The museum galleries display only a portion of the Hunter’s permanent collection. Fortunately, you can explore more collage pieces from the Hunter Museum’s storage by reading below.

 

Benny Andrews

Memories (from the Music Series)

Georgia native Benny Andrews shared personal and familial memories through his collages.  Andrews, who notably illustrated album covers for Duke Ellington early in his career, often incorporated music and faith into his narrative images. In this case, the Blues trumpet offers a visual soundtrack to the memorial acts played out by the other three figures. The figures and rocks are painted separately and collaged onto the background, contributing a variety of textures to this multi-layered piece.

 

Radcliff Bailey

In the Returnal

Atlanta-based artist Radcliffe Bailey consistently explores themes of journey and passage through his work in Under Construction, as well as through his piece in the Hunter collection. In the Returnal is inspired by Bailey’s motherland trip to Ghana to explore his heritage, as well as by Bailey’s interest in Marcus Garvey’s early 20th century “Back to Africa” movement. The artist brings his ideas together through a remarkable assemblage of dissimilar objects that come together like puzzle pieces creating a larger themes.

Romare Bearden

Reunion (from the series Ritual Bayou)

Under Construction offers an extensive look into the work of artist Romare Bearden. The Hunter has several Bearden works including Reunion, which embraces a traditional collage technique to convey the narrative of the Great Migration. While many artists focus on those who have moved to northern cities, this image offers a quiet reflection on a return to a Southern home and a meditative reunion with those who remained in the South.

Sam Gilliam

Snow Lane #29

Abstract artist Sam Gilliam, whose work can also be seen in Under Construction, may be best known for his large, draped, abstract canvases. Smaller collages, like this piece from the Snow Lane series, continue his improvisational process, using various printmaking, embossing, and layering techniques with quilt-like patterning to create this sculpture-painting hybrid.

Jacob Lawrence

The Apartment

The Apartment, though collage-like, was actually  made using gouache paint and offers an intimate glimpse into an African American woman’s color-filled apartment.

Kahn and Selesnick

Bearparade
Currency Balloon

The photographic alternative realities seen in Under Construction are also found in the archival pigment prints of the artist team Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick. Khan and Selesnick create complex, layered narratives that examine the intersection of truth and fiction. These manipulated photographs add a comic veneer to deeper cultural critiques, in this case as commentary on capitalism and climate change.

Roger Shimomura

Kansas Samurai

Bringing in a pop art collage aesthetic, Japanese American artist Roger Simomura blends popular culture figures from both American and Japanese culture. This lighthearted look at comic figures and super heroes also reflects his deeper exploration of issues of race and bigotry in American society, something he experienced first-hand when his family was placed in the Minidoka Relocation Camp during WWII and that he continues to experience as an ethnic minority in his current home in Kansas.

Hank Willis Thomas

From Cain’t See in the Mornin’ til Cain’t See at Night

Continuing this exploration of photographic collage, artist Hank Willis Thomas created this digital print that juxtaposes images of an enslaved man picking cotton with a contemporary football player against a dark background. Known for his exploration of the intersection of identity, media and popular culture, Thomas uses this work to present a personification of the commodification of the black body.