Reclaiming
My Time
Meditations on Rest and Reconnection
Reclaiming My Time presents furniture designs by contemporary Black designers. Their work highlights how objects can provide opportunities for rest and reconnection to cultural heritage.
We Will Rest
Detail of digital illustration by Rachelle A. Baker for the cover of Elle Decor magazine, 2021
Reclaiming My Time features furniture designers, graphic designers, and visual artists. The exhibition’s focus on design demonstrates how everyday objects carry meanings beyond their simple function. Through wallpaper, chairs, art, and illustrations, Black creators are expressing ideas about leisure, labor, and connections to Black cultures across the African diaspora.
By featuring selections from our collection of seating design, the Museum is also highlighting the importance of rest and restoration.
This exhibition is generously supported by CBRE.
You are worthy of rest.
Tricia Hersey, 2022
Seating Design
Chairs are commonplace today, but they were not always available to everyone. Chairs were once reserved for royalty and wealthy individuals. The designs featured here invite sitters to feel both supported and uplifted.
Germane Barnes
Germane Barnes, Prototype for Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown, 2020
Germane Barnes, Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown, (7) 2021
Germane Barnes renders a porch chair as a throne as a throne—one with deep connections to Black culture. The back of the chair is in the shape of an Afro pick, a comb used for Black hair.
I'm Gonna Lay Down...
Sheldon Scott, Rope Hammock, 2022
Sheldon Scott in Rope Hammock
Artist Sheldon Scott’s birthplace of Lowcountry South Carolina is known for this style of handmade cotton rope hammock. Scott’s Rope Hammock is part of a series of hammocks he repurposed that highlights the weaving traditions of the Gullah Geechee people. “There’s a lot of Black labor that goes into all leisure,” the artist notes.
At Home
Tuesday at Home Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 7, 1971
Sheila Bridges, Harlem Toile de Jouy, 2006
Tuesday at Home was a homemaking magazine in the 1970s, created by William Leonard Evans, Jr. under his Tuesday Publications imprint. The cover of this edition, Vol. 1, No. 7, 1971, shows Chicago architect Lee Hilary comfortably seated in his renovated townhouse. Magazines are often associated with spaces and activities of leisure (vacation, the hairdresser, the barbershop). To have the time to read a magazine in your own home and in a space of your own making connects ideas of rest and relaxation to home life.
Interior designer Sheila Bridges conceived of Harlem Toile de Jouy as a wallpaper for her own home. She created a pattern that showed Black people relaxing, dancing, styling hair, and playing games. These vignettes of Black leisure appealed to a wider public, making Harlem Toile a popular home décor choice.
The Suburbia Portfolio by Sheila Pree Bright
Kicked off heels and a dangling purse frame a domestic interior by Sheila Pree Bright. With figures just out of view, the photographer offers scenes of privacy, intimacy, and comfort.
The Others by Stephen Burks
The Others Lantern M, 2021
The Others Statue LIKA, 2021
Stephen Burks has described The Others, a collaboration between Stephen Burks and manufacturer Dedon, as a community of dreamers, ambassadors, and imagination-guides. Both familiar and monumental, The Others lanterns can be stacked together or suspended from the ceiling. Burks says, “We all came from someplace else once. There was a time when we were each the other.”
Affirming Ourselves at Home
What we display at home shows who we are and who we aspire to be. This gallery includes images of beauty, power, and pride.
We can make homeplace that space where we return for renewal and self-recovery, where we can heal our wounds and become whole.
bell hooks, “Homeplace (a site of resistance)”, 1990
Gail Anderson’s Reclaiming My Time Poster
Congresswoman Maxine Waters introduced many people to the phrase “reclaiming my time.” Learn about the origins of the phrase and explore ways to reclaim time, memory, rest and reconnect.
Amy Sherald
Amy Sherald, Grand Dame Queenie, 2012
Amy Sherald says that painting cleanses her spirit from the daily injustices in the world. “The tradition of portraiture has become a way to reclaim time for me as a Black figurative painter that paints Black people…The paintings are a resting place for people to see a reflection of themselves that is not in resistance or contention. It’s just a Black person being a person.”
Featured Video
Amy Sherald: In the Studio
Amy Sherald discusses her relationship to portraiture. Her work is a respite from narratives of continual resistance.