Art Blog

Bill Traylor, William Edmondson, and the Modernist Impulse

The Studio Museum in Harlen: April 27 – July 3, 2005

Bill Traylor Female Drinker circa 1939-1942 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Bill Traylor, William Edmondson, and the Modernist Impulse is the first large-scale exhibition focusing on the works of two major figures in American and African-American art history: Bill Traylor (1854-1949), a draftsman, and William Edmondson (1874-1951), a sculptor. Although Traylor and Edmondson are often defined as “folk” or “outsider” artists that reflect the roots of African-American culture, their work was actually discovered and first discussed in the broader context of modernism. This exhibition includes over fifty drawings and paintings made by Traylor, and twenty-five sculptures by Edmondson, along with photographs of them by their contemporaries, drawn from private collections and museums across the country. Bill Traylor,William Edmondson, and the Modernist Impulse opened at Krannert Art Museum before traveling to the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama and The Studio Museum in Harlem, and will be on view at The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas from July 22—October 2, 2005.

http://www.studiomuseum.org