me that’s what they always have been. Having a career in museums has been most exciting for me. For me, there’s something about maybe a more informal way of learning or a kind of “you-choose-how-you want to learn” in a museum. Information is presented, you can read as much or as little as you like. You can listen to as much or as little as you like. You can go back many, many times. There are public programs you can go to, if you want to have more in depth understanding. There are catalogues you can buy if you want to study the subject matter. But there is a way in which museums provide the space, the venue and enough information, I think, to spark interest, but different from a classroom. There’s a kind of mode of learning that happens differently in museums.

For African American museums, it’s really the same thing. I think we just have to really do more education outside of the museum as to what a museum is, what it does and how it can serve our publics. I think inside the museums a lot of us know, you know, how much we have to offer. I don’t think we are always doing a good enough job of sharing. And sometimes you can’t share until you get people to come in, but to get people to come in, you have to go where they are, you have to kind of build that relationship of trust. And in some of the previous exhibitions that I have done here, it has been a challenge. But when that trust is built and developed, you see the successes.

I see all museums as having the opportunity to be more open and engaging and to do more outreach.

AV: How can people find out more about the museum, programs, activities, the exhibitions, and membership?

Michelle: More information www.africanamericanculture.org Basic membership is only $35, which is very affordable.

Thank you Michelle, for this interview. And we encourage everyone to come up to Baltimore to learn more about the museum. It is located at 830 E. Pratt Street, Baltimore, MD 21202.