Collection
/
Contemporary Art

Birmingham Race Riot

Andy Warhol

Brooklyn Museum photograph

Object Label

 Warhol’s repetitions of Charles Moore’s photographs from Birmingham, Alabama, brought the reality of police violence into art spaces at a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement, after they had appeared in a Life magazine photo-essay that shocked white Americans. As today, some viewers may have felt reassured to see police violently uphold the white supremacist status quo.

Caption

Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987). Birmingham Race Riot, 1964. Black ink silkscreen print on off-white moderately textured wove paper, sheet: 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm) frame: 27 3/4 x 31 3/4 x 1 7/8 in. (70.5 x 80.6 x 4.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of R. Wallace and Ruth Bowman, 86.285.9. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

Gallery

Not on view

Title

Birmingham Race Riot

Date

1964

Medium

Black ink silkscreen print on off-white moderately textured wove paper

Classification

Print

Dimensions

sheet: 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm) frame: 27 3/4 x 31 3/4 x 1 7/8 in. (70.5 x 80.6 x 4.8 cm)

Markings

Chopmark lower right recto

Credit Line

Gift of R. Wallace and Ruth Bowman

Accession Number

86.285.9

Frequent Art Questions

  • Some of the objects displayed in the Feminist Center for Art are made by men and also do not seem to address feminist concerns. Why is that?

    It's a good question. While some do address feminist concerns or even self-identify as feminists, another aspect of their inclusion to consider is a feminist look at their work in terms of curatorial practice rather than solely presentation of feminist art.
    Is that true for Dread Scott? I see nothing feminist in this photograph.
    My argument for the Dread Scott piece would be that any work which critiques or attempts to dismantle white supremacy in some way intersects with feminism, especially as it concerns black women.
    That’s a good argument. Can I steal it? I wouldn’t have thought that carefully!
    And why Warhol?
    Of course!
    With the Warhol piece, a photograph of a race riot, the same argument could apply.
    Yes agreed on Warhol.

Have information?

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Artists and makers

Andy Warhol

35 works in the collection

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art

8 works in the collection