Tomashi Jackson - Brown II - Exhbition at the Radcliffe Institute

September 20, 2021
Tomashi Jackson, detail from Brown II, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist and the Tilton Gallery

 

Brown II

 

On view September 20, 2021–January 15, 2022
Monday–Saturday, noon–5 PM

 
Tomashi Jackson, detail from Brown II, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist and the Tilton Gallery
 

Tomashi Jackson combines a practice based in painting and printmaking with archival research in the histories of law, urbanism, and social justice. Her work plumbs the intersections between the formal languages of visual art (color, composition, layering) and the political languages driving the histories of segregation, voting rights, education, and housing in the United States. By activating these shared motifs of art and policy, her work brings the full power of both traditions to bear on historical engagement and critical action.

In this exhibition, commissioned by Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Jackson explores the challenges of implementing the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court decision. Her research and work centers specifically on the 1955 case (referred to as Brown II) that followed the 1954 Brown decision. Brown II asserted that the effort to desegregate schools in the United States was to be undertaken with “all deliberate speed.”

Working with a team of Harvard graduate students, Jackson produced a volume of research that animates the legal, social, contemporary, and historical movements that flow from the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Working before and during the spring 2020 period of quarantine, Jackson and the student research team interviewed experts and sifted through the Schlesinger Library archives to produce a multifaceted approach to historical narratives of governance and policy.

 
“As sunshine beamed through the windows, we sat beneath a framed portrait of Pauli Murray and reconsidered what we thought we knew about how this history looked. We asked ourselves, ‘What would visualizing this history look like through a lens of Black love, care, and coalition?’” —Tomashi Jackson, spring 2020

 

Tomashi Jackson’s work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, in Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Studio Museum in Harlem; and the Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art. 

Jackson, born in 1980 in Houston, Texas, lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in New York City. She has had solo museum exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts and the Zuckerman Museum of Art, and another solo exhibition—The Land Claim at the Parrish Art Museum—is on view through November 7, 2021. Her work is in the group show Off the Record at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum through September 27, 2021, and was included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial and other group shows at the Contemporary Art Center, in New Orleans; the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; MASS MoCA; and the Moody Center for the Arts. Among many other upcoming exhibitions, in 2022 her work will be included in Working Thought: Art, Labor, and the American Economy at the Carnegie Museum of Art and in What is Left Unspoken,Love at the High Museum of Art.

Request a copy of the publication Tomashi Jackson: Brown II by filling out this form. This research-based volume, produced for the exhibition, animates the legal, social, contemporary, and historical movements that flow from the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Contributors

  • Matt Cregor, staff attorney, Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee
  • Tomiko Brown-Nagin, dean of Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, and professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University
  • David J. Harris, managing director, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice, Harvard Law School
  • Donna Bivens, education justice coordinator and director of the Boston Busing/Desegregation Project, Union of Minority Neighborhoods
  • Nia K. Evans, director, Boston Ujima Project
  • Rashida Richardson, director of policy research, AI Now Institute
  • Meredith Whittaker, Minderoo Research Professor, New York University, and cofounder and codirector, AI Now Institute
  • Sabelo Mhlambi , technology and human rights fellow, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, and fellow, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University

Publication Editor

  • Rachel Vogel AM ’18, PhD ’22, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Research Collaborators

  • Kéla B. Jackson PhD ’25, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
  • K. Anthony Jones MDes ’20 Harvard Graduate School of Design
  • Martha Schnee EdM ’20, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Exhibition cocurated by Jennifer L. Roberts, Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Professor of the Humanities in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Meg Rotzel, curator of exhibitions at Harvard Radcliffe Institute

Artist’s Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all our discussants for sharing their knowledge and experience with us with such clarity and generosity. I would especially like to thank Nia K. Evans, Matthew Cregor, and Donna Bivens for inspiring this inquiry for me in 2014, continuing to be available for my questions, and helping to structure my interrogation of this history. Thank you to Natalie Z. Wang for advising us to be active in ethical visual storytelling and preparing now for our memories of the future. Thanks to Connie Rogers Tilton, Meagan Bartsch, and the team at Tilton Gallery for your tireless support. Thank you to Elizabeth (Betsy) Moore and Harrison Moore for your kindness and the stability you provide. Thank you to Jane Panetta and Ashley James for your unwavering encouragement. Finally, I would like to thank my team of research assistants and editor, Rachel Vogel, and the entire team at Harvard Radcliffe Institute for your investment in this project and your agility during times of great change.

Harvard Radcliffe Institute gratefully acknowledges the Johnson-Kulukundis Family Endowment Fund for the Arts, which is supporting this exhibition.

Register

University guidelines limit the number of visitors in the Johnson-Kulukundis Family Gallery, so visitors must reserve time in advance to guarantee access. To reserve a time slot, individuals will need to register via Calendly. Each reservation grants entry for the individual named in the confirmation only. Please make separate bookings for each member of your party.

To visit the exhibition before October 1, you must have an active Harvard University ID and present it at the time of your visit. If you do not have a Harvard University ID, please book a visit anytime beginning October 1.

All of the above text drawn from: https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2021-brown-ii-exhibition