My Soul Has Grown Deep
2018
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York23.5 x 26 cm116 pagesHardcoverISBN 9781588396099
My Soul Has Grown Deep considers the art-historical significance of contemporary Black artists and quilters working throughout the southeastern United States and Alabama in particular. Their paintings, drawings, mixed-media compositions, sculptures, and textiles include pieces ranging from the profoundly moving assemblages of Thornton Dial to the renowned quilts of Gee’s Bend.
Nearly sixty remarkable examples – originally collected by the Souls Grown Deep Foundation and donated to The Metropolitan Museum of Art – are illustrated alongside insightful texts from John Beardsley, William Arnett, Paul Arnett and Jane Livingston that situate them in the history of modernism and the context of the African American experience in the twentieth-century South. This remarkable study simultaneously considers these works on their own merits while making connections to mainstream contemporary art.