HOUSTON, TX.- The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston presents In the Brown Foundation Gallery: Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970, through April 17, 2005. Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970 examines the influence of a number of the critical art movements of the late 1960s on African-American art. By adopting and retooling the ordinary materials, texts and performances commonly identified with conceptual art, African-American conceptual artists created a new language that legitimized their invisible place in contemporary art history and examined the complex social realities of present-day life. The exhibition will illustrate how the work of African-American artists has left an indelible impression on conceptual art in America and its place in contemporary art history – an impact that remains largely unacknowledged by the art world.
Organized by the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston’s Associate Curator Valerie Cassel Oliver, the exhibition will be accompanied by a major catalogue with new research and scholarship in the field of African-American art. It will contain essays by Cassel Oliver and Franklin Sirmans, editor-in-chief of Art AsiaPacific, as well as contributions by several of the artists and scholars featured in the exhibition, reproductions of exhibited work, and documentation on the artists’ careers.