Expanding Tradition: The Journey of the African-American Artist at Grenning Gallery

February 4th – March 5th

Please join us for the Opening Reception for Expanding Tradition: The Journey of the African-American Artist on Saturday, February 4th, from 5:30 – 7pm at the Grenning Gallery, 17 Washington Street, Sag Harbor. The exhibition hangs until March 5th. The Grenning Gallery will be donating 10% of profits from all opening day sales to the Eastville Community Historical Society, in support of their 6-week summer art camp for school-age children.

To celebrate Black History Month, we will be showcasing the works of remarkable Black artists, who have mastered the classical techniques that Grenning Gallery has consistently championed for the past 20 years. Institutional recognition of the African-American artist has lagged behind their actual contribution, across the board, and we seek to offset that in our classical eddy of the art world. Few African-American artists have been given major solo museum shows, and works by 19^th and 20^th century African-American artists are generally undervalued by the art market relative to those by white artists of equal standing. Only a handful of Black artists – Mark Bradford, Glenn Ligon, and Julie Mehretu to name a few, have made it into the upper reaches of the market with works that fetch millions of dollars at auction. While museums slowly work towards the advancement of racial diversity in the art world, certain private galleries like Jack Shainman Gallery and Papillion Art are beacons of support that serve this under-represented group.  And this month, in our small way, the Grenning Gallery is doing our best by showcasing emerging and mid-career African-American Artists.

This show was inspired by and curated with Andree MiChelle who is a local African-American writer launching her latest book Escape Under Cover: The Ola Mae Story this month. In this young persons novel, MiChelle writes about how the Underground Railroad used specific quilts hanging in front of their homes to signal to those travelling up North towards freedom. Escape Under Cover is MiChelles third novel. MiChelle, a native of Riverhead, New York was the Grenning Gallerys first Gallery Manager in the very early days almost 20 years ago and she has remained a dear friend of our artists and our mission ever since. The Grenning Gallery will host her book signing on February 18^th.

More details on the featured artists are online here.