Bisa Butler: Portraits — Shelby Silvernell

While working onsite recently, I finally made the time to go visit the Bisa Butler: Portraits exhibition. Being able to visit any exhibition at the museum is a big perk of working there, but I haven’t often taken advantage of this. In fact, even before the pandemic hit, I likely hadn’t wandered around the galleries in months. It felt good to finally remedy this.

The Safety Patrol, the first work you see when entering the exhibition.

Butler’s portrait works are absolutely beautiful. Color and texture, shape and pattern, viewing her works felt like a balm for this worn out museum worker. The media of the works - largely comprised of fabric - lends a physicality that really drew me in. And I loved the fact that so many of her pieces are based off of archival photographs of Black folks throughout history. The exhibition website has this to say about Butler’s art:

“She strategically uses textiles—a traditionally marginalized medium—to interrogate the historical marginalization of her subjects while using scale and subtle detail to convey her subjects’ complex individuality. Together, Butler’s quilts present an expansive view of history through their engagement with themes such as family, community, migration, the promise of youth, and artistic and intellectual legacies.”

Gallery view of Bisa Butler: Portraits, including the work Southside Sunday Morning (left), one of my favorite pieces in the show. It’s based on a 1941 photograph by Russell Lee of a group of boys seated on the hood of a car on Easter morning.

I found myself standing and looking at each of the pieces for much longer than I often do artworks in galleries, taken with the faces of the subjects in particular. The museum was closed to the public on the day I visited, so the galleries were largely silent and empty. In one gallery, however, the museum’s public affairs coordinator was working with a Chicago-based photographer on a shoot. The photographer was collaborating with Butler - who had not yet arrived by the time I headed back to my office - on in situ portraits with some of her artworks. Living artists represent a small fraction of the museum’s collections holdings and exhibition subjects, so it was so satisfying seeing this connection between contemporary artists play out in the gallery. This brought Butler’s life to work for me even further.

This experience reminded me of how powerful artwork can be and the necessity of taking time to enjoy exhibitions like this one.