Can you imagine an artist declining a solo show? Especially the first show in a new gallery? When the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum was preparing to move to a new location in 1986, founding director John Kinard offered Sam Gilliam the inaugural exhibition. The artist responded immediately,
I will accept your offer to exhibit providing I am permitted to invite other artists to share this experience.
-Sam Gilliam
The resulting exhibit, Contemporary Visual Expressions, featured the artwork of Gilliam, Martha Jackson-Jarvis, Keith Morrison, and William T. Williams.
This spirit of community opened the galleries at the Museum's new home, 1901 Fort Place, SE. For Gilliam, art and community were intertwined practices.
Gilliam remains in the ranks of his peers a creative artist of great skill. But he is also highly regarded as a person who uses his art to reach out to help others. Many young emerging artists will attest to his generosity in this regard as will his artist colleagues in Contemporary Visual Expressions.
-David Driskell, Guest Curator, Contemporary Visual Expressions
In 2017, Gilliam was one of eight artists on a National Gallery of Art panel titled The African American Art World in Twentieth-Century Washington, DC. He paid tribute to the District's artistic community and also to its land:
And, sort of in an inward way, from the inside, whether knowing Tom [Downing], knowing Keith [Morrison], and knowing...Martin Puryear, or working with Lou [Stovall], I always felt that Washington was the best place to be, if for no other reason, for Rock Creek Park.
-Sam Gilliam1
Notes
1. The African American Art World in Twentieth-Century Washington, DC, Wyeth Foundation for American Art Symposium, 17 March 2017. Panelists: Lilian Thomas Burwell, Floyd Coleman, David C. Driskell, Sam Gilliam, Keith A. Morrison, Martin Puryear, Sylvia Snowden, and Lou Stovall.
Resources
Contemporary Visual Expressions: The Art of Martha Jackson-Jarvis, Keith Morrison, and William T. Williams. Exhibition Catalogue. Washington, DC: Anacostia Museum, Smithsonian Institution Press. 1987.
—Teacher's Resource Booklet. Washington, DC: Anacostia Museum, Smithsonian Institution. 1987.
