Nadine Robinson, Coronation Theme: Organon, 2008.
Image from the High Museum of Art, Atlanta © Nadine Robinson.
The Virginia Museum of Fine Art will be exhibiting The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse from May 22 to September 6, 2021. Curated by Valerie Cassel Oliver, VMFA’s Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, this show will explore the aesthetic legacies and traditions of Black culture in the African American South as seen through the lens of contemporary Black musical expression. In this feature for RVAHub, Trevor Dickerson highlights exhibition's efforts to demonstrate how the aesthetics of the African American South have shaped musical and visual culture for the last century.
“The confluence between the visual and sonic arts in the Black creative expression has long been recognized. What has remained elusive, particularly in the presentation of these forms, is the long trajectory of this exchange.” - Valerie Cassel Oliver
