This spring exhibition, Approaching Abstraction: African American Art from the Permanent Collection, highlights La Salle University Art Museum’s holdings of works by African American artists. The exhibition features 24 fine art prints, mixed media, and paintings which incorporate abstract ideas, forms, and techniques. Many of the artworks selected for this exhibition are marked by the persistence of the figural, approaching but not fully realizing abstraction. Some artists have intentionally combined both modes of artistic expression, figuration and abstraction, seeking a synthesis which retains the figure and its social implications in representing African American life. Other works suggest more symbolic connections with the past and the present, and reflect the increasing multiculturalism of American society.

The exhibition features a total of 22 artworks by both local and national African American artists, including Bernice Appelin-Williams, Romare Bearden, John Anansa Thomas Biggers, Moe Brooker, Barbara J. Bullock, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Nannette Acker Clark, Willie Cole, John E. Dowell Jr., Walter Edmonds, Allan L. Edmunds, Sam Gilliam, Theodore A. Harris, Martina Johnson-Allen, Paul F. Keene Jr., Jacob Lawrence, John Thomas Riddle Jr., Alison Saar, Charles Robert Searles, Alma Thomas, Cheryl Warrick, and Walter Williams.

Programs
In conjunction with this exhibition, La Salle University Art Museum is presenting the following public programs:

Wednesday, March 15, 5-7 pm, Opening Reception
Thursday, April 6, 12:30-2 pm, Poetry reading by Yolanda Wisher, Philadelphia’s Poet Laureate 2016- 2017