Silver Linings: Celebrating the  Spelman Art Collection at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) is an eclectic collection of 40 works of sculptures, lithographs, photographs, paintings, and a gelatin silver print. The media includes acrylic, ink, pastels, graphite, crayon, oils, metals, wood, glass, and even 24-carat gold. 

Styles and subjects vary, too. 

What unifies this exhibition is that all of the work represents Black artists and expresses feelings or thoughts about Black culture or life. 

“The exhibition came to be through decades and decades and decades of Spelman College’s commitment to collecting art by Black artists,” says Liz Andrews, Ph.D., director of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art.  Andrews says the immediate reasons for putting together a touring exhibit, the museum’s first, are less significant than Spelman’s groundbreaking efforts over the years in prioritizing art by and about women of the African diaspora. 

Sure, Spelman's museum opened in 1996, but the college, which opened in 1881, started collecting works in the late 1880s. “Black women have been actively excluded from art spaces like museums and galleries,” Andrews explains. “What’s beautiful about historically Black colleges is that we’ve always had a commitment to uplifting the geniuses among us. The works of art have come into this collection at different times from about 1889.”

Andrews came to the college in Atlanta in 2021, as the museum approached its 25th anniversary—and as the world was reeling from COVID. “We wanted to open up the gallery after two years of closing,” she says. She went into the storage area to see what she would see and invited a local curator, Karen Comer Lowe,  to assist with the project. “We selected a group of works that I think really tell African-American art history 101,” she explains.  Even though the Spelman is dedicated to art by Black women, works by Black men are included in the permanent collection and in this exhibition."

For instance, three of the pieces are by Benny Andrews, 1930-2006, who grew up in poverty in Georgia. After earning a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago, his varied endeavors included illustrating for record companies and designing ads for Chicago theater companies. In 1969, Andrews co-founded the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC). In 2006, he went to the Gulf Coast to do an art project with children displaced by Hurricane Katrina. His work hangs in museums throughout the country, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the National Gallery of Art in D.C. 

In Fun #2, a 2002 oil and collage on paper, Andrews invites us into the living room of a happy Black family. A child draws at a table while his parents dance to music on the radio. Andrews is also represented in this exhibit by two other oil and collages on paper: 2005's Sunrise, which depicts a Black girl on a pier, watching the sunrise; and 1999's From the Mountain Top, which features a black figure in a surreal landscape. The exhibition label suggests the title refers to MLK’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, noting: “The figure is in a posture of religious praise, emphasizing communing as a means of spiritual release."

Elizabeth Catlett’s 1987 work Standing Woman (Woman Walking) is a fitting piece for an exhibition that honors the work of talented Black artists, with an emphasis on Black women. Catlett was a sculptor, teacher, printmaker, and radical Black feminist, and her work often depicts strong, empowered Black women.

Faith Ringgold, who grew up in Harlem, died this year at 94. She was a performance artist, author, teacher, and activist as well as a visual artist who often integrated fine art and craft traditions. Some of her other works are political, expressing her feelings about women’s issues and the plight of people of color. 

Ringgold’s 1996 piece Groovin’ High is a brightly colored work that takes the viewer into a jazz club. She creates rhythm and motion through the use of diagonals and triangles as people on a quilted fabric dance. Ringgold used acrylic, beads, dye, and sequins to create the work that was inspired by a tune of that name by Dizzy Gillespie.

Born Lynda Faye Peek in 1949 in Atlanta, Amalia Amaki changed her name in 1978. She has taught art history at several colleges and created work ranging from photo quilts and portraiture on fabric, which can be found in museums and private collections throughout the country. 

Amaki's BLUE Gold Lady, two photographs shown side by side, are variations on the same photo, one slightly cropped. The images look strikingly different because color—blue on one, gold the other—is added to them, suggesting that color changes our perception of the same image. The museum label tells us “the blue woman appears to be a negation of the gold woman, as in a photographic negative. The 'blue' may also refer to a series in which Amaki honored Black women blues singers.”

Andrews says UMMA has done a fine job of hanging the works and has been enjoying watching her “baby grow up and go on the road, and inspire new conversations.” 

Davi Napoleon, a theater historian and freelance writer, holds a BA and MA from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. from New York University. Her book is Chelsea on the Edge: The Adventures of an American Theatre.

“Silver Linings” is on view through January 5, 2025, at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, 525 South State Street, Ann Arbor. For more information, visit umma.umich.edu or call 734-764-0395. Admission is free. 

"Silver Linings" also features the work of Emma Amos, Benny Andrews, Firelei Báez, Herman “Kofi” Bailey, Romare Bearden, Betty Blayton, Beverly Buchanan, Selma Burke, Elizabeth Catlett, Floyd Coleman, Renée Cox, Myra Greene, Sam Gilliam, Glenn Ligon, Howardena Pindell, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Lucille Malkia Roberts, Deborah Roberts, Nellie Mae Rowe, Lorna Simpson, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Lina Iris Viktor, Carrie Mae Weems, Charles White, and Hale Woodruff.