Wadsworth Jarrell: Joyful Resistance: Peoria Riverfront Museum
Black American culture is American culture.
For the first time in the museum’s history, Joyful Resistance brings together a multidisciplinary collection of works from the pioneering Black American artists, authors and designers across the nation, spanning generations.
A celebration of the enduring spirit, creativity, and agency of Black people across time and space, this exhibition honors the vibrant tapestry of Black life, where art becomes both a refuge and a rallying cry.
As the Peoria Riverfront Museum honors the 250th anniversary of the birth of our nation, we look to explore 250 years of our country’s art, history, scientific advancement and achievements.
In the first exhibition of a series commemorating America 250, Joyful Resistance shines a light on the myriad forms of Black expression; showcasing the vibrancy, resilience, and multiplicity of artistry within the Black American community.
The exhibition itself brings to attention the materiality of the objects within. Cultural signifiers like hair brushes, African black soap, and scrap fabric peek through the exhibition, a mosaic of the everyday life of Black Americans exalted as art.
Featuring works by Wadsworth Jarrell, one of the pioneers of the AfriCOBRA art movement, a signed first edition copy of “On Poems of Various Subjects, Religious and Moral” by Phyllis Wheatley, the first published Black author, and items worn by A’Lelia Walker, daughter of haircare mogul Madam C.J. Walker, this exhibition brings together art, literature, fashion and more to paint a vivid picture of Black American expression.
Generations of Black American art culminate in works by contemporary artists like Rashid Johnson, Mickalene Thomas and Kara Walker, who carry on the traditions of their predecessors while they forge their own path, looking on to the future and celebrating the past.
Many of the works featured in the exhibition come to the museum through some of the most pre-eminent collections in the nation, including the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, Art Bridges, Kavi Gupta Gallery, individuals like artist Felandus Thames, author and great-great-granddaughter of Madam C.J. Walker A'Lelia Bundles, and Seth Kaller, the nation's leading expert in rare historic documents.
The exhibition aims to empower all who visit, in seeing joy not as a denial of pain, but as a strategy of survival and a testament to resilience. Joyful Resistance invites you to witness how Black artists and communities have continually made space for themselves, for each other, and for generations to come.
Joy is radical. Joy is cultural. Joy is in the everyday.
