Howard Bossen, co-curator

“Wendel A. White: Difficult Histories” presents a selection from White’s Manifest (2009–present) and Red Summer (2011–2019) series.

Manifest presents in classic still life fashion individual objects found in collections, public and private, from African American history. Some, like White’s image of a stained-glass shard of Birmingham’s 16^th Street Baptist Church, are connected to pivotal events.

White, in his montage series Red Summer, ties the past to the present using early twentieth-century news clippings and contemporary landscapes. Made at the sites where racial violence took place between 1917 and 1923, the series draws its title from civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson’s label for the summer of 1919, when white supremacist terrorism reached a fever pitch.

White’s Manifest and Red Summer series challenge viewers to excavate the difficult history of the United States.