Exploring the images of ‘Black Womanhood’

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‘People like to say we’ve gotten beyond these issues of image and race, but we haven’t,’ says Barbara Thompson, who has organized a provocative show titled ‘Black Womanhood: Images, Icons and Ideologies of the African Body’ at the San Diego Museum of Art.

‘They’re still very salient in our everyday lives,’ adds Thompson, formerly a curator at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College and now at Stanford University. ‘Our culture has learned to hide it. Look at the discussion around Michelle Obama during the presidential campaign and how black she was or wasn’t. It’s amazing.’

For Erin Aubry Kaplan’s intimate report on the show and the subject, see the Sunday Arts & Books story here.

Above: Alison Saar’s sculpture ‘Cache.’ Credit: LA Louver Gallery/San Diego Museum of Art