Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Liz Andrews. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Liz thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
My meaningful project is the exhibition and book Black American Portraits. I had been working at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) for four years when the pandemic shook our world in 2020. When I first began at LACMA, I was working full time in the Director’s Office while also completing my PhD in Cultural Studies. My dissertation topic was visual images from the 2008 Obama campaign. I argued that visual images were key to convincing this nation – one founded on white supremacy – that a Black man could be President of the United States of America. I’d spent years researching and writing about presidential candidate Barack Obama as a visual cultural icon, and so I was asked to work on Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s (NGP) The Obama Portraits Tour when LACMA was confirmed as one of the venues. Our Director Michael Govan asked me and my co-curator, the seasoned and brilliant Christine Y. Kim, if we wanted to organize a companion show from the permanent collection. In the wake of the calls for museums and cultural institutions to more justly reflect their audiences and history, Christine and I were thrilled about the opportunity to provide a deeper context. We began thinking about what story we wanted to tell alongside the NPG portraits of Barack Obama by Kehinde Wiley and Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama by Amy Sherald, both the first Black artists to paint official presidential portraits. That was the inception of the exhibition Black American Portraits. It was an honor to work alongside Christine to look at LACMA’s collection and see that, while LACMA had made strides in collecting works by Black artists, there were still major gaps. Together we organized the show to reframe a history of portraiture to center Black American subjects, sitters, and spaces. Spanning over two centuries from c. 1800 to the opening in 2021, our selection of approximately 140 works drew primarily from LACMA’s permanent collection and highlighted emancipation and early studio photography, scenes from the Harlem Renaissance, portraits from the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, and multiculturalism of the 1990s. Black American Portraits chronicled the ways in which Black Americans have used portraiture to envision themselves in their own eyes. Countering a visual culture that often demonizes Blackness and fetishizes the spectacle of Black pain, these images center love, abundance, family, community, and exuberance. One of the most meaningful parts of the project was the fact that we brought in 70 new works of art to the collection – about half of the exhibition. That means that the show existed at LACMA for a brief moment in time, and the impact of the show will live on with works that more fully reflect the beauty and brilliance of Black people for generations. It was an honor to have the show on view at LACMA from November 2021 – April 2022, and I was fortunate to give a tour of the exhibition to Former First Lady Michelle Obama, alongside Christine and Michael. In February 2023, we brought the exhibition to the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art just in time for the release of the book Black American Portraits. It was beautiful to place this show and these incredible works of art in a different context in Atlanta at Spelman College, a place where Black art and excellence have always been at the center of our mission.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I got into the field of the arts originally as an artist. I am a singer and performer and was a part of the Denver Spirituals Project Choir in my hometown after graduating from Wesleyan University. While I’d spent the four years of college studying social justice issues, I felt that the music known as the Spirituals – the songs created and sung by enslaved African people in this nation – were imbued with the history of slavery in ways that no history book could ever convey. I went on to get a M.A. in Arts Politics from the Tisch School of Arts at NYU and a PhD in Cultural Studies from George Mason University. Now, as Director of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, I am immersed in two of my passions – education and art. It is a strange job, being a museum director. It requires the ability to speak eloquently about artists, works of art, and your mission. You manage people and priorities, money and momentum. Being at Spelman College, our audience is not only the general public, but the specific students at the HBCUs in Atlanta. There is no place like it, and I am thankful for the generations of sisters and leaders who built the collection of art and made the Atlanta University Center a nexus for the arts.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I love being in the gallery at Spelman College and engaging with visitors about the art on view. Art has a way of making people think differently – questioning things, engaging with different perspectives, and sometimes just providing solace in the beauty before us. In a world dominated by social media and the speed with which we can make images and words travel across screens, art asks us to slow down and live a little in the moment.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
Studies have shown that somehow, people across race, class, and gender generally trust and like museums and cultural institutions. I believe in the power of museums and cultural institutions to provide spaces for dialogue, inspiration, and motivation. Museums produce knowledge by upholding artworks and artists. For a long time, museums have centered Europe as the center of civilization and overrepresented male artists in their collections and exhibitions. Spelman College Museum of Fine Art is the only museum in the nation with the mission to uplift art by and about Black women. With every show and collection object, we get to expand and focus what counts as Art History.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://museum.spelman.edu/
- Instagram: @mizlizthebizwiz
Image Credits
Headshot: Photo by Olivia K. Bowdin
Book: Cover of Black American Portraits
Award: GMU CHSS Community and Catalyst event / reception, November 4, 2023. John Boal Photography
Blue / Silver Linings: Installation view from Silver Linings at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, March 2022. Photo by Michael Jensen
Posed with Obama Portraits: Liz Andrews with The Obama Portraits at LACMA, November 2021, Photo by DeliaSofia Zacarias
Black American Portraits install: Installation view of Black American Portraits at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, February 2023, Photo by Mike Jensen
¾ in red: Liz Andrews at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art during Silver Linings, March 2022, Photo by Julie Yarbrough