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Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture, 1963-2017 
Baltimore Museum of Art

Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture, 1963-2017 is a study in contrasts.

Eight of Whitten’s  larger than life painting from his Black Monolith series —tributes to James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Maya Angelou, Muhammad Ali and others African American cultural figures—fill one gallery.

These well known works  are on loan from MOMA, Glenstone and other major collections.  These are what comes to mind when we talk of Whitten’s art.  Like their subjects, these are works we have to look up to see,  just as there subjects were looked up to in real life.

But the Baltimore Museum of Art’s exhibit Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture, 1963-2017 focuses on about another part of Whitten’s life work- forty of  his sculptures largely unknown and not made for shows but for his personal exploration in art.

Unlike his paintings which are in honor of  well known figures that are part of Whitten’s identity as an African American, these are shared themes with African, Minoan, and Cycladic sculptures and objects that inspired Whitten through the years. 

These works are smaller, placed at ground level or in small pedestals throughout. They do not speak to the present day, like the figures we know in the Black Monolith but share their space with works by unknown artists. 

There is the beloved Minoan Snake Goddess  from around 1600 BC. and   a Cycladic Female Figurine from 2500 BC., both from the Walters Art Museum.  There is a  collection of African wood carvings,  from over half a dozen countries, dating from 1100 AD to the 20th century   Whitten’s The Heart of Humanity, from his estate, fits right in with these works from three continents, and many millenniums.

While the exhibit shows that sculpture influenced his paintings, Whitten as a true artist ably expressed with diverse types of material —that  is the constructed  acrylic tiles of Black Monolith as well as natural materials; wood, marble, copper, bone, fishing wire, and personal mementos in the small works.   

His themes  likewise expanded to include ritual items, family members, Greek gods, and animals which evoke a shared human experience.  

Contrasts  of  his well known and unknown works  now being shown for the first time together reveal the unity there is in the discoveries of Whitten in search of his identity through his art. 


Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture, 1963-2017  on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art (to July 29, 2018)  before going to the Metropolitan Museum of New York.

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