Exhibits on show at the RA speak loudly of ‘art’s role in collective survival’
It took both ingenuity and courage for African Americans to become artists in the Jim Crow-era Deep South, said Maya Jaggi in the FT. The region’s black inhabitants typically received no education beyond primary level and were limited to low-paid jobs, making materials like oil paint all but unaffordable. Since museums and galleries were “barred” to them, they had no conventional spaces in which to exhibit. Such was the level of prejudice, the very act of making art as an African American, let alone calling oneself an artist, might inspire “violent reprisals”.
