Three Families (A Memorial Piece With Scars)
Artist
Beverly Buchanan
(American, 1940 - 2015)
CultureAmerican
Date1989
MediumWood with paint, charcoal, and metal
Dimensionsoverall three shacks: 17 × 32 × 10 in. (43.2 × 81.3 × 25.4 cm)
InscribedSigned on 99.29.1.3: signed in script "Beverly Buchanan//--9" right side of porch floor.
The date is unreadable, but appears to end with "...9"
Credit LineGift of David Henry Jacobs, Jr.
Object number99.29.1
Collections
On View
Chrysler Museum of Art, Gallery 223
Label TextBeverly Buchanan American, 1940-2015 Three Families (A Memorial Piece with Scars), 1989 Wood, tar and clay Gift of David Henry Jacobs, Jr. 99.29.1.1-.3 Beverly Buchanan builds on her own memories when making these crude, yet compelling sculptures. She makes very powerful statements about destitution, inequality, and personal triumph. Often Buchanan's shacks symbolize an angry defiance as they address and challenge sociological problems of our time-racism, social injustice, civil rights-issues that have torn apart this country for nearly four centuries. In Three Families (A Memorial Piece With Scars), she confronts these concerns: Like burnt clothing, remains carry the smell of danger past and present. Covering or patching (houses or garments) does not remove the memory. Theses structures, after being painted, were set on fire, left to burn, and to be extinguished by friends. These shacks are a metaphor for what, then as now, was a tactic for enforced despair…despair from without. Those of us up in Greensboro in 1961-62 faced a different force. Instead of fire and blood, there was wood and bats-with-nails-sunk-into-flesh. There was blood-and-flesh and wood. These are a tribute to the still strong spirit and to memories of that spirit in spite of blood and flesh and wood and fire. Her works are not icons of hopelessness, but rather elegies that salute the integrity, resilience, and resolution of the shack-dwellers. Written By: Edited By: DS Edited Date: 10/19/2005 Approved By: MHM Approval Date: 10/19/2005Exhibition HistorySoho Art Gallery, New York, New York, 1990. Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, New York, New York, 1990. The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia, 1992. "Beverly Buchanan: ShackWorks, A 16 Year Survey," The Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey, April 10 - May 22, 1994. Museum of African American History, Michigan, July 1 - September 20, 1994. The Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, New York, November 7 - December 17, 1994. Smith College Museum of Art, Massachusetts, February 9 - April 16, 1995. Delaware Art Museum, Delaware, May 12 - July 9, 1995. Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina, July 28 - September 24, 1995. Kutztown University, Sharadin Art Gallery, Pennsylvania, October- December, 1995. Edison Community College Gallery of Fine Art, Florida, January 19 - March 10, 1996. Brenau University Galleries, Georgia, March 28 - May 12, 1996. Chattahoochee Valley Art Museum, Georgia, July 20 - August 20, 1996. "Women of the Chrysler: a 400-Year Celebration of the Arts," Large Changing Gallery, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., March 24 - July 18, 2010. "Etched in Collective History," Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama, August 25 - November 17, 2013. "Beverly Buchanan: Ruins and Rituals," Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, October 21, 2016 - March 5, 2017; Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA, September 14 - December 2, 2017.Published ReferencesLinda McGreevy. "STORY SHACKS". Port Folio Magazine. 09/15/1992:19. Suzanne Slesin. "THE SHACK AS ART AND SOCIAL COMMENT". Vol. CXXXIX, No. 48, 119. The New York Times. 01/18/1990:Front page. Michael Brenson. ART IN REVIEW, "Beverly Buchanan". Vol. CXI, No. 48, 610. THE NEW YORK TIMES. 05/24/1991. Eleanor Flomenhaft. BEVERLY BUCHANAN: SHACKWORKS. Montclair Art Museum. 1994:48 pgs. Larry Gabriel. HOUSES FOR THE SOUL. Tempo: Columbia, South Carolina. 07/23/1995:F1-F2.
