The collaborative exhibition presents the work of 20 artists considering the question “Is the sun rising or setting on the experiment of American democracy?” Most wanted to “wait-and-see.”

by Judith Stein, For The Inquirer

A section of wallpaper from the mixed media installation by Deborah Willis hangs in the lobby of the African American Museum in Philadelphia. Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer

Whenever George Washington rose to speak at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Ben Franklin had a clear view of an ornamental sun, its shape halfway revealed on a horizon line, carved into the high back of the president’s mahogany chair. Was it rising or setting? He was of two minds, an indecisiveness that mirrored his “hopes and fears” for the future of his young country. Only with the Constitution’s ratification did he conclude that the sun was indeed rising.

More than 100 years later, poet James Weldon Johnson envisioned “facing the rising sun of our new day begun” in the lyrics for “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

“Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America,” the collaborative exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) and the African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP), presents the work of 20 artists who were asked to consider the question: “Is the sun rising or setting on the experiment of American democracy?”

A close up of the Rising Sun Chair replica on display in the show “Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America” at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer

Six years in the making, “Rising Sun” coalesced during a period of increased anxiety, worries stoked by a bloviator-in-chief, racial violence, mass shootings, and a devastating pandemic. PAFA’s then-museum director, Brooke Davis Anderson, initiated the partnership; their curator, Jodi Throckmorton, provided the thematic touchstone; and Dejáy B. Duckett, AAMP’s vice president of curatorial services, enlarged its relevance with Johnson’s resonant phrase.

The two curators worked “together and apart,” independently selecting artists for their home base, nine for AAMP and 11 for PAFA’s historic landmark building. It was an arrangement based on trust, as was the bold decision to commission room-size installations, art that for the most part didn’t exist in advance.

“Black Medallion XV (Mama-Quilla)” by Eamon-Ore Giron on display in the show “Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America” at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer

To provide every artist with a clean slate, the museums deinstalled most galleries. At PAFA, interim walls now encase Benjamin West’s monumental paintings that were too large to be moved. In their stead, Eamon Ore-Giron’s colossal intimations of dawn and dusk — the only abstract art in “Rising Sun” — flank the deep well of space above the grand staircase.

Since its founding in 1976, AAMP has presented important shows despite the challenges imposed by its central, space-hogging ramp. For La Vaughn Belle’s meditative video essay, Between the Dusk and Dawn, Duckett resourcefully projected the video and stationed earphones along its walkway. Belle herself is the dancer who symbolically bridges transoceanic colonial waters from St. Croix to Guam.

Bridgette Palmer, of Boston, takes a photo of the projected pieces of work in the main halls by Saya Woodfalk, at PAFA. Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer

Two installations at PAFA took inspired advantage of its collections and historic building that opened in 1876. Saya Woolfalk’s Emerge at the Sunset of Your Ideology transformed the majestic rotunda into a secular chapel with her dazzling videos of women who merge cultural identities and cross species. Lenka Clayton requisitioned a heterogeneous array of PAFA’s holdings to illustrate The True Story of a Stone, a little-known episode in the academy’s history. Scattered across six walls, her selections and their hand-lettered captions explain just how an ancient marble goddess, acquired in 1828, ended her days as a small duck.

It’s hard to walk away from the men who answer wide-ranging questions about their views on life with honesty and wit in Hank Willis Thomas’ compelling, three-hour, five-channel video on AAMP’s ground level. Two floors up, Facing the Rising Sun, the multimedia installation by his mother, Philadelphia-native Deborah Willis, exerts a comparable magnetic pull. Walls papered with images of Civil War era photographs of African American women and soldiers, fruits of her archival research, entice you to step close.

Mark Thomas Gibson, “Their Failure is Our Reward,” 2022, animatronic flower, gypsum cast grave, speakers and wood base, music performed by Ethan Philbrick and Rashonda Reaves. Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer

At AAMP, a funereal darkness enshrouds the grave of a klansman in Mark Thomas Gibson’s magical, immersive environment, Their Failure is Our Reward. Music inspired in part by a Confederate battle hymn, a Ghanaian funeral dirge, and New Orleans second-line music, accompanies its daily performances.

It’s the sound of dripping water you’ll hear at PAFA in Alison Saar’s Hygiea, a unique monument to the ancient goddess of health and sanitation that she worked on during the pandemic. Constructed from patinaed scraps of pressed tin, her signature material, Hygiea and her two-headed broom bring to mind Gordon Parks’ photo of cleaning woman Ella Watson.

Renée Stout’s pre-pandemic sense of foreboding spurred her later work at AAMP. Hoodoo Assassins, a varied group of prints and drawings, invokes the spiritual religious tradition created in America by enslaved Africans. This wonderfully vivid, imagined army of protectors includes a woman with dreadlock antennae and humanoids with African masks as faces. At PAFA, Shiva Ahmadi’s haunting animation of a marooned oil tanker enacts an ambiguous rescue.

(Detail, left) Deborah Willis, Facing the Rising Sun, 2022. Mixed media Installation, vinyl, fabric, wallpaper, video 5 min 40 seconds; and (right) Martha Jackson Jarvis, Adaptation/ A Sonic Journey, 2022, Mixed media sculpture installation, painted brushed silver aluminum, steel; at the African American Museum in Philadelphia Wednesday, Mar. 29, 2023. Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer

Asked to eye an uncertain future, some artists looked back. At AAMP, Martha Jackson Jarvis caught up with her fourth great grandfather, a Black veteran of the Revolutionary War; Dread Scott photographed reenactments of slave revolts; and John Acomfrah allied his videos with a 1960 album by jazz musician Max Roach. You’ll need signage to appreciate Demetrius Oliver’s covert reference to Franklin’s contemporary, Black scientist Benjamin Banneker, whose almanac was one of the nation’s earliest to chronicle the sun’s rising and setting.

“Delegate” by Rose B. Simpson on display in the show “Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America” at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer

To take the measure of “Rising Sun” unprecedented partnership, you’ll need to explore both halves. All 20 “Rising Sun” artists inventively interrogated the anchoring question put to them. Yet most were “wait-and-see.” At PAFA, delicate shards of light speckle Rose B. Simpson’s majestic Delegate, a larger-than-life clay figure. Perhaps they are a portend of hope.

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“Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America” is on view at the African American Museum in Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. It runs through Oct. 8. https://risingsunphilly.org/

Published June 16, 2023