In the mid-1960s, as the revolutionary fervor of Black Power intensified, an Afrocentric aesthetic movement was brewing. Poet and playwright Amiri Baraka opened the Black Arts Repertory Theater in Harlem in 1965, seen as a nucleus for the emergent Black Arts Movement. In his 1968 essay of the same name, considered a manifesto of sorts for the crusade, Larry Neal touted the “need to develop a ‘black aesthetic’” to oppose White hegemony — a distinct visual language to distinguish a new class of politically minded artistry. For Neal, “The cultural values inherent in western history must either be radicalized or destroyed, and we will probably find that even radicalization is impossible. In fact, what is needed is a whole new system of ideas.”
In October of 1969, tucked away on Bedford Street in the West Village, Acts of Art opened its doors, displaying the work of Black artists. It was the first gallery of its kind in the neighborhood. Founded by Nigel Jackson and Patricia Grey, it operated for only six years but exemplified the spirit of a subversive and consequential period in Black art history. Acts of Art in Greenwich Village at Hunter College’s Leubsdorf Gallery offers an overview of the gallery’s history, featuring 14 of its frequent collaborators. The showing is diverse, from Frank Wimberley’s collaged, torn-paper portals and Harlan Jackson’s collages intertwining Abstract Expressionism and allusions to West African sculpture to Ann Tanksley’s stirring portrait of Jonah, a biblical allegory for the transatlantic slave trade. The selection illuminates Black artists’ mutual preoccupations at the time — diaspora, autonomy, spirituality and religion, community, jazz — through their shared references.
