Celebrating Freedom : The Art of Willie Birch Exhibition at MICA

Written by Jose Sawyers Friday, 12 November 2010 22:14

BALTIMORE, MD – Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) hosts Celebrating Freedom: The Art of Willie Birch in Decker Gallery located in the Fox Building at 1303 Mount Royal Avenue.  This major, traveling exhibition of large-scale drawings by award-winning, New Orleans-based artist and MICA alumnus Willie Birch examines American freedom from the African-American perspective.  On exhibit 2 November until 17 December, 2006.

In conjunction with Celebrating Freedom: The Art of Willie Birch, a partner exhibition, Willie Birch: Exodus, Revelation, and Reality, showcases papier-mâché and mixed media sculpture influenced by Birch’s trial and displacement from his New Orleans home after Hurricane Katrina.  Additionally, a lecture series and daylong symposium, “After the Storm: Art, Culture, and Politics beyond Katrina,” addresses the role of art, culture, and politics often found in Birch’s artwork.

The larger-than-life charcoal drawings in Celebrating Freedom: The Art of Willie Birch depict celebratory and everyday lifestyles, expressing the shared memories through codes of behavior, community rituals, and celebrations, modes of dress, and taboos that are embedded in New Orleans African-American culture.

Organized by the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans, this exhibition was originally developed for an opening in New Orleans in January 2006.  However, because of delays caused by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, a nationwide tour of the exhibition, including stops at the Acadiana Arts Center in Lafayette, Louisiana; MICA; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA), Scottsdale, Arizona; and 40 Acres Art Gallery, Sacramento, California; closes at the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans in Spring 2008.

A MICA alumnus, Birch is a New Orleans-based artist and educator well-known for his mixed media sculptures.  His work has continuously demonstrated the potential of art to provoke social change—often seeking to blur the boundaries of art and life.  Birch has won numerous awards and fellowships.  He has exhibited throughout the United States and his work is found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, among many others.

A full-color monograph, Celebrating Freedom: The Art of Willie Birch, is the first publication to examine Birch’s career.  Published by Hudson Hills Press (2006), it includes a preface by Lolis Eric Elie, a regular contributor to the New Orleans Times-Picayune; essays by Dr. Leslie King-Hammond, dean of graduate studies at MICA; and David S. Rubin, presently the curator of contemporary art at the San Antonio Museum of Art; and an interview with Willie Birch by J.B. Borders, a social commentator and cultural critic. The monograph is available for purchase at the MICA Store. 

Visit Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) at : www.mica.edu/