Renowned International Artists on View in “Reclamation! Pan-African Works from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection”
ROANOKE, Va. (Dec. 20, 2017) — The Taubman Museum of Art is pleased to present Reclamation! Pan-African Works from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, featuring nearly 100 works from various media highlighting the global migration of peoples across the world.
Drawn from DeWoody’s significant contemporary African diaspora collection, it features world renowned artists such as Willie Cole, Hank Thomas Willis, Kerry James Marshall, Kara Walker, Romare Bearden, Kehinde Wiley, Sanford Biggers, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, and Yinka Shonibare MBE (RA) among others working in a broad reach of media and conceptual approaches.
The exhibition opens March 3, 2018, with a special ticketed Q&A with DeWoody Friday, March 2. Exhibiting artist Nathaniel Mary Quinn will be on hand for the Q&A event. The exhibition is on view through Sept. 2, 2018.
“I am delighted to share this important selection of Pan-African artwork with the Taubman Museum of Art and Roanoke community,” said DeWoody. “Reclamation! introduces themes of globalization and diaspora that I feel are especially timely and important within art history. It is truly special to me that this exhibition will include my very first acquisition, by Benny Andrews in 1969, alongside major works in my collection spanning the 1940’s to present. It has been a pleasure working with the Taubman Museum of Art to develop this wonderful exhibition, and I look forward to the opening in March 2018.”
The exhibiting artists create work that investigates the universal conversation of migration, history, race and representation in art being made today. The exhibition captures the personal stories and collective histories of artists reflected through installations, videos, paintings and sculptures. The exhibition aims to represent artists whose work references ownership of their own home countries while developing narratives that embrace global histories.
About the Collector: Beth Rudin DeWoody, art collector and curator, resides between Los Angeles, New York City, and West Palm Beach, Fla. She is president of The Rudin Family Foundations and executive vice president of Rudin Management. Her Board affiliations include the Whitney Museum of American Art, Hammer Museum, The New School, The Glass House, Empowers Africa, New Yorkers for Children, and The New York City Police Foundation. She is an honorary trustee at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and on the photography steering committee at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach.
This month, DeWoody opened a private art space in West Palm Beach, which will present viewable storage of her collection, as well as exhibitions. The space will hold private tours and events.
Reclamation! Pan-African Works from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection is co-curated by the Taubman Museum of Art with Laura Dvorkin of the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection.
The exhibition is presented by The Secular Society, with education programming support provided by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.
