Ambrotype of Frederick Douglass, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC, 2016, from Manifest (Images courtesy OUAG/Wendel A. White)
New Jersey Manual and Industrial Training School for Colored Youth, Bordentown, New Jersey, 2008, from Schools for the Colored
Chicago, Illinois, July 27–August 3, 1919 / “Fort Wayne (IN) News and Sentinel,” July 29, 1919, 2016, from Red Summer
August 17, 2023
Beginning Sept. 8, the Oakland University Art Gallery will present Remains • Remnants • Reliquaries, a solo exhibition of the work Wendel A. White, a Distinguished Professor of Art and American Studies at Stockton University whose work addresses the complex historical narrative of Black life in the United States.
“The Oakland University Art Gallery is honored to present the first retrospective devoted to the prolific career of Wendel A. White,” said Dr. Claude Baillargeon, a professor of art history at OU and curator of the exhibition. “Viewed as a whole, Remains • Remnants • Reliquaries attests to the artist’s long-held commitment to a rigorous, research-based practice centered on African American history and material culture.”
The exhibition will feature four wide-ranging bodies of work created by White over the last 35 years, including Manifest (2009-present), Red Summer (2011-2019), Schools for the Colored (2002-2012), and Small Towns, Black Lives (1989-2002).
“While serendipitous discoveries are an essential part of the creative process, advanced planning and research remain the driving engine of White’s workmanship and artistry,” Baillargeon said. “Each of the four long-term projects represented in the exhibition rests on solid research foundations achieved through a variety of channels, including sustained multidisciplinary reading, oral history gathering, archival sleuthing, digitized newspaper gleaning, collection catalogue scrutinizing, and Internet browsing to name a few.”
“Equally significant to the artist’s working methodology and creative impulse is unqualified dedication to material culture, the broad range of physical evidence testifying to human activity and cultural specificity,” Baillargeon added. “Sharply focused on his African American heritage, White has in turn trained his lens on remnants of once predominantly Black communities, on the architectural remains of school segregation, on published and revisited accounts of racial terrorism, and on the too-often overlooked artifacts of Black lives.”
The exhibition will kick off at 5 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 8 in the Oakland University Art Gallery with a conversation between Wendel A. White and Kenya Tyson, an internationally recognized criminal justice expert and higher education executive at Dartmouth College. Tyson is also the executive director of The Black Massacre Project, an independent research center that explores the historical race massacres perpetrated against Black communities in the Unites States. This event is sponsored by the Barry M. Klein Center for Culture and Globalization, with the assistance of the Department of Art and Art History at OU.
On Thursday, Sept. 28 in Banquet Rooms A and B inside the Oakland Center, the Oakland University Department of Art and Art History will present the Jean S. and Fred M. Braun Memorial Lecture “An Artist Committed to History: Wendel A. White” with Dr. Deborah Willis, university professor and chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch School of Arts at New York University. Her research examines photography’s multifaceted histories, visual culture, the photographic history of slavery and emancipation, contemporary women photographers, and beauty. This event is made possible by the generous support of the Jean S. and Fred M. Braun Memorial Lecture Fund, the Department of Art and Art History, and the Division of Student Affairs and Diversity.
At 7 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 12, the Oakland University Art Gallery — with the support of The Judd Family Endowed Fund — will present “Contemporary Photography and the Black Atlantic Diaspora” at the Oakland University Art Gallery. This two-part event will open with Dr. Kenneth Montague — a Toronto-based dentist, art collector, and the founding director of Wedge Curatorial Projects, a non-profit arts organization — speaking about his collection of Black Atlantic photography. A panel discussion featuring Wendel A. White, Dr. Montague, and Samantha A. Noël, Ph.D. will follow. Noël is an associate professor of art history and the Hawkins Ferry endowed chair in modern and contemporary art at Wayne State University. Her research interests revolve around the history of art, visual culture, and performance of the Black Diaspora.
“What I’m hoping is for people to see this exhibition as a bridge,” Baillargeon said. “We are trying to look at history so we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. At the Oakland University Art Gallery, our mandate is to educate people, not to conceal history but to look at it so that we can learn from it and find ways to move forward. And if we can help people to have a greater respect for the contributions of African Americans to the American experiment, so much the better.”
The exhibition, Wendel A. White: Remains • Remnants • Reliquaries will continue through Nov. 26, 2023. For more information, visit https://calendar.oakland.edu/ou-art-gallery/event/remains-remnants-reliquaries.