Souls Grown Deep: African-American Vernacular Art of the South, a groundbreaking exhibition of over 450 artworks by some 30 contemporary artists, highlighting a significant artistic tradition that has risen in concert with the Civil Rights Movement. The exhibit will introduce visitors to the achievements of individuals who have given artistic form to their changing identity. This showing will emphasize Southern artists' growing awareness of their changing role from being conveyors of localized traditions to becoming concerned with national issues. Some of the most powerful African-American vernacular art has been created in areas where the greatest inequities have occurred, namely those sections of the South where deep-rooted traditions have come into collision with industrialization, mass-media, racial integration, and increased social and demographic mobility.
This exhibition presents an art form that is universal in its appeal and currency yet highly individuated in its origins within the African-American South. Involving both a celebration of gains in Civil Rights as well as a critique of the values of post-World War II consumer culture, this art combines naïveté and sophistication in remarkable new ways that have collapsed fine and folk art in designations, resulting in a new category that is neither wholly marginalized nor completely mainstream. This art is unique in its way of synthesizing three enduring legacies—African, European, and Native American—that are particularly strong in the South.
The exhibition is a collaboration among The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) Cultural Olympiad, the Carlos Museum and the City of Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs.