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Kerry James Marshall

Born, 1955 in Birmingham, Alabama

Kerry James Marshall contributed a preface, ‘A Black Artist Named White’, to the major catalogue, CHARLES WHITE: A RETROSPECTIVE, Edited by Sarah Kelly Oehler and Esther Adler. Marshall’s text “honors White’s significance as a mentor to an entire generation of practitioners” (from the catalogue flyleaf). The catalogue accompanied the first major museum survey devoted to the artist in well over 30 years. The exhibition charted the breadth of Charles White’s career—from the 1930s through to works completed before his death in 1979. Featuring in excess of 100 works, including drawings, paintings, prints, photographs, illustrated books, record covers and archival materials, this was by far the most extensive, well resourced exhibition of the artist’s work ever to take place. Fittingly, it travelled to prominent galleries in the three US cities with which White was associated. Opening at the Art Institute of Chicago, the exhibition travelled to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, finishing its tour at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This was a weighty, profusely illustrated catalogue, coming as it did with important texts by leading scholars and well known names.