Art Crow / Jim Crow

Artist Howardena Doreen Pindell (American, born 1943)

Publisher Howardena Pindell, [s.l.], 1988

Printer Solo Letterpress, New York (Peter Kruty)

Binder Peter Kruty, New York; box: Angela Scott, [s.l.]

Date1988

Dimensionsbox: 9 1/8 x 8 1/4 x 1 1/4 in. (231 x 209 x 31mm)
book: 7 1/4 x 7 1/16 in. (184 x 180mm)
page: 7 3/16 x 7 3/16 in. (183 x 183mm)
sheet: 7 3/16 x 111 15/16 in. (183 x 2844mm)

MediumReproductions: photo-etchings Text: letterpress in white (typefaces: Foundry and Linotype Helvetica) Paper: black wove Canson Mi-Teintes paper

ClassificationBooks

Credit LineMrs. George W. Stevens Fund

Object number

1990.8

Not on View

Label TextThe words “Art Crow” and “Jim Crow” repeat throughout the pages of this accordion-fold book, along with facsimiles of photographs taken in the Deep South in the days of officially mandated segregation. Photography of blatant racial exclusion was often met with anger at the time. An official from Lane College, Jackson, Tennessee, for example, was arrested and fined for photographing a Coca-Cola machine with cold drinks for “white customers only!” Howardena Pindell found the photographs reproduced in this book in pictorial histories of the South. The artist draws a parallel between segregation and the closed art dealer/gallery system in New York by including a listing of 35 New York galleries that represented only white artists in 1987–88. The profits from the sale of this book were donated to assist the victims of racially motivated crimes.Exhibition History

Toledo Museum of Art, People Get Ready: 50 Years of Civil Rights, Jun. 27-Sept. 21, 2014.

Delaware, OH, Ross Art Museum, Ohio Wesleyan University, What We Make, August 21, 2018-October 17, 2018.

Toledo Museum of Art, PICTURE ID: Contemporary African American Works on Paper, March 14-June 14, 2020.