Faith Ringgold. Artist/Activist.
The artist Faith Ringgold died this week at the age of 93.
It was only a few months ago that her work was on exhibition at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
I had seen the show when it was on exhibit at New York’s downtown New Museum during the height of the pandemic in 2021.
Even for someone who had lived and worked over such a long period of time, the quantity, quality and breadth of Ringgold’s work was stunning.
What needs to be remembered now was Faith Ringgold’s activism on behalf of artists, particularly artists of color.
In the late 1960s the country (and the world) witnessed an explosion of cultural and political revolt and protest.
Part of all that was the Art Workers Coalition (AWC), in which Ringgold was a leading voice. She along with Tom Lloyd co-led a black coalition within the group.
The AWC was born out of an action at the Museum of Modern Art on January 3, 1969, when the artist Takis removed his sculpture (which was owned by the Museum) from an exhibition on the grounds that an artist had the right to control the exhibition and treatment of their work regardless of whether they had sold it.
This provided the catalyst for a group of artists and others to join together into the AWC. Throughout the course of the year, the AWC staged demonstrations, organized an open hearing, and attended meetings with MoMA staff to further their demands.
Bates Lowry was MoMA’s director at the time and also my father-in-law.
The AWC’s famous “13 Demands,” submitted to Bates Lowry on January 28, 1969, included point #2: “A section of the Museum, under the direction of black artists, should be devoted to showing the accomplishments of black artists.” And item #3: “The Museum’s activities should be extended into the Black, Spanish and other communities. It should also encourage exhibits with which these groups can identify.”
Other AWC demands included free admission which led to today’s common museum practice of having at least one free day a week.
On April 3, 1969, Ringgold along with Lloyd wrote a letter to Lowry informing him of their intention to “bring a group” to visit the Museum on April 16 in order to evaluate its program in terms of meeting and serving the needs of minority populations.
They wrote, “The glaring shortcomings of the Museum vis-à-vis the black and Puerto Rican communities clearly require the setting up of a special Black Wing to enable the Museum to present a harmonized portrayal of black culture in America.”
They proposed naming the wing the Martin Luther King, Jr., Wing for Black and Puerto Rican Art at The Museum of Modern Art.
Naming the wing for Dr. King wasn’t only a way to honor the civil rights hero, the proposed title was also intended as a criticism of the Museum.
From October 31 to November 3 1968, the Museum had hosted a tribute exhibition titled In Honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It consisted of important and major works donated by approximately 80 leading American artists, all of which were to be sold to benefit the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and concluded with a literary evening with readings by Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Robert Penn Warren, and Allen Ginsberg in the Museum auditorium.
The AWC called attention to the fact that the exhibition included work by very few African American artists. Ringgold and the AWC rebuked the Museum for grouping the work of Black artists together in the last room of the show in what for all intentions was an act of racial segregation.
For issues unrelated, Bates Lowry was fired by the MoMA trustees and replaced with John Hightower.
Hightower assumed the directorship of the Museum in May 1970, and he was sympathetic to the concerns of the AWC and other artist protest groups.
At Hightower’s urging, the Museum’s Board of Trustees convened a special subcommittee. A memo of June 29, 1970, with the subject line “Black, Puerto Rican and Other Ethnic Studies Program,” indicated that the committee was charged “to study the role of the Museum of Modern Art with respect to the works of various ethnic groups and to recommend to the Board of Trustees any changes in the operations of the Museum which it may find appropriate and desirable in order to increase its usefulness in this area.”
But Hightower didn’t last long as director. Barely six months in he too was fired and the Museum’s board of trustees, including David Rockefeller and CBS Chairman William Paley, lost interest in the project.