Spelman College has brought The Renaissance to campus, and you don’t even have to wear a bedazzled cowboy hat to watch.
The HBCU is currently hosting an art exhibition showcasing the Renaissance era through the perspective of Black people. The exhibit is open for visitors and students to tour between 12-5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Recently, rolling out spoke to Karen Comer Lowe, the Spelman College curator in the residence Museum of Fine Art, about the current exhibit and the HBCU’s relationship with art.
What’s the piece behind you?
Behind us, we have the work of Harmonia Rosales. This is the current exhibition that we have in the museum. She’s a Cuban-American artist from Los Angeles, and she creates works that are reimagined through the Renaissance, through the Black narrative.
Harmonia Rosales’ artwork on display at Spelman College’s art exhibit (Photo credit: Rashad Milligan for rolling out)
What’s your favorite part of this particular exhibit?
I love that people can come in and see themselves through this historic lens.
I think it’s very important for people of color, Black people in particular, to be able to know that we were a part of history and it’s not just current history, but history from centuries, decades and worlds ago.
Why does art need to remain in schools and universities?
It’s so important to have art in universities, especially in HBCUs, where students can come and see high-quality works of art by artists of note, and see themselves told in narratives throughout different kinds of stories from this kind of narrative that reference the Renaissance paintings, to contemporary works of artists like Mickalene Thomas, or Bisa Butler, who are making things through various mediums. We don’t only have paintings, but we show quilts, and printmaking, and things that you can’t even imagine that artists are making to tell our stories.
Karen Comer Lowe inside of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art (Photo credit: Rashad Milligan for rolling out)
How do HBCU culture and art intersect?
They’re almost one and the same. I was just recently walking across campus thinking about Spike Lee’s School Daze, and how that was such an important way for us to see ourselves through film, and it happens through visual art as well. There are so many stories that we are telling that have been told about the HBCU experience through art, that it’s important we have this kind of work in all of these institutions.
