PHILADELPHIA — In October 1937, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York opened Sculpture by William Edmondson, the museum’s first solo exhibition dedicated to a Black artist. The show may have broken boundaries, but curators and reviewers alike also belittled and exoticized this Southern self-taught stone carver.
In June 2023, almost 86 years later, the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia presents William Edmondson: A Monumental Vision, featuring more than 60 of the artist’s striking sculptures and grave markers. Billed as “the first major East Coast exhibition dedicated to the self-taught artist in decades,” it is intended to right past wrongs. At a moment when many museums are reexamining their relationship to artists who have been excluded from the mainstream art world, the Barnes show offers a chance to explore how, and to what extent, large institutions can meet such artists on their own terms rather than those of the art world.