By 2023 it had already been several years since the last substantial gallery exhibitions of Charles White’s work. [Charles White: The Gordon Gift to the University of Texas, September 7 - December 1, 2019/Charles White and the Legacy of the Figure: Celebrating the Gordon Gift, Christian-Green Gallery of Black Studies at UT, August 28 - November 30, 2019]. These two exhibitions had followed on the heels of Charles White: A Retrospective, the first major museum survey devoted to the artist in well over 30 years. Opening at the Art Institute of Chicago (Jun 8–Sep 3, 2018), the exhibition travelled to the Museum of Modern Art, New York (Oct 7, 2018–Jan 13, 2019), finishing its tour at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Feb 17–Jun 9, 2019).

In 2022, a major new exhibition on Charles White opened at the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami (November 10, 2022 – February 26, 2023). The exhibition toured to Hickory Museum of Art (March 18, 2023 – July 30, 2023) and Cincinnati Art Museum (November 10, 2023 – February 25, 2024). The exhibition, Charles White: A Little Higher was an invaluable curatorial undertaking. From Cincinnati Art Museum’s website, https://www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org/art/exhibitions/charles-white-a-little-higher/:

Charles White (1918–1979) is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential African American artists of the twentieth century. The exhibition Charles White: A Little Higher explores the work of the Chicago-born artist and educator. Over the course of a 40-year career, White created powerful, evocative interpretations of the Black experience with a confidence and technical skill that defined his mastery as a draftsman, printmaker, and painter.

Although his art focused nearly exclusively on African American subjects, White speaks to viewers from all walks of life. He stated, “I like to think that my work has a universality to it. I deal with love, hope, courage, freedom, and dignity—the full gamut of the human experience.”

The exhibition features nearly 50 of White’s drawings, prints, and paintings selected from the Primas Family Collection, one of the nation’s premiere collections of work by Black artists. The forceful images of White’s early career merge into the breathtaking, emotive works for which he is best known, like the two large charcoal drawings in the exhibition from his “J’Accuse” series. Another notable feature of the exhibition, on public display for the first time, is a group of twelve oil-wash illustrations commissioned by the Johnson Publishing Company (which also produced Ebony) for the landmark book The Shaping of Black America (published in 1975) by noted author and Ebony editor Lerone Bennett, Jr.

Expressing his lifelong commitment to social justice and equality, White’s stirring art provides lessons in tolerance and compassion that resonate today.

Charles White: A Little Higher came with a substantial hardback catalogue, published by Lowe Art Museum and Tra Publishing, Miami. A particular note was the publication’s early essay by Jill Deupi, “Charles White: A Life, Extraordinary”, a largely biographical text that was accompanied by a treasure trove of archival photographs. A similar importance was a text by Mora J. Beauchamp-Byrd, “Mexico Was a Milestone – Charles White’s Negro: U.S.A. Prints, a rare and highly significant reflection on Charles White’s contributions to two important folios of prints dating from 1948. The two other fascinating texts in this first section of Charles White: A Little Higher, were “On Charles White: His Vision Was His Own – Willis “Bing” Davis in conversation with Will South” and “The Miseducation of Charles White” by Nijah Cunningham. These texts, and indeed the substantial selection of plates that follow, include images of Whites with which we might be familiar, alongside other images with which we might be less familiar. These plates, and the wonderful selection of archival material in the book, make Charles White: A Little Higher a wonderful work.

Contents as follows:

DIRECTOR’S FOREWORD, Jill Deupi

COLLECTOR’S NOTE, Arthur Primas

CHARLES WHITE: A LIFE, EXTRAORDINARY, Jill Deupi

MEXICO WAS A MILESTONE, Mora J. Beauchamp-Byrd

ON CHARLES WHITE: HIS VISION WAS HIS OWN, Willis “Bing” Davis in conversation with Will South

THE MISEDUCATION OF CHARLES WHITE, Nijah Cunningham

PLATED, Texts by Jill Deupi

Notes

CONTRIBUTORS

Credits.