Charles White Across Media: A Visual Archive
@ Logan Center Exhibitions
915 E 60th St, Chicago, IL 60637
Opening Friday, November 6th, from 6PM - 8PM
On view through Sunday, January 31st
Charles White Across Media: A Visual Archive brings together album covers, book jackets, magazines, film stills, photographs, prints, and other ephemera featuring the work of Charles White (1918-1979) to examine the expansive cultural life of his imagery. Tracing how his work circulated beyond the studio and the museum wall, the exhibition reveals how White’s images centered everyday life and shaped a broader visual language.
An artist who worked fluidly across drawing, painting, printmaking, and mural-making, White created what he described as “powerful images of dignity”, centering African-American experiences as well as historical figures and events at a time when such representations were widely distorted or excluded from mainstream culture. These opportunities for reproduction arose through active collaboration with musicians, writers, and filmmakers. White’s images were adapted, printed, and distributed across a wide range of media, crossing disciplines and communities to become part of a shared cultural consciousness.
By foregrounding circulation alongside creation, the exhibition invites visitors to consider how White’s work contributed to the formation of a Black visual canon. His images did not remain fixed objects behind glass — they became living symbols, connecting people, histories, and communities through a sustained commitment to representation, relationships, and what White himself understood as a sense of oneness.
Charles White Across Media: A Visual Archive is a special initiative of the Charles White Archives presented by Logan Center Exhibitions and the South Side Community Art Center. The exhibition is curated by Ian White with curatorial support by Paulina Alvarez and Jan Brugger, and program curation by Jan Brugger and jada-amina. Additional support is provided by the Ng Family Visiting Artist Fund, the Revada Foundation, and Friends of the Logan Center.
Image: Gordon Parks, Charles White, Chicago, Illinois, 1941. (Charles White in front of his Chaos of the American Negro mural). Courtesy of the Charles White Archives and the Gordon Parks Foundation.
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Tags: Across Media: A Visual Archive, Charles White, Logan Center Exhibitions
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