These acquisitions come following a recent Museum exhibition on the Kamoinge Workshop.
“Kamoinge artists were committed to the power of photography as an art form and depicted Black life as they saw and experienced it. They sought to offer an alternative to the mainstream media of the time, which often overlooked Black culture or portrayed it negatively,” says Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the Getty Museum. “As part of Getty’s commitment to building a more inclusive representation of American photography, both past and present, the Museum is continuing to work with members of the Kamoinge Workshop to bring additional objects into the collection for future exhibitions, and for researchers and classes to view in the Department of Photographs study room.”
The GRI’s acquisition is part of its ongoing African American Art History Initiative. “The Kamoinge Workshop helped shape a critical era of Black self-determination in the 1960s and 1970s, a period that coincided with a pivotal shift in photography’s wider acceptance as a powerful artistic medium,” says Mary Miller, director of the GRI. “Acquiring Barboza’s work, and in particular this series, which symbolizes the collaborative efforts of the Kamoinge photographers, is particularly important as we create a center for the study of African American art.”
To learn more about the Museum’s exhibition, visit Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop. To learn more about the GRI’s multi-project effort to make African American art history more visible to the public and accessible to the scholarly community worldwide, visit African American Art History Initiative.