Claremont, Calif. (March 10, 2021)—The Pasadena Art Alliance has awarded the Pitzer College Art Galleries a $12,000 grant for its exhibition Sadie Barnette: Legacy & Legend, opening on August 31, 2021. A partnership between Pitzer College Art Galleries and the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, Legacy & Legend is Sadie Barnette’s most ambitious exhibition to date. Sadie Barnette: Legacy & Legend is curated by Ciara Ennis, Pitzer College Art Galleries director, and Rebecca McGrew, the Benton Museum’s senior curator.
Sadie Barnette, Malcolm X Speaks, 2018, archival pigment print and Swarovski crystals, 30 x 40 inchesSadie Barnette creates large-scale installations that explore the history of Black Power movements and Black queer identities from the 1960s to the present day. She captures collective and familial histories through photography, drawing, and objects as well as installations. Barnette’s work is in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim, LACMA, the California African American Museum, and other institutions. She is the recipient of Art Matters and Artadia awards and was a 2014-15 artist-in-residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem.
Legacy & Legend will span two campuses of the Claremont Colleges and showcase two critical facets of Barnette’s work. The Pitzer College Art Galleries component will feature Barnette’s signature reimagining of a domestic spaces as futuristic, otherworldly locations of liberation and restoration. Pomona College’s Benton Museum of Art will expand upon an earlier project, Dear 1968,… that focused on the 500-page surveillance dossier amassed by the FBI on the artist’s father, Rodney Barnette, who founded the Compton chapter of the Black Panther Party.
Pasadena Art Alliance (PAA) has been an active supporter of Pitzer College Art Galleries for the last decade. Prior to this grant, PAA’s most recent gift helped fund a catalogue for the artist Candice Lin’s exhibition Natural History: A Half-Eaten Portrait, an Unrecognizable Landscape, a Still, Still Life.
PAA’s mission is to foster appreciation for contemporary visual arts in Southern California by supporting artists, exhibitions, educational programs, and art-oriented, nonprofit institutions. Since its founding in 1976, Pasadena Art Alliance has championed challenging art, exhibition, and pedagogical practices. For a full listing of PAA grantees, visit Pasadena Art Alliance Grants and Awards.
Pitzer College Art Galleries’ mandate is Education and Advocacy through the Pitzer College core values—social responsibility, intercultural understanding, interdisciplinary learning, student engagement, and environmental sustainability. By following these precepts, Pitzer College Art Galleries engage and interrogate contemporary and historical issues of importance to expand our audiences’ understanding and contributions to our artistic, intellectual, and social culture. Through curatorial creativity and innovative programming, the Galleries seek to provide context, support, and a critical framework for artists and curators working today and, by doing so, inspire meaningful dialogue that fascinates, excites, and invigorates.
Additional information on Sadie Barnette: Legacy & Legend can be found on the Pitzer College Art Galleries website.
