Along the Color Line—Traces of a Transatlantic Modernism

To mark its 50th anniversary, the Museum Ludwig is staging a major interdisciplinary survey exhibition that explores the connections between the art of the international Black diaspora and European modernism. The exhibition features modernist and contemporary works by artists of the Black diaspora through a host of international loans that are presented in dialogue with pieces from the Museum Ludwig collection. These works include paintings, sculptures, drawings, literature, and music, highlighting the diversity of artistic expression that served as a platform for cultural exchange and engagement at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The title of the exhibition is borrowed from the writings of the African American sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois. Having studied in Berlin, in 1936, while working as a journalist for The Pittsburgh Courier, Du Bois visited several German cities, including Cologne, Hamburg, and Stuttgart, and attended the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth and the Olympic Games in Berlin. His academic work offers a unique testimony of this period in history, enhancing our understanding of the global interconnections between racism and exclusion. In the exhibition, Du Bois’s reports are accompanied by accounts from other prominent figures of the Black diaspora in Europe, including the philosopher Alain Locke (1885–1954). Locke taught at Howard University, which has generously loaned items from its collection, where his academic writings and collection of international art are housed today.

The exhibition’s line of enquiry stems from a study of the Museum Ludwig collection, which revealed, as in most European museums, a virtual absence of works by Black artists, particularly in the realm of modernism. This underrepresentation points to deep-rooted colonial and social power dynamics whose effects are still evident today. With this context in mind, the exhibition explores how Black artists used their works to create new narratives that challenged colonial and Eurocentric habits of seeing. By drawing on movements such as the Harlem Renaissance in the United States and the Négritude movement in Europe, the exhibition traces the artistic relations between both continents and their influence on artists working today.

An important focus of the exhibition is the work of the German American artist James Gregory Atkinson (*1981). His nonlinear archive of images, objects, writings, and oral histories, which engages with African American history and bears witness to the history of Black people in Germany, serves as a central work in the show, linking early twentieth-century movements to current Black diasporic experiences.

Works by artists of the Black diaspora who spent time in Europe and the Rhine region show how questions of migration, identity, and cultural belonging are just as much local concerns as they are global ones. The works of Mildred Thompson (1936-2003), for example, who lived in Düren in the 1960s and studied at Howard University, provide the exhibition with a strong local emphasis.

In the run-up to the exhibition, the Museum Ludwig purchased a number of works by Thompson, Herbert Gentry (1919–2003), and Iba Ndiaye (1928–2008). Through their transnational biographies and aesthetic positions, these artists offer new perspectives on (post)modernism. 

Yilmaz Dziewior, Director: “I believe it is important, in our anniversary year, to take a careful look at the gaps in our collection. With this exhibition we want to make clear which positions are not represented in our collection, although they were created at the same time as works that are in our collection. In making these overlooked positions visible, the exhibition seeks to broaden the narratives of modernism and reveal the transnational connections that have long shaped its history.”

Along the Color Line opens up a dialogue between the museum’s holdings, these new acquisitions, and international loans, revealing previously hidden intercultural ties and transatlantic connections running through the core themes of the Museum Ludwig collection: European modernism and American postmodernism.

More than a century after W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke traveled through modern-day Germany and Europe, this exhibition invites visitors to reflect on the social significance of cultural identity, community, and belonging and to consider the importance of creative solutions for living with and between different cultures—both then and now.

Curator: Eboa Itondo / Project Assistant: Alison Shea. 

Catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by the catalogue Along the Color Line: Traces of a Transatlantic Modernism ed. by Eboa Itondo, with contributions by Kathryn E. Coney-Ali, Yilmaz Dziewior, Eboa Itondo, Oliver Lubrich, Joanna Peprah, Eric Otieno Sumba, and Chassidy Winestock, German/English, 21 x 23.3 cm, 248 pages, 170 illustrations, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Köln, ISBN 978-3-7533-1128-9, EUR 35 (museum), EUR 38 (book shops). 

Thanks to
The exhibition is funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation). Funded by the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media), the Kunststiftung NRW, and the Terra Foundation for American Art. It is also supported by the Peter and Irene Ludwig Foundation, the Friends of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum and the Museum Ludwig e.V., the Cultural Foundation of the German States, and the Beatrix Lichtken Foundation. The exhibition is sponsored by the REWE Group.