Black History exhibit at Yale

New Haven, Conn (WTNH) - Horace Ballard, Associate Guest Curator at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music in New Haven, spoke with GMC Weekend about the new exhibit "Incarnations: Black Spiritualities in American Art", going on now through April 22nd.

Incarnations: Black Spiritualities in American Art engages the diverse expression of Christian devotion in the everyday experience of a selection of African American artists and their imagined or recollected subjects.

The featured works expand, challenge, and critique notions of a sacred/profane divide, and exemplify the multiple ways artists have interpreted the culturally-constructed systemics of ethnicity, religion, and community.

In both the making and the viewing of these works, artist and audience negotiate the implicit and explicit bounds of grace in a complex, cultural landscape. Within a varied program of visual representations, Incarnations brings together works that interpret scriptural texts, wrestle with the concept of theodicy, and situate the church at the heart of Black political and communal life.

Etchings, linocuts, mixed media collage, lithographs, and silkscreen prints come together within the exhibition to map the tangible realities inherent in the material mysteries of Christian ritual and belief.

Horace Ballard, Jr. is a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University in the department of American Civilization. He received his B.A. in English Literature and American Studies from the University of Virginia and holds a Masters in Religion and the Arts from Yale and the Yale Institute for Sacred Music. He currently works as a Museum Educator at the RISD Museum of Art. Horace has worked as an interpretation guide and research fellow at Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, and as a Gallery Teacher and Curatorial Intern at the Yale University Art Gallery. Incarnations: Black Identities in American Art at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music is the second exhibition Horace has helped to curate.

Incarnations: Black Spiritualities in American Art from the Steele Collection"
Yale Institute of Sacred Music/Divinity School.
409 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511
Now through April 22nd
Mon-Fri 9am-4pm
http://www.yale.edu/ism/events/Incarnations.html