ST. LOUIS, Oct. 26, 2022—Co-organized by the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art, “The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century” will examine the extraordinary impact of hip hop on contemporary art. Titled after the phrase “for the culture,” this exhibition will advance a sweeping and contemporary account of the expansive influence of hip-hop culture and its myriad expressions across the globe.
“The Culture” will bring together poetry, music videos, fashion, painting, sculpture, photography, and film by some of the most innovative cultural producers of the last 20 years. The exhibition will open in St. Louis on Saturday, Aug. 19, 2023, and continue through Jan. 1, 2024. The exhibition will be on view at the BMA from March 26 through July 9, 2023.
Grounded in hip hop’s emergence in the mid-1970s as a cultural form originated by Black, Latinx and Afro-Latinx youth, “The Culture” examines how the collision of hip hop, technology, and the marketplace over the past two decades transformed contemporary art and material culture.
Featuring approximately 70 objects by both established and emerging artists, “The Culture” will be multi-disciplinary and multimedia in its focus. Exhibition sections will explore a variety of hip hop’s themes, from activism and racial identity to notions of bling and swagger, and will highlight hip-hop culture’s relationship to gender, sexuality and feminism as well as hip hop’s connections to the art world and the art market.
“The Culture” will prominently showcase iconic paintings not previously exhibited in St. Louis by some of the art world’s most famous practitioners, including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Mark Bradford, as well as works by artists represented in the SLAM collection, such as Julie Mehretu and Carrie Mae Weems. Other featured artists include Nina Chanel Abney, Derrick Adams, Jordan Casteel, Kudzanai Chiurai, William Cordova, Hassan Hajjaj, Lauren Halsey, Arthur Jafa, Deana Lawson, Hank Willis Thomas and others. The exhibition will include significant examples of fashion, including looks from Virgil Abloh’s collections for Louis Vuitton, legendary streetwear brand Cross Colours, as well as a range of music ephemera.
Conceived and developed as a collaborative effort that engages with both museums’ curatorial, education and audience development staff, “The Culture” will emphasize community access and engagement as core to the exhibition experience. Throughout the planning for this exhibition, the BMA and SLAM have engaged a global advisory committee of experts comprising hip hop’s leading thinkers: academics, musicians, fashion designers, visual artists and curators who have helped to refine the exhibition themes, adhere to the ethos of hip hop and make the exhibition accessible to the local community and beyond.
To further illuminate hip hop’s influence, the exhibition will incorporate works by artists with deep ties to their local communities. Participating St. Louis and Missouri artists include Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola, Damon Davis, Jen Everett, Aaron Fowler, Kahlil Robert Irving, Shabez Jamal, Yvonne Osei and Adrian Octavius Walker, among others. The show will be accompanied at both venues with a robust slate of community-oriented programs and partnerships.
The exhibition is curated by Hannah Klemm, SLAM’s former associate curator of modern and contemporary art; Andréa Purnell, SLAM’s audience development manager; Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Chief Curator and Interim Co-Director; and Gamynne Guillotte, the BMA’s chief education officer; with Rikki Byrd, the BMA’s curatorial research fellow, and Carlyn Thomas, the BMA’s curatorial assistant.
“The Culture” is accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue with contributions from more than 50 artists, writers, scholars, curators and arts leaders.
The exhibition is generously supported by the Ford Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. In St. Louis, “The Culture” is made possible with lead funding from the exhibition’s presenting sponsor, the William T. Kemper Foundation
CONTACT: Molly Morris, 314.655.5250, molly.morris@slam.org
Press images for 'The Culture'
Click on any the images in this gallery to download.
-
-
-
-
-
-
Gajin Fujita, American, born 1972; “Ride or Die”, 2005; Collection of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri, Bebe and Crosby Kemper Collection, Museum purchase, Enid and Crosby Kemper and William T. Kemper Acquisition Fund 2005.39.01; © Gajin Fujita, Courtesy of the artist and L.A. Louver Gallery, Photo: E. G. Schempf, 2021
-
-
View 1 more
