L. Kent Wolgamott: Exhibition is a striking start

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“New Acquisitions: African-American Masters Collection,” which recently opened at the Sheldon Museum of Art, is an exhibition that is notable on two counts.

First, it’s an all-killer, no-filler grouping of pieces by some of the 20th century’s most important African-American artists in media from painting and prints to sculpture.

Second, it’s not going anywhere.

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Charles Alston’s “Untitled (Figures with Architecture)” is a tempera and crayon on wove paper from 1949. It is part of “New Acquisitions: African-American Masters Collection” at the Sheldon Museum of Art. (Courtesy Sheldon Museum of Art)

Charles Alston’s “Untitled (Figures with Architecture)” is a tempera and crayon on wove paper from 1949. It is part of “New Acquisitions: African-American Masters Collection” at the Sheldon Museum of Art. (Courtesy Sheldon Museum of Art)

The art, which includes two multiple print series, was purchased this fall by Sheldon. It will form the core of a new African-American Masters Collection that Sheldon director J. Daniel Veneciano plans to continue to develop.

He has made a striking start with these acquisitions.

When I spoke to Veneciano about the purchases last month, the artwork hadn’t arrived in Lincoln. Suffice it to say that, as is always the case, the actual art is far more impressive than any reproduction — and many of the purchases had some punch in digital form.

That’s particularly true for “Frederick Douglass Lives Again (The Ghost of Frederick Douglass),” a large, very tightly detailed pen and ink over pencil drawing from 1949 by Charles White.

A powerful piece about the civil rights movement, the drawing has the powerful, almost godlike visage of Douglass pointing the way as a group of men, including what appears to be an attorney clutching a paper, moves through barbed wire.

The beautifully rendered drawing has plenty of visual impact, in part because of its 20x30-inch size, but also because of the way in which it captures the sense of those committed to the struggle for their rights that is on the verge of becoming more visible and intense.

Veneciano called “Frederick Douglass Lives Again” the gem of the new acquisitions, and it lives up to that billing. But I’d put “Emperor Jones,” a series of four woodcuts on Japan paper by Aaron Douglas, right up there with the White drawing.

The 1926 Douglas pieces are small — 8 inches by 5½ inches each. That’s because they were designed as illustrations for the program for a theatrical presentation of the Eugene O’Neill play that had been written just five years early.

But they are striking, done in heavy, black angular graphics that create silhouettes that illustrate Jones in battle with an alligator or crocodile, running through a jungle, firing a gun in full military dress and arriving at a formal function. Those pieces are tellingly titled “Surrender,” “Flight,” “Defiance” and “Bravado.”

Again, the four woodcuts are fine pieces of work, regardless of who made them. But given that Douglas was the first African-American graduate of the University of Nebraska’s art school and became the leading artist of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, they’re of particular value and importance to the Sheldon collection and to Lincoln.

Looking at the new works, I was particularly taken by the eight large color screenprints that make up “Eight Passages.” Done by Jacob Lawrence in 1990, the prints are two-panel pieces with a biblical quote from the creation story on the left side of the paper and an illustration of sorts of that quotation on the right.

The illustrations take the form of a black preacher, based on the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, exhorting his congregation while the changes in the world — from the coming of the atmosphere to animals — are seen through the windows. I had a little difficulty making out Lawrence’s handwriting for the quote. But the pieces are both visually captivating and fun.

I could go piece by piece through the show as each of the acquisitions is worth talking about — a sign of their quality and importance.

But I’ll wrap this up quickly by saying that the other pieces that captured my attention were Romare Bearden’s brilliantly colored 1970 screenprint with collage “Carolina Blue (Interior),” a piece that is far superior to the Sheldon’s previous Bearden, and Elizabeth Catlett’s “Pensive Figure,” a powerful, grounded sculpture of an African-American woman that connects with its spiral-like, bottom-heavy structure and through the expression on the woman’s face.

“New Acquisitions: African-American Masters Collection” isn’t a huge show. It comfortably fills one of Sheldon’s small first-floor galleries.

But it is an impressive start on building a collection that is a fitting addition to the museum’s noted collection of American art — filling in an often-overlooked and still underappreciated gap in the national art survey with pieces that have resonance in the broader culture along with the art world.

“New Acquisitions: African-American Masters Collection” is on view at Sheldon through March 2. It will be the centerpiece of Sheldon’s celebration of Martin Luther King Day in January, when the museum will hold its official reception for the show.

Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.