Memento #5

Artist Kerry James Marshall (American, born 1955)

Date2003

MediumAcrylic and glitter on paper adhered to unstretched canvas banner

DimensionsOverall: 108 × 156 inches (274.32 × 396.24 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: acquired through the generosity of the William T. Kemper Foundation–Commerce Bank, Trustee

Object number2003.24

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

Contemporary Art

Terms

DescriptionThe painting is in black and shades of gray overlaid with squares of silver glitter which fall, curtain-like in a streamer pattern over the image. The scene is that of a domestic interior. In the center stands a figural form holding apart two strands of glitter. Just below the figure is a written phrase repeated twice "What a Time What a Time." Directly behind the standing figure is a picture hung on the wall of the interior. Above it, the letters "Rememb" can be partially seen through the glitter streamers. To the upper right, in a cloud-like configuration are the heads of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. To the upper left if the head of Malcolm X.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Kerry James Marshall: One True Thing, Meditations on Black Aesthetics, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, October 25-January 18, 2004, Miami Art Museum, February 6-April 25, 2004, Baltimore Museum of Art, June 20-September 5, 2004, Birmingham Museum of Art, February 3-April 24, 2005, unnumbered.

Kerry James Marshall: Mastry, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, April 23-September 25, 2016; The Met Breuer, New York, October 26, 2016-January 30, 2017; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, February 26-June 25, 2017, no. 41.

Gallery Label

Memento #5, the final painting in Chicago-based artist Kerry James Marshall's Memento series, is an elegy to the Civil Rights movement. The monochromatic painting depicts a black angel standing at the center of a living room. Solemnly, the figure draws closed a glittery, silver curtain, symbolically concluding a decade of peaceful civil disobedience, courageous marches, visionary speeches, righteous legislation, explosive riots and tragic deaths. Behind the angel, at left and right, are the faces of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Each year of the decade appears between the glitter strands, and fragments of the word "Remember" are also visible. At the bottom, Marshall has written, "What a Time. What a Time."

Provenance

With Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, 2003;

Purchased from Jack Shainman Gallery by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2003.

Published References

Robert Fitzpatrick and Elizabeth A.T. Smith, Kerry James Marshall: One True Thing, Meditations on Black Aesthetics ex. cat. (Chicago: The Museum of Contemporary Art, 2003), xv, (repro.).

Camden Arts Centre. Kerry James Marshall, Along the Way ex. cat. (London: Camden Arts Centre, 2005), 30, (repro.).

Jan Schall and Robert Storr, Sparks! The William T. Kemper Collecting Initiative at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 102, 103, (repro.).

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 240, (repro.).

Helen Molesworth, ed., Kerry James Marshall: Mastry ex. cat. (Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; New York: Skira Rizzoli Publications, 2016), 156-156, (repro.).

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