Kerry James Marshall: Mementos
A commemorative exhibition catalogue that documents Kerry James Marshall's ambitious 1998 installation addressing the legacy and lost potential of the Civil Rights Movement through monumental history painting.
Published on the occasion of Marshall's exhibition at The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (May 6–June 28, 1998), this catalogue presents the artist's immersive installation conceived as "a requiem to the 60s, a decade synonymous with the Civil Rights Movement." The exhibition featured three new paintings from Marshall's acclaimed Souvenir series—large-scale acrylic and glitter works on unstretched canvas measuring 9 × 13 feet each—alongside two sculptural components and a video projection. The works create an angelic pantheon of African-American cultural and political figures who died between 1959 and 1979, including Martin Luther King Jr., employing the visual language of memorial culture—glitter, banners, commemorative fans—to examine how Black achievement and loss are remembered. Essays by Richard Powell, Cheryl I. Harris, and Will Alexander provide critical context for Marshall's engagement with history, mourning, and the Civil Rights era's unfulfilled promises. The exhibition subsequently toured to Brooklyn Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Santa Monica Museum, and Boise Art Museum.
Kerry James Marshall (b. 1955, Birmingham, Alabama) is one of the most significant American painters working today, known for his monumental figurative works that center Black life and challenge art historical narratives. Growing up in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles during the Civil Rights Movement, Marshall developed a practice that addresses the absence of Black subjects from the Western canon through technically virtuosic paintings that combine social realism with allegory. His work is held in major collections including MoMA, the Whitney Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Tate Modern. He is represented by David Zwirner gallery and received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1997.
