until Sunday May 24 2015

Brooklyn Museum of Art
T : +1 (718) 638 5000
200 Eastern Parkway
11238-6052 New York
United States

A New Republic

The works presented in Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic raise questions about race, gender, and the politics of representation by portraying contemporary African American men and women using the conventions of traditional European portraiture. The exhibition includes an overview of the artist’s prolific fourteen-year career and features sixty paintings and sculptures.

Wiley's signature portraits of everyday men and women riff on specific paintings by Old Masters, replacing the European aristocrats depicted in those paintings with contemporary black subjects, drawing attention to the absence of African Americans from historical and cultural narratives.
The exhibition includes a selection of Wiley's World Stage paintings, begun in 2006, in which he takes his street casting process to other countries, widening the scope of his collaboration.