NOW ON EXHIBIT – CAAM, Expositions Park

Witness as California African American Museum opens exhibit on Mario Moore’s “Enshrined: Presence + Preservation”, on display until October 2.

Mario Moore, born and based in Detroit, is a figurative painter whose subjects stand tall, gazing confidently at the viewer. They convey a dignified presence without regalia, a type of depiction that places Moore’s portraiture within a lineage of artists such as Kerry James Marshall, Barkley L. Hendricks, and one of Moore’s earliest influences, the seventeenth-century Spanish painter Diego Velázquez.

Mario Moore | Enshrined: Presence + Preservation, Moore’s first solo exhibition in California, brings together work from early in his career as well as his most recent series, The Work of Several Lifetimes (2019), created with the support of Princeton University’s esteemed Hodder Fellowship. Together, these works represent the artist’s desire to make visible the dedicated work of marginalized groups in this country. For many years, Moore has foregrounded the contributions of essential and frontline workers in his paintings, an effort that has become even more poignant during this time of global pandemic, as their labors have enabled and ensured the well-being of us all. This exhibition brings to light Moore’s commitment to celebrating his subjects—both their labor and leisure. His paintings encourage us to question who is deserving of portraiture and, thus, preservation.

This presentation of Enshrined: Presence + Preservation debuts two new portraits made especially for the exhibition at CAAM that feature women who have worked as custodians at the Museum. By recognizing them, Moore provides us with an opportunity to honor all of the workers whose labor, often behind the scenes, is integral to the success of museums such as CAAM.

Mario Moore | Enshrined: Presence + Preservation is curated by Taylor Renee Aldridge, visual arts curator.

CAAM recently interviewed Mario Moore about this exhibition:

600 State Drive, Exposition Park, Los Angeles, California 90037

FREE! TUES – SUNDAY- Exposition Park

The California African American Museum (CAAM) focuses on enrichment and education on the cultural heritage and history of African Americans with a focus on California and western United States.

Admission is free to all visitors. The California African American Museum’s mission is to research, collect, preserve, and interpret for public enrichment the history, art, and culture of African Americans with an emphasis on California and the western United States.

CAAM’s permanent collection consists of over 4,000 objects ranging from the 1800s to the present. It encompasses paintings, photographs, film, sculpture, historical documents, and artifacts, and it spans nineteenth-century landscape paintings to modern artworks to contemporary mixed-media reflections on cultural and political events.

The Museum’s first acquisitions included a bronze bust of civil rights activist Dr. Mary Mcleod Bethune by artist Richmond Barthé and a sculpture by artist Maren Hassinger, then at the start of her career. These laid the perfect groundwork for CAAM’s mandate to assemble a comprehensive, thoughtful, and wide-reaching collection.

CAAM’s deepest holdings include art made or connected to African Americans in California and the western United States. However, the Museum also has significant works of contemporary art from the African diaspora (including Haiti, Brazil, and Jamaica), as well as traditional African art from Western, Central, and Sub-Saharan Africa. CAAM aims to represent the diverse contributions of African Americans in the United States, but also to interpret how the past has affected identity in the present.

Today, CAAM oversees, exhibits, and conserves a rapidly growing collection. Each quarter, curators review the current holdings and decide as a committee on future acquisitions. We view our collection as a living body — constantly evolving, growing, and reflecting the world in which we live.

Some examples of CAAM’s collection include the Walter Burrell Collection of audio recordings of Burrell’s interviews with African American celebrities, broadcast by a local radio station in the early 1970s; the oral histories of Celes King, who was both a local civil rights activist as well as a former Tuskegee airman; and selections from the collection of visual artist John Outterbridge.

Hours

Monday: Closed
Tuesday – Saturday: 10:00am – 5:00pm
Sunday: 11:00am – 5:00pm

For additional information, visit the website @

https://caamuseum.org/exhibitions/2022/enshrined-presence-preservation

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