Kelly-Christina Grant

Following on from an initial six-month stay in Washington, DC, as part of the Fellowship Program of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, this upcoming residency will enable me to continue and expand my thesis research work in several other US cities.  

My Villa Albertine research project, Loïs Mailou Jones’ Black Atlantic, draws upon the concept of diaspora and the Black experience of the Americas as proposed by sociologist Paul Gilroy in his essay, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness. Its aim is to spark a dialog between the principles that he advocates (i.e., mobility, interculturality, and hybridity) and Jones’ landscape painting. This project will see me investigate the blend of traditions and references, both visible and invisible, that emerge from analyzing the landscapes of the United States, France, and Haiti in Jones’ work. I will look at how these contributed, whether directly or indirectly, to the creation of her Black Atlantic. By this term, I refer to the intercultural, transnational experience shaped by her journeys and the diverse cultures that she encountered, culminating in a landscape style that forges links between Europe, the US, and the Caribbean.  

To conduct this research, I intend to investigate existing records on Jones, as well as her close artistic circle; to view the artist’s works at galleries, museums, and private collections; to meet art professionals who conserve and exhibit her works; and lastly to be physically present in the geographical location that launched and sustained her practice of landscape painting.  

The first step will be to visit Atlanta’s AUC GLAM Center, which holds records and publications on Jones. Next, I will travel to Emory University to research the archive of artist-historian James Porter, a longtime friend of Jones’ at Howard University, as I would argue that his critical thinking was an integral part of the artist’s landscape painting.  

I will then make my way to New York to avail myself of the resources at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, which documents the work of artists from the Harlem Renaissance movement, which included Jones among its members. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Brooklyn Museum also feature works by the artist in their permanent collections.  

I will conclude my trip with a visit to Jones’ birthplace of Boston, MA. The Museum of Fine Arts has organized several retrospectives of the artist’s work and regularly exhibited works of hers that are included in its permanent collection. A number of records on Jones are also housed at the Northeastern University library, acquired from the collections of Boston’s Museum of National Center of Afro-American Artists. Martha’s Vineyard, where Jones first ventured into plein-air painting at a young age, will mark the final phase of my project. There, I will visit sites where the artist once painted from nature, and consult works and archives held at the museum and historic art galleries on the island.