Revelation
A Journey into Abstraction
Abstract artists are an important part of the visual art collection at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. While figurative works—such as portraits, landscapes, and realist pieces—are prominently represented, abstraction also holds a significant place in the broader history of art.
Revelation explores the profound range and depth of abstract art and celebrates the expansive creativity and contributions of 20th and 21st-century African American artists. Their work presented in this exhibition spans from subtly suggestive forms to fully abstract expressions.
What Is Abstract Art?
The Big Egg. Ed Clark, 1968.
Abstract art is a form of artistic expression that moves away from realistic images of people, places, or objects. Instead of clearly showing recognizable subjects, abstract artists use elements such as color, shape, line, scale, and texture to express ideas and emotions. These visual elements may begin with real-world inspiration, but they are often changed or simplified so that realistic representation is no longer the main focus.
In abstract art, meaning is open to interpretation. Viewers are encouraged to think, feel, and respond in their own way rather than look for one clear message. This freedom allows abstract art to become a space for creativity, experimentation, and new ways of thinking. By reducing literal images, artists draw attention to how art is made through movement, materials, and structure. In this way, abstract art expands how we understand and experience artistic expression.
Abstraction and the Politics of Identity
Abstraction and identity is often deeply connected. The painter Charles H. Alston has described the struggle Black artists face when balancing artistic freedom with real and perceived responsibility to their communities. Black abstract artists have often confronted discrimination, narrow aesthetic expectations, and pressure to represent racial experiences in specific ways.
For many Black artists, abstraction does not require denying racial identity. In many instances, it can offer a powerful way to explore Black life beyond fixed narratives. It also allows viewers to engage thoughtfully with ambiguity and emotion. The artists presented in Revelation prove that abstraction can be more than just a visual style—it can address complex histories, identities, and social critiques while preserving creative freedom.
Revelation: A Journey into Abstraction celebrates works from the Museum’s permanent collection of abstract art, which is marked by being steeped in the speculative and subtlety and is less concerned with explicit renderings of aspects of the Black experience.
Michelle D. Commander, Deputy Director, National Museum of African American History and Culture, 2025
Collecting Abstract Art at NMAAHC
Walking. Charles H. Alston, 1958.
In building an art collection at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), the goal was to introduce audiences to the broad range of American art styles, movements, and themes. Linking the collection to the histories explored in the Museum was also important.
Walking, by modernist and abstract painter Charles H. Alston, fits both an art and a historical narrative. It is also the first artwork NMAAHC acquired. Alton’s use of color and West African–derived sculptural forms place this work in the middle of social realism, European modernism, and abstraction.
NMAAHC’s abstraction collection reveals that for many Black artists, creating nonrepresentational art is a vehicle to express culture, to revel in the beauty of nature, to protest injustice, and to explore the purely abstract.