The first ever career retrospective of renowned artist Willie Birch (American, born 1942), this exhibition brings together groundbreaking works from the early 1970s to the present that chronicle Birch’s unique vision of the Black American experience and explore the interconnected nature of global art forms. Birch, raised in New Orleans and trained in Europe, Baltimore, and New York, often speaks about “retentions,” a term he uses to describe cultural evidence of another culture’s traditions in Black American life.

Throughout his career, Birch has explored how African traditions have been retained in music, art, and culture in America and beyond. As he manifested his ideas over the years through a wide variety of media from wood and papier-mâché sculpture to large-scale works on paper, Birch has applied this same insightful philosophy to all cultural production. Birch’s work as an artist, community organizer, and cultural provocateur questions why certain things are retained and not others, unearthing uncomfortable truths about American identity, but also offering possibilities for greater cultural awareness.  

The exhibition is organized chronologically and in three major sections, beginning with Birch’s earlier work in the early 1970s, continuing through his shift towards papier-mâché in the 1980s, and closing with large scale charcoal and acrylic works on paper. Major installation works will be interspersed in these major sections, ideally separated in their own small gallery spaces. Most of the work comes directly from the artist or his representatives at Fort Gansevoort Gallery in New York, New York, with key loans of a few specific works from institutional collections, namely the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.