Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic

Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic offers an overview of the artist’s prolific 14-year career. His signature portraits of everyday men and women riff on paintings by Old Masters, replacing European aristocrats in those paintings with contemporary black subjects and drawing attention to the absence of African Americans from historical and cultural narratives. The exhibition also features a selection from the artist’s ongoing World Stage project, which he started in 2006 by establishing a satellite studio in Beijing; several bronze portrait busts and new stained glass “paintings.” The touring exhibition is organized by Eugenie Tsai, the John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum where it was shown last year (Feb. 20-May 24, 2015). The tour schedule includes the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (Sept. 20, 2015-Jan. 10, 2016), the Seattle Art Museum (Feb. 11-May 8, 2016) and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (June 3-Sept. 5, 2016) as well as TMA. The Toledo showing is presented in part by Welltower with additional support from 2017 Exhibition Program Sponsor ProMedica, KeyBank, and the Ohio Arts Council. 

For more, visit www.toledomuseum.org.