The first museum exhibition of its kind, Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898–1971 opens at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on August 21, 2022. It offers the public a chance to learn more about how Black performers and filmmakers have helped define cinema in the United States. The exhibition explores the achievements and challenges of both independent production and the studio system, from cinema’s infancy in the 1890s through the height of the civil rights movement.
Regeneration features rarely seen excerpts of films restored by the Academy Film Archive, as well as other narrative films and documentaries; newsreels and home movies; photographs; scripts; drawings; costumes; equipment; posters; and historical materials, such as entrance tickets, note cards, and telegrams; along with augmented reality experiences (AR) designed specifically for the exhibition.
The second major temporary exhibition to be organized by the Academy Museum, Regeneration will remain on view in the Marilyn and Jeffrey Katzenberg Gallery through April 9, 2023. Regeneration is co-curated by Doris Berger, Vice President of Curatorial Affairs at the Academy Museum, and Rhea Combs, Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, with the Academy Museum’s J. Raúl Guzmán, Assistant Curator as well as Manouchka Kelly Labouba and Emily Rauber-Rodriguez, Research Assistants.
Co-curators Berger and Combs said, “It has been a great honor for us to curate Regeneration, a project that challenged us to do justice to the lives and work of nearly a century of Black filmmakers and the audiences they served. The legacies explored in these galleries were important in their own time, though too often neglected and marginalized, and remain vital today. We hope to heighten awareness of these films and film artists and encourage an appreciation of the many, many contributions that Black Americans have made to cinema.”
“This landmark exhibition seeks to restore lost chapters of American film history as it elevates the contributions of Black artists to present a more inclusive story,” said Jacqueline Stewart, who served on the exhibition’s advisory panel before becoming Chief Artistic and Programming Officer of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. “We are incredibly proud to present Regeneration, an exhibition that demonstrates how the Academy Museum introduces new scholarship, offers a more expansive vision of American film history, and encourages public dialogue about the past and present of film as an art form and a social force.”
Regeneration comprises seven galleries dedicated to exploring the social and political situation of Black Americans at the dawn of cinema in the United States; the representation of Black people in early cinema from 1897 to 1915; pioneering independent Black filmmakers such as Oscar Micheaux and “race films,” made for Black audiences from the 1910s to the 1940s; Black music in American film, including “soundies” and Black musicals; Black stars and film icons; cinematic stories reflecting the freedom movements; and the daring and pioneering paths Black film directors blazed during the civil rights movement. Highlighted objects on view include never-before-shown costume drawings from Carmen Jones (1954); promotional glamour portraits of dozens of leading Black film stars; costumes worn by Lena Horne in Stormy Weather (1943), and Sammy Davis, Jr. in Porgy and Bess (1959); cowboy boots worn by Herb Jeffries in Harlem on the Prairie (1937); a 1920s camera from the Norman Film Company, a producer of race films; a Mills Panoram machine from the 1940s; tap dance shoes from the Nicholas Brothers; and one of Louis Armstrong’s trumpets.
Regeneration received the 2018 Sotheby’s Prize for curatorial excellence and for facilitating an exhibition that explores overlooked or underrepresented areas of art history. Regeneration was also recognized with major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture.
Throughout the development of the exhibition, co-curators Doris Berger and Rhea Combs collaborated with an advisory group of distinguished scholars, curators, and filmmakers, including: Charles Burnett, filmmaker, Academy member; Ava DuVernay, filmmaker, Academy member; Michael Boyce Gillespie, Associate Professor, The City College of New York, Department of Media and Communication Arts; Shola Lynch, Curator, New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, filmmaker, Academy member; Ron Magliozzi, Curator of Film, The Museum of Modern Art; Ellen C. Scott, Associate Professor and Head of Cinema and Media Studies, UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television; and Jacqueline Stewart.
For more information on the exhibition and first-looks visit https://www.academymuseum.org/en/exhibitions/regeneration-black-cinema
The Academy Museum is the largest museum in the United States devoted to the arts, sciences, and artists of moviemaking. The museum advances the understanding, celebration, and preservation of cinema through inclusive and accessible exhibitions, screenings, programs, initiatives, and collections. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano, the museum's campus contains the restored and revitalized historic Saban Building—formerly known as the May Company building (1939)—and a soaring spherical addition. Together, these buildings contain 50,000 square feet of exhibition spaces, two state-of-the-art theaters, the Shirley Temple Education Studio, and beautiful public spaces that are free and open to the public. These include The Walt Disney Company Piazza and the Sidney Poitier Grand Lobby, which houses the Spielberg Family Gallery, Academy Museum Store, and Fanny’s restaurant and café. The Academy Museum exhibition galleries are open seven days a week, with hours Sunday through Thursday from 10am to 6pm and Friday and Saturday from 10 am to 8 pm.
Image credits: Film still from William Selig's Something Good – Negro Kiss (1898), with Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown. Courtesy of USC HMH Foundation Moving Image Archive; The Nicholas Brothers in a scene from Stormy Weather (1943), from left, Fayard Nicholas and Harold Nicholas. Photographic print, gelatin silver. Courtesy Margaret Herrick Library, © Twentieth Century Fox; Portrait of Josephine Baker. Photo by adoc--photos/Corbis via Getty Images; Carmen Jones costume design (Carmen, Change #1), Costume design: Mary Ann Nyberg, c. 1954, courtesy Cinémathèque Française; Photo of Melvin Van Peebles, 1971. Photo by Pix/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images.
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