“For more than 50 years, the thrust of my photography practice and research has been grounded by an interest in the culture, history, and migration of people of the African diaspora. This comes from my roots as the offspring of Southern born parents who traveled west as part of the Great Migration of the Twentieth Century. The work has evolved into a variety of related series two of which are represented in the exhibition; portraits of folks who I have been drawn to photograph because they are not letting outside forces determine how they present themselves to the world and who seem to be comfortable in their own skins and historical African American book covers and pages as both objects and reflections of the narrative of history and in some cases briefs for White supremacy”. – Lewis Watts

Lewis Watts is a photographer, archivist and professor emeritus of art at the University of California, Santa Cruz with a longstanding interest in the cultural landscape of the African diaspora in the US and internationally. He is the co-author of Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era.

The exhibition highlights an impressive grouping of photographs by Watts gifted to the JSMA that includes portraits of artists, activists, authors, and musicians along with his sourcing of important historical publications acquired from archival holdings of African American cultural institutions. The exhibition is organized by Thom Sempere, JSMA, Associate Curator of Photography.

The JSMA’s recent acquisition of Untitled by Raymond Saunders (American, b. 1934) marked the first work by this esteemed Bay Area painter and installation artist to enter the collection. Untitled combines many of the visual and thematic elements Saunders has repeated throughout his long artistic career. His work often references his public school education in Pittsburgh and his own role as an educator: as professor (now emeritus) at California State University in Hayward (now CSU East Bay) and as a core faculty member at the California College of Arts, from which he had received his MFA in 1961. Saunders was awarded a Rome Prize Fellowship (1964), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1976), and two National Endowment for the Arts Awards (1977, 1984). His 1967 pamphlet titled “Black Is a Color” challenged the notion of “Black art” as an identifiable, fixed category of art-making tied directly to an artist’s racial identity. In Saunders’ rejection of an easy reading of his own works, he celebrates the possibilities provided by jazz-like improvisation, multiple references, and layered meanings.

Untitled is presented in context with special loans of three drawings by Saunders from the collection of Laura Vandenburgh (Director, UO School of Art + Design; Associate Dean; and Professor of Art), and two works from Vandenburgh’s own drawing-based practice. The two artists have known one another for nearly five decades; Drawing Connections includes a reflection from Vandenburgh on the significance of this friendship and Saunders’ role in the development of her own artistic practice. 

Ideas about the American West, both in popular culture and in commonly accepted historical narratives, are often based on a past that never was, and fail to take into account important events that actually occurred. The exhibition Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea examines the perspectives of 48 modern and contemporary artists who offer a broader and more inclusive view of this region, which too often has been dominated by romanticized myths and Euro-American historical accounts.

Featuring artwork from the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and four partner museums in the western region of the United States, Many Wests is the culmination of a multi-year, joint curatorial initiative made possible by the Art Bridges Foundation. Along with JSMA, the SAAM’s collaborating partners include the Boise Art Museum (Boise, Idaho); the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Salt Lake City, Utah); and the Whatcom Museum (Bellingham, Washington).

This exhibition presents an opportunity to examine previous misconceptions, question racist clichés, and highlight the multiple communities and histories that continue to form this iconic region of the United States. Working in various media, from painting and sculpture to photography and mixed media, the artists featured bring a nuanced and multifaceted history to light. Many Wests highlights many voices, especially those of artists who identify as Black, Indigenous, Asian American, Latinx, and LGBTQ+. In Many Wests, JSMA is pleased to share works by Rick Bartow (Wiyot), Ka’ila Farrell-Smith (Klamath Modoc), V. Maldonado, Rubén Trejo, and Marie Watt (Seneca) from the permanent collection. The modern and contemporary artists featured in this exhibition reveal that “the West” has always been a place of multiple stories, experiences, and cultures.  

This exhibition is organized by Amy Chaloupka, curator of art at the Whatcom Museum; Melanie Fales, executive director/CEO of the Boise Art Museum; Danielle Knapp, McCosh Curator at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art; Whitney Tassie, senior curator and curator of modern and contemporary art at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts; and E. Carmen Ramos, former curator of Latinx Art, and Art Bridges Initiative Project Director, with Anne Hyland, the Art Bridges Initiative curatorial coordinator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. 

This is one in a series of American art exhibitions created through a multi-year, multi-institutional partnership formed by the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of the Art Bridges Initiative.

Virtual Tour

Many Wests national tour:

Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID (July 31 to Feb. 13, 2022)

Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, WA (March 19 to Aug. 21, 2022)

Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR (Sept. 28, to Dec. 18, 2022)

Utah Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT (Feb. 4 to June 11, 2023)

Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. (July 28, 2023, to Jan. 14, 2024)