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In the fall of 2021, Davidson College released a Call For Qualifications for the creation of a commemorative work of art to honor the contributions of enslaved people and others whose labor was exploited. The call was open to professional artists, architects, landscape architects, and design teams with experience managing, designing, and completing public art commissions. The jury identified the most highly qualified artist(s)/architects/teams for this opportunity, and selected five finalists, including Radcliffe Bailey. Radcliffe Bailey | Photo by LaMont Hamilton "I've always felt like the only way I can heal myself is to go back through my memory, learn...

From my limited experience with painting, I have often used water for cleaning my brushes and occasionally thinned my paint. However, when it comes to Nicholas Galanin’s work, Unshadowed Land, those two common art terms have vastly different meanings. Rather than experimenting with new aesthetics or creating contrasting layers within a work, the thinning recently done to the corn grown in the outline of Andrew Jackson involved selectively removing plants from the soil. Despite the glaring differences in action, the function of thinning plants relates to thinning paint in one beautifully efficient way: creating more with less.  On a gorgeous...

Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798-1863)Juive d'Alger (Jewish Woman of Algiers), 1830 Etching on paperGallery Purchase 1830's, North Africa. Eugène Delacroix and his friend, Count de Mornay, are on a good-will, diplomatic mission to the Sultan of Morocco. Delacroix’s drawings fill countless pages of his sketchbooks, depicting his observations of Arab life. An encounter greatly influences Delacroix’s practice; assigned as the dragoman for the travels is Abraham-Ben-Chimol of Tangiers, who introduces Delacroix to his wife and daughter. The trajectory of Delacroix’s etchings shifts to depicting young Jewish women in modest interiors. In Juive d’Alger, a young Jewish woman in traditional dress sits...

Raymond Pettibon (American, b. 1957)Untitled (However Vast), 2007Color lithograph on wove paper33.375 x 25.125 in.Gift of John Andrew MacMahon, Class of 1995 However vast the “outer space” may be, yet with all its sidereal distances it hardlybears comparison with the dimensions, with the depth dimensions of our inner being, which doesnot even need the spaciousness of the universe to be within itself almost unfathomable. Thus, ifthe dead, if those who are to come, need an abode, what refuge could be more agreeable andappointed for them than this imaginary space? I rarely find words to be integral to an illustration, but here...

Raymond Grubb (American, b. 1952)A Shatter of Camellia Blooms Arranged Themselves over Tom's Face, 202023 x 17 inArchival ink jet printGallery Purchase A man sits — or perhaps lounges — on the ground, leaning against a rusted bench. Vibrant pink Camellia flowers lay across the man’s face. Vines and branches growing with green leaves curl up around the bench, almost in active, visible motion, like they are conscious, moving in concert with Tom and creating a halo to rest on his head. He is not dressed like an angel; he is a person, just like you or me, wearing regular (albeit fancy)...