Directed by Jacques Goldstein • Documentary • 2017 • 52 minutes
In 1969, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York mounted a major exhibit called “Harlem On My Mind.” There was just one thing wrong: the show had no work by African-American artists.
The “Harlem on My Mind” fiasco is emblematic of the barriers Black artists have faced when it comes to having their work exhibited and collected. BLACK IS THE COLOR highlights key moments in the history of African-American visual art, from Edmonia Lewis’s 1867 sculpture Forever Free, to the work of contemporary artists such as Whitfield Lovell, Kerry James Marshall, Ellen Gallagher, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Art historians and gallery owners place the works in context—juxtaposing them with racist images of African-Americans as minstrels, for instance, and setting them against the larger social contexts of Jim Crow, WWI, the civil rights movement and the racism of the Reagan era. Meanwhile, contemporary artists discuss individual works by their forerunners and their ongoing influence.
Both comprehensive and lively, BLACK IS THE COLOR is a much-needed survey of great work by artists whose contributions were neglected by the mainstream art world for far too long.
"An incredibly in-depth investigation." —Le Monde
Directed by Arthur Borgnis • Documentary • 2017 • 80 minutes
"Outsider art" challenges established historical categories and transcends artistic movements. A translation of the French term art brut, a phrase coined by the painter and sculptor Jean Dubuffet in the aftermath of World War II, this ...
Directed by Michael Schindhelm • Documentary • With Uli Sigg, Ai Weiwei, Cao Chong’en, Cao Fei, Pierre de Meuron, Hans-Peter Fallegger • 2016 • 93 minutes
A documentary about the entrepreneur, diplomat and art collector Uli Sigg, and the tense sociopolitical context of China's ongoing transforma...
Directed by Richard Berge, Nicole Newnham & Bonni Cohen • Documentary • With Joan Allen • 2006 • 117 minutes
The Rape of Europa tells the epic story of the systematic theft, deliberate destruction and miraculous survival of Europe’s art treasures during the Third Reich and World War II.
In ...
