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Blackness and belonging: the impact of Brockman Gallery and the Underground Museum on Los Angeles Art and Culture

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Blackness and belonging: the impact of Brockman Gallery and the Underground Museum on Los Angeles Art and Culture

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Blackness and Belonging: The Impact of Brockman Gallery and The Underground Museum on
Los Angeles Art and Culture

By

Adrianne Ramsey

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSKI SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements of the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(CURATORIAL PRACTICES AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE)

DECEMBER 2022

Copyright 2022 Adrianne Ramsey

ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Without my mother, Donna Ramsey, this thesis would have never been written. Thank
you for piquing and enriching my passion for African American art history and culture, and for
supplying many of the books that supported my research (especially Black Dimensions in
Contemporary Art). Your support throughout the duration of this process has been
immeasurable, and I love you very much.
Big thanks must be given to my brilliant committee, helmed by Dr. Amelia Jones and
including Dr. Andy Campbell and Edgar Arceneaux. Thank you all for the careful editing and
feedback you gave me while I painstakingly researched and wrote this thesis over the summer.
This final product would not be what it is without the three of you, and I would like to
particularly highlight Andy, who is currently on sabbatical for the 2022-23 school year. Andy,
you have been so generous with your time and energy, especially as you are away from Roski
and California at the time of this writing. I personally know that many members of my MA
cohort wish that you could be a part of their thesis committees, and I am so grateful that you
agreed to be a part of mine.
Thank you to Dr. Jenny Lin, who also serves as Director of the MA in Curatorial
Practices and the Public Sphere program, for her kind words and support, as well as my fellow
classmates and/or cohort members for their encouragement, in particular: Storm Bria-Rose
Bookhard, taylor brock, Nadia R. Estrada, Jiayi Hu, Diego Dela Rosa, Jonas Short, and Bryce
Zeffert (MA cohort), Michon Sanders and Kim Sweet (MFA in Art cohort), and Jordan Gonzalez
(MUP/MA dual degree program). I would also like to thank Andrew Noble and Maliko Pearson
for the valuable friendship, support, and motivation that they have both provided to me over the
years. Having great friends that encourage you to continue with your journey after you’ve been
researching and writing for days provided me the stimulation to finish my project.
Lastly, I must thank Brockman Gallery and The Underground Museum. Can you thank a
site? I would like to think so. I first learned about Brockman Gallery due to its mention in the
Betye Saar: Call and Response (2019-20) exhibition at LACMA, and I had the pleasure of
viewing the exhibitions Deana Lawson: Planes (2018-19), Roy DeCarava: The Work of Art
(2019), and Noah Davis (2022) at The Underground Museum. Both of these art and culture hubs
created safe spaces for the Black community and produced several exhibitions, programs, and
initiatives that amplified Black art and diverse communities. It causes one to wonder how many
marginalized artists may never have gotten their due if they were not featured at Brockman or the
Underground, and how many Black curators and/or gallerists were influenced by them in
opening up their own spaces (as I detail more in the conclusion section of this thesis). I certainly
have felt their impact on my own curatorial practice, and I would like to specifically extend
thanks to both Alonzo and Dale Davis (whom I had the pleasure of interviewing for this thesis)
and Noah Davis and the Davis family. Special thanks to Mark Greenfield and J. Stanley “Stan”
Sanders, the latter of whom is my cousin, for also allowing me to conduct wonderful and
thoughtful interviews with the both of them.

iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………….ii

LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………………………………iv

ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………….viii

INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………...........1

CHAPTER ONE: JOINING HANDS: BROCKMAN GALLERY AND THE STORMY
SIXTIES……………………………………………………………………………………..........6

CHAPTER TWO: SHAKING THE TABLE: THE BLACK ARTS COUNCIL AND THREE
GRAPHIC ARTISTS AT LACMA………………………………………………………….........25

CHAPTER THREE: SOMEPLACE TO GATHER, SOMEPLACE TO HEAL: THE
UNDERGROUND MUSEUM…………………………………………………………………..41

CHAPTER FOUR: RECLAIMING THE BLACK BODY: NON-FICTION AT THE
UNDERGROUND MUSEUM…………………………………………………………………..54

CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………..63

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………..70

APPENDIX OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………........75

iv
LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Los Angeles following the Watts Rebellion (1965).
Courtesy of Harry Drinkwater……………………………………………………………………6

Figure 2. Remnants of a destroyed car during the Watts Rebellion (1965). Courtesy of Harry
Drinkwater………………………………………………………………………………………..7

Figure 3. Dale and Alonzo Davis with their father in front of Brockman Gallery. Courtesy of
Brockman Gallery Archives……………………………………………………………………...8

Figure 4. The exterior of Brockman Gallery (4334 Degnan Boulevard). Courtesy of
Brockman Gallery Archives………………………………………………………………………9

Figure 5. Brockman Gallery’s inaugural opening (January 1967). Courtesy of Brockman
Gallery Archives…………………………………………………………………………………..9

Figure 6. Betye Saar, The Divine Face and Hand, 1971. Acrylic, gouache, and ink on paper…10

Figure 7. Announcement for Niggers Ain’t Gonna Be Nothin’ – All They Want To Do Is
Drink + Fuck (1971) at Brockman Gallery. Courtesy of Brockman Gallery Archives…………12

Figure 8. Announcement for Oriental America at Brockman Gallery (1969). Courtesy of
Brockman Gallery Archives……………………………………………………………………..13

Figure 9. Announcement for a group exhibition featuring Doyle Lane, Al Porter, and John
Riddle at Brockman Gallery. Courtesy of Brockman Gallery Archives………………………...13

Figure 10. Announcement for The Sapphire Show at Gallery 32 (1970). Courtesy of
Suzanne Jackson…………………………………………………………………………………15

Figure 11. Promotional poster for Just Above Midtown’s inaugural exhibition, Synthesis
(1974). Courtesy of Linda Goode Bryant………………………………………………………..16

Figure 12. Senga Nengudi, Ceremony for Freeway Fets, 1978. Photo Credit: Roderick
“Quako” Young………………………………………………………………………………….18

Figure 13. Performance detail – Senga Nengudi, Ceremony for Freeway Fets, 1978. Photo
Credit: Roderick “Quako” Young……………………………………………………………….19

Figure 14. Los Angeles Street Graphics Committee (L-R): Alonzo Davis (seated), Ronald
Welton, Kinshasha Conwil, Mark Greenfield, George Combs, Ulysses Jenkins, Joe Simms
(lying down) Houston Conwill, and Lester Gones, 1974. Courtesy of Mark
Greenfield……………..................................................................................................................19

Figure 15. Mark Greenfield, He, She, and It (1975). Courtesy of Mark Greenfield……………20

v
Figure 16. Map of the Los Angeles Olympic Mural Sites (Summer 1984). Courtesy of The
Los Angeles Times………………………………………………………………………………..20

Figure 17. Installation view of Alonzo Davis’s murals (L-R): “Eyes on ‘84”, “Eyes of
Consciousness”, and “Reflections of LA”, as part of the 1984 Summer Olympics Mural
Project: “Art in the Fast Lane.” Courtesy of Alonzo Davis……………………………………...21

Figure 18. Installation view of Judy Baca, “Hitting the Wall: Women in the Marathon”
(1983-84), as part of the 1984 Summer Olympics Mural Project: “Art in the Fast Lane.”
Courtesy of Judy Baca…………………………………………………………………………...21

Figure 19. LAPD beating of Rodney King (still), 1991. Video taken by George Holliday…….23

Figure 20. Flyer for the “Black Culture Festival” at LACMA (1968). Courtesy of LACMA….25

Figure 21. Letter from Claude Booker describing the organization and asking for
Membership support. Courtesy of Brockman Gallery Archives………………………………...26

Figure 22. Stan Sanders, John Riddle, and Claude Booker during a Black Arts Council
meeting. Courtesy of Claude and Ann Booker…………………………………………………..27

Figure 23. David Hammons in front of his work in Three Graphic Artists. Courtesy of
LACMA………………………………………………………………………………………….29

Figure 24. Timothy Washington in front of his work in Three Graphic Artists. Courtesy of
LACMA………………………………………………………………………………………….29

Figure 25. Charles White, Wanted Poster #17, 1971. Oil drawing, 60” x 40”………………….30

Figure 26. Charles White, J’Accuse #1, 1966. Charcoal drawing, 50” x 36”…………………...31

Figure 27. Charles White, J’Accuse #5, 1966. Charcoal drawing, 50” x 36”…………………...31

Figure 28. David Hammons, Injustice Case, 1970. Mixed-media, 63 x 40 ½ inches…………..31

Figure 29. David Hammons, Spade (Power for the Spade), 1969. Grease, pigment, and
silkscreen on paper, 51 ½ x 33 ½ inches………………………………………………………...32

Figure 30. David Hammons, Black First, American Second, 1970. Body print and silkscreen,
40” x 30”…………………………………………………………………………………………32

Figure 31. Timothy Washington, One Nation Under God, 1970. Engraving on aluminum and
added color, 35” x 48”…………………………………………………………………………...33

Figure 32. Timothy Washington, Raw Truth, 1970. Engraving on aluminum and
assemblage, including cast iron, wood, nails, a zipper and a leather baseball mitt, with

vi
hand coloring, 35” x 24”…………………………………………………………………………33

Figure 33. Flyer for Los Angeles 1972: A Panorama of Black Artists at LACMA (1972).
Courtesy of Brockman Gallery Archives………………………………………………………...36

Figure 34. Richard Wyatt, Carroll Greene, Jr., and Claude Booker at the opening reception
for Panorama (1972). Courtesy of LACMA…………………………………………………….36

Figure 35. Poster for Two Centuries of Black American Art at LACMA (1976). Courtesy of
LACMA………………………………………………………………………………………….39

Figure 36. David C. Driskell, Alonzo Davis, and Mayor Tom Bradley at the opening for
Two Centuries of Black American Art (1976). Courtesy of Brockman Gallery Archives……….39

Figure 37. Noah Davis speaking at a film event at The Underground Museum. Photo by
Alberto E. Rodriguez and Courtesy of WireImage………………………………………………42

Figure 38. The exterior of The Underground Museum (3508 W. Washington Boulevard).
Credit: Carolyn A. Miranda / The Los Angeles Times…………………………………………...44

Figure 39. Installation view of Imitation of Wealth, curated by Noah Davis, at The
Underground Museum (August – November 2013). Photo by Karon Davis and Courtesy of
The Underground Museum………………………………………………………………………45

Figure 40. Installation view of The Oracle, curated by Noah Davis, at The Underground
Museum (July – September 2014). Courtesy of The Underground Museum……………………45

Figure 41. Installation view of Kahlil Joseph, m.A.A.d. (2014) in Kahlil Joseph: Double
Conscience (2015) at MOCA Grand Avenue. Photo by Brian Forrest and Courtesy of The
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles…………………………………………………….47

Figure 42. Installation view of William Kentridge: Journey to the Moon, curated by Noah
Davis, at The Underground Museum (June 2015 – February 2016). Photo by Brian
Forrest……………………………………………………………………………………………48

Figure 43. Installation view of Artists of Color, curated by Noah Davis, at The Underground
Museum (June 2017 – April 2018). Photo by Lita Albuquerque………………………………..49

Figure 44. Exterior view of The Purple Garden. Photo by Adrianne Ramsey………………….49

Figure 45. Still of “Black Museum” (Season 4, Episode 6), as part of Black Mirror, 2017.
Courtesy of Netflix………………………………………………………………………………54

Figure 46. Robert Gober, Hanging Man / Sleeping Man, 1989. Screen-printed wallpaper;
Marion Palfi, Wife of a Lynch Victim, 1949. Gelatin silver print………………………………..56

vii
Figure 47. Kara Walker, The Means to an End…A Shadow Drama in Five Acts, 1995.
Etching, aquatint on paper……………………………………………………………………….56

Figure 48. Kerry James Marshall, As Seen on TV, 2002. Enamel on plastic vase, plastic
flowers, framed video still, wood and glass shelf with steel bracket and chain…………………57

Figure 49. David Hammons, In the Hood (Gray), 2016. Athletic sweatshirt hood, wire,
monofilament…………………………………………………………………………………….58

Figure 50. Deana Lawson, Cowboys, 2014. Photographic print………………………………...59

Figure 51. Deana Lawson, The Garden, Gemena, DR Congo, 2015. Photographic print………59

Figure 52. Kerry James Marshall, Heirlooms and Accessories, 2002. Inkjet prints on paper…..60

Figure 53. Installation view of Henry Taylor, Warning shots not required, 2011. Acrylic,
charcoal, and collage on canvas………………………………………………………………….60

Figure 54. Theaster Gates, Sheol, 2013. Wood, roofing paper, rubber, metal, and tar………….61

Figure 55. The exterior of Crenshaw Dairy Mart (8629 Crenshaw Boulevard). Courtesy of
Crenshaw Dairy Mart…………………………………………………………………………….66

Figure 56. Crenshaw Dairy Mart, abolitionist pod [prototype], 2021, at The Geffen
Contemporary at MOCA (May 2021). Credit: Giovanni Solis…………………………………..67

Figure 57. Documentation of Summaeverythang’s operations. Credit: Mariah Tauger / The
Los Angeles Times………………………………………………………………………………..67

Figure 58. Contents of a Summaeverythang sponsored produce box. Photo by and courtesy
of Lauren Halsey…………………………………………………………………………………67

Figure 59. Exterior of Art + Practice (4334 Degnan Boulevard). Credit: Sean Shim-Boyle…...68

Figure 60. Naima J. Keith, Dale Brockman Davis, and Alonzo Davis in conversation at Art
+ Practice (Los Angeles) on February 17, 2015. Courtesy of Naima Keith and Art + Practice…68

viii
ABSTRACT

This thesis will examine counter-institutional curatorial practices and community
engagement initiatives in Black owned and operated art spaces in Los Angeles. The author’s
research focuses on how these art spaces that highlighted Blackness were created within complex
political and social movements, such as the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement,
and the Black Lives Matter Movement, thus utilizing curation to take an activist stance against
systemic racism. The presented research will be supported with two case studies of
intergenerational Black-run alternative art spaces: Brockman Gallery (1967-1989) in Leimert
Park Village and The Underground Museum (2012-2022) in Arlington Heights. These sites were
located in predominately Black and brown neighborhoods and became spaces for intellectual
agency and community action. They also sought to create support structures for a diverse array
of artists, particularly Black cultural workers, outside of the commercial gallery and traditional
museum system in Los Angeles, although they did occasionally partner with major institutions
that supported their mission.

1
INTRODUCTION

“When we ask, ‘What is the black aesthetic?’ and ‘What is black art?’, we are talking about something other
than what most art critics are prepared to deal with honestly at this point. The possibility of a black
art/aesthetic is not a mainstream idea. It is not something nonblacks consider seriously. It is not something
that is generally desired. It is a different and separate thing.”
1
– Edward S. Spriggs

During the 1960’s, there were only two public museums in Los Angeles that exhibited
modern and contemporary art: the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the
Pasadena Museum of Art. Unfortunately, these major art institutions were unwelcoming to Black
artists, and the burgeoning diversity of the city was not represented in exhibitions, programming,
or staffing. Thanks to more African Americans moving to Los Angeles following World War II,
there was a slow increase of Black artists entering the institutional art world. This change was
driven by more African Americans participating in BFA and MFA programs, the alleviation of
racial segregation, and financial support from the G.I. Bill. As gaining acceptance into major
institutions was extraordinarily difficult, Black artists mounted exhibitions anywhere they could
– in homes, community centers, libraries, churches, and Black-owned businesses. They
eventually established their own art spaces in order to showcase their work, the practices of other
Black artists, and marginalized communities of color. With the rise of the Black Arts Movement
and the 1965 Watts Uprising, the Los Angeles art scene became robust and politically engaged,
focused on bringing arts programming to diverse neighborhoods and pressing for inclusion in the
city’s art institutions.
One of these neighborhoods was Leimert Park, which was founded in 1927 as one of the
first master-planned communities in Los Angeles. Marketed as an upscale, all-white community,

1
Edward S. Spriggs, “Preface” in Black Dimensions in Contemporary Art, ed. Atkinson, J. Edward (New York, NY:
New American Library, 1971), 7-8.

2
it was off-limits to African Americans and people of color for decades.
2
With the lifting of
restrictive race covenants in 1948, upwardly mobile African Americans began settling in and
around Leimert Park. Racism and unwarranted fear would spur white residents to leave Leimert
Park in the 1950’s. Despite the efforts of integrated neighborhood groups to keep Leimert Park
racially balanced and prevent white flight, the 1965 Watts rebellion resulted in the departure of
many remaining white residents.
3
Though their withdrawal meant a decline in diversity for
Leimert Park, it led to residential and business opportunities for the Black community.
Eventually, Black-owned art spaces, galleries, and performance venues would reign in this once
all-white neighborhood, creating what many still consider the center of Black culture and social
activism in Los Angeles. One of these spaces was Brockman Gallery, which brothers Alonzo
Davis and Dale Brockman Davis opened in 1967; this was the first commercial art gallery in Los
Angeles run by and largely for the Black community.
In present time, the last decade has been a mixed experience for Black artists in the
United States. One could argue that Black artists have finally been accorded their due, after
centuries of underrepresentation in museums. There have been several reparative exhibitions at
major institutions that focus on the artwork and experience of Black visual artists, such as the
intergenerational group shows We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-1985 at
The Brooklyn Museum (April 21 – September 17, 2017), Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of
Black Power at Tate Modern (July 12 – October 22, 2017), and Grief and Grievance: Art and
Mourning in America at The New Museum (February 17 – June 6, 2021). These exhibitions join

2
Yosuke Kitazawa, “Walter H. Leimert and the Selling of a Perfect Planned Community,” KCET website
(September 9, 2013), available at: https://www.kcet.org/shows/departures/walter-h-leimert-and-the-selling-of-a-
perfect-planned-community
3
Jennifer Mandel. Making a ‘Black Beverly Hills’: The Struggle for Housing Equality in Modern Los Angeles
(Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire Doctoral Dissertations, 2010), 228.

3
a long list of overdue retrospectives – Charles Gaines, Lorraine O’Grady, Adrian Piper, Carrie
Mae Weems, etc. – and a burgeoning shelf of books devoted to correcting art history’s crimes of
exclusion. Two Black artists have represented the United States at the last two Venice Biennales:
Mark Bradford at the fifty-seventh edition (May 13 – November 26, 2017) and Simone Leigh at
the fifty-ninth edition (April 23 – November 27, 2022). These achievements are the result of
decades of hard effort by Black artists, curators, and historians, and they, as well as the long and
painful history they aim to remedy, will not be erased. Nor should we take for granted that a
“turn” is permanent, especially after the presidency of Donald Trump (2016-2020), whose
rhetoric and policy centered white grievance and racial animus. These flush of exhibitions and
representation should not indicate that full equality has been achieved; indeed, many perceive the
fascination with Black art and artists as forms of tokenism and exoticization. Moreover, outside
an exhibition’s walls, African Americans are faced with a different story altogether: the
abandonment of safeguards against racist voter suppression, the chilling and perpetual systemic
violence enacted by police against Black citizens without judgement or punishment, to say
nothing of the racism that, since the Trump administration, has become newly unashamed to
speak its name to the public. The protest culture that exploded due to Trump’s win in 2016
actually began years earlier, thanks to the founding of the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM)
in 2012. BLM was created in order to raise awareness about racial discrimination and police
violence against Black people. The movement has continued to grow and thrive, particularly due
to the Summer 2020 global uprisings in response to George Floyd’s murder.
Artists Noah and Karon Davis (no relation to the Davis brothers and Brockman Gallery)
capitalized on this activist spirit. They were also based in Los Angeles, where they founded The
Underground Museum in 2012. Situated in the neighborhood of Arlington Heights, their art

4
space was founded on the idea that every person deserves to experience excellence. To that end,
the museum advocated bringing “museum-quality art” to a neighborhood often ignored by both
the city’s government and cultural institutions.
4
Accessibility was a primary feature of The
Underground Museum, as admission was free and the site was conceived as a welcoming and
safe space for art, ideas, books, and friends. The homelike and communal quality was pointed, as
the museum’s founders once lived there. They imagined a new form of a museum, one that
expands upon a singular artistic vision that embraces the cornerstones of life – love, hope, and
loss – as a museological practice.
Although these independent art spaces justifiably held critical views about major art
institutions, their efforts are not diminished by acknowledging that they nevertheless benefited
from the support of certain institutions they viewed as being sympathetic to their cause. These
collaborations led to expanded accessibility and activism; the text will investigate institutional
partnerships within both case studies. Brockman Gallery proudly sponsored Three Graphic
Artists (1971) at LACMA, which featured works by David Hammons, Timothy Washington, and
Charles White. This groundbreaking exhibition was initiated by the newly formed Black Arts
Council, who worked towards diversifying exhibitions, programming, and staffing at LACMA
from 1968-1974. Many of The Underground Museum’s exhibitions, such as Non-Fiction (2016-
2017), drew upon the collection of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), as
the result of a years-long, innovative partnership negotiated between co-founder Noah Davis and
MOCA’s Chief Curator, Helen Molesworth. As art historian and curator Kellie Jones noted,

4
Noah Davis was known for specifically putting quotation marks around the term “museum-quality art.” This
stylization was confirmed by Helen Molesworth in an essay: “I mostly remember how nervous I was when I wrote
to Phillippe Vergne, the new director at MOCA, to tell him that what Noah wanted was to show “museum-quality
art” (he always put quotes around the phrase; Noah was so damn funny) at the UM.” Helen Molesworth, “Some
Years Count As Double” in Noah Davis, ed. Molesworth, Helen (New York, NY: David Zwirner Books and Los
Angeles, CA: The Underground Museum, 2020), 165.

5
“Even as African Americans were founding their own institutions and hewing their own path in
the national and international art worlds, they had a network of friends who helped and
championed them, and who were not always African American.”
5

This thesis will trace a historical through line of how Brockman Gallery and The
Underground Museum used curation to take an activist stance within Los Angeles and the larger
art world. By focusing on the curatorial and programming practices of these two Black owned art
and cultural centers in Los Angeles, as well as their partnerships with outside institutions, this
text unearths an enormous diversity of responses and reactions to the political, social, and
cultural climate of their respective times. The direct influence of several social and political
movements caused these spaces to craft their own unique solutions in order to embrace
Blackness and Black art as the forefront of their respective organization’s vision.

5
Kellie Jones, “Now Dig This! An Introduction”, Hammer Museum website (2016), available at:
https://hammer.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/migrated-
assets/media/Digital_archives/Now_Dig_This_/Essays/Jones_Now_Dig_This.pdf

6
CHAPTER ONE: JOINING HANDS: BROCKMAN GALLERY AND THE STORMY
SIXTIES

“You have to carry the [Leimert Park] Village within your heart. And wherever you’re at, it’ll provide that
sense of community.”
6
– A.K. Toney

Spearheaded by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the U.S. Civil Rights Movement ushered in
groundbreaking federal legislation by the mid-1960’s, thanks in part to its usage of nonviolent
sit-ins, protests, and marches. But as a younger generation of African Americans continued to
experience discrimination and state-sanctioned violence, an intensifying call for faster action and
more dynamic leadership led to a social and political schism. On the evening of August 11, 1965
in Watts, California, a group of Black residents observed the arrest of a Black man, Marquette
Frye, by a white California Highway Patrol Officer, Lee Minikus. Frye was pulled over for drunk
driving and eventually deemed to be resisting arrest. Patrolman Minikus called for backup as the
crowd threw bottles and rocks to prevent him from handcuffing Frye. The arrival of more police
officers further agitated the protestors, with the confrontation spilling onto the block and the
larger community of Watts. Riots ensued over the next six days, resulting in the loss of 34 lives,
1,032 injured persons, and over 800 damaged or destroyed buildings.
7

In retrospect, the Watts Rebellion was unsurprising, as by 1965 Los Angeles was
California’s most segregated city. Los Angeles’s Black community, which was most affected by
the looting and arson, reacted with violence. When Dr. King visited Watts immediately
following the insurrection, he urged for peace and pleaded with the community to come together
and “join hands.” (Figure 1) However, members of the audience finished his pronouncement
with their own declaration – “and burn!” In the eyes of the younger generation, the burned

6
A.K. Toney, “Leimert Park Art Village: The Struggle with a Sense of Place,” KCET website (February 9, 2014),
available at: https://www.kcet.org/shows/departures/leimert-park-art-village-the-struggle-with-a-sense-of-place
7
Information about the Watts Rebellion was provided from: Robert Conot. Rivers of Blood, Years of Darkness (New
York, NY: Bantam Books, 1967)

7
buildings, debris-filled streets, and loss of life were discernable symbols of the failure of the
Civil Rights Movement, and by extension, Dr. King, in protecting Black people from racial
injustice (Figure 2).
8
At the Mississippi March Against Fear in June of 1966, Black activist
Stokely Carmichael rallied for nationwide solidarity and resistance against racial violence,
dubbing this as “Black Power!” His urgent appeal was accompanied with what would become
the Black Power salute: a defiant, raised fist. Taking inspiration from this were Huey P. Newton
and Bobby Seale, two Black activists who co-founded The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense
in October of 1966 in Oakland, California. The Party’s directive was to protect African
American residents from police brutality in their own neighborhoods and community, thus
demanding “the power to determine the destiny of our Black community.”
9
They also created
numerous community programs, such as food services and mobile health clinics, that sought to
rectify social and economic inequalities that impacted African Americans. The Black Panther
Party dissolved in 1982 after years of intense government pushback and legal woes.
Following the Watts Rebellion, the Blacks Arts Movement (1965-1976) kicked into high
gear, spurred by political activism, celebration of Black culture and heritage, increased funding
for arts programming in Black communities, and in the case of Los Angeles, the opening of
several Black-owned galleries. In an essay for Ebony, Black writer Larry Neal stated that the
Black Arts Movement aided Black cultural workers in claiming a status for themselves in not
just the art world, but social, economic, and political circumstances that denied them recognition:
The Black Arts Movement preaches that liberation is inextricably bound up
with politics and culture. The culture gives us a revolutionary moral vision
and a system of values and a methodology around which to shape the

8
Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther
Party (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013), 30.
9
Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, “The Ten Point Program: What We Want Now!” The Black Panther
Newspaper, Vol. 1, No. 2 (May 15, 1967), 3.

8
political movement. When we say “culture” we do not merely mean artistic
forms. We mean, instead, the values, the life styles, and the feelings of the
people as expressed in everyday life.
10

Acutely aware of the lack of opportunities for Black and underrepresented artists to be
featured at established art institutions, and influenced by the recent cultural shifts and activism in
the Black community, brothers Alonzo Davis, 24, and Dale Brockman Davis, 20, opened
Brockman Gallery in Leimert Park Village in 1967 (Figure 3). Having lived in Leimert Park
since the late 1950’s and having watched the steady stream of affluent African Americans move
into the corresponding Crenshaw District, the Davis brothers saw a potential for a receptive
client base by locating their gallery in what was then considered the “wealthiest Black
neighborhood in the city.”
11
Both Alonzo and Dale are practicing visual artists, with Alonzo
focusing on colorful prints and drawings and Dale centering on ceramics and sculpture. After
Alonzo graduated from Pepperdine University in 1966, he and Dale drove across the country in a
Volkswagen Bug so they could participate in civil rights marches. They stayed with family in
Jackson, Mississippi, and became more politically aware and active. While driving through the
South, they witnessed the boiling racial tensions and growing frustration amongst Black activists.
On the return trip home, the brothers had many conversations about what they wanted to do with
their lives and decided to pursue a new venture of running an art space. As Dale explained, “We
were told as art students that we had best get teaching credentials, because there would be no
opportunities for African American artists to show, that there would be no galleries open to us.
And so, we decided to take the challenge and open up a gallery.”
12

10
Larry Neal. “Any Day Now: Black Art and Black Liberation.” Ebony Magazine (August 1969), 55.
11
Mandel, 253
12
Ana Luisa González. “Dale Brockman Davis reflects on the origins of Brockman Gallery, the cultural landscape
of South L.A,” Medium website (February 4, 2016), available at: https://medium.com/@analuisagonzalez/dale-
brockman-davis-reflects-on-the-origins-of-the-brockman-gallery-the-cultural-landscape-of-420c644f86d8

9
Jack Sidney, a Jewish man, showed Alonzo and Dale a vacant storefront at 4334 Degnan
Boulevard; it was a charming commercial building that had been erected in 1936 (Figure 4). The
Davis brothers ultimately decided to convert the space into a gallery, and they also leased two
neighboring properties as their individual studio spaces. In an interview with the author, Dale
praised Sidney’s management and belief in their mission: “He was a real personable guy who
was critical to leasing spaces [in Leimert Park], leading to the philosophy that it takes a village.
He was not a greedy landlord; he kept rent within a reasonable amount and made sure that the
properties were acceptable, unlike many white landlords in the community.”
13
The feel of the
gallery was comfortable and homey, as there were west-facing windows across the whole front
of the gallery that let in a lot of light. The brothers used the windows for further display, often
presenting large ceramics, crafts, and jewelry cases. To honor their family heritage, the gallery
was named after their maternal grandmother, Della Brockman, who had been a slave.
A commercial gallery focused primarily on promoting, exhibiting, and selling the work of
African American artists, Brockman Gallery opened in January 1967 (Figure 5). The inaugural
exhibition featured works by the Davis brothers; while they solely organized group exhibitions in
their first two years of operations, they began curating solo showings in 1969. Some of their
earliest solo presentations highlighted artists working in assemblage, which had become popular
among Black artists in the mid-sixties:
It is often seen as a form of critical practice, with notions such as the fraud of
the 1950s consumer society and its platitudes laced through the ruined
consumer products of assemblage’s facture. Embedded in the narrative of this
method too is the concept of transformation, the alchemy of taking a thing
discarded and changing it into a thing of (re)use. […] With assemblage, these
artists could refer to the complexities of African American culture and life
without having to rely on simplistic painted representations of the black
figure.
14

13
Davis, Dale. Phone interview with the author. Conducted on July 11, 2022
14
Jones, “Now Dig This! An Introduction”

10
Some of these artists included John Outterbridge, John Riddle, and Betye Saar, who were
all visual artists who forayed into assemblage. Riddle had his first solo exhibition at Brockman
Gallery in November 1969, which included his American Dream series and large metal
sculptures. Outterbridge’s sculptures were made out of metal assemblage, wood, and leather. He
had his first solo exhibition at Brockman Gallery in 1971, and exhibited with the gallery several
times over the years. “John Outterbridge was probably one of the more successful and loyal
artists that Brockman Gallery was involved with,” Alonzo said. “I consider John the poet, the
prophet, philosopher, and the new dean of black artists in Southern California.”
15
Saar was one
of the first artists to appear on Brockman Gallery’s roster; she was originally a printmaker, but
the Watts Rebellion radicalized her political opinions and piqued her interest in assemblage,
which she began working with in the early seventies. She utilized pieces that related to her
ancestral lineage of conjured women, believing that these objects had a sense of autonomy and
were specific to Black life. “[Saar] showed with us on a regular basis,” Dale explained. “She
started out as one of the homies and now international institutions are showing her work. Maybe
we were lucky or in the right place at the right time, but I think we had an impact.”
16
Alonzo
even provided the cowhide that Saar used to create The Divine Face and Hand (1971), a mixed
media assemblage that is a self-portrait based on an ancient Ethiopian symbol (Figure 6). By
nurturing the careers of local, emerging artists, the Davis brothers sought to network them to a
regional audience of gallery visitors and art collectors, and diversify the Southern Californian art
scene through practical and intellectual means.

15
Karen Anne Mason. “Interview of Alonzo Davis.” African American Artists of Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA:
UCLA Center for Oral History Research, c. 1990-91), 131.
16
Dale Brockman Davis and Megan Franz, “For The Love of the Work” in Black Light, ed. Nudelman, Amanda and
Myers-Szupinska (San Francisco, CA: California College of the Arts, 2018), 56

11
Brockman Gallery also showed the work of nationally recognized Black artists, such as
Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, and Charles White. In 1971, Catlett had her
first solo exhibition in over a decade at Brockman Gallery. The show featured her prints and
sculptures, and Alonzo traveled to Tijuana to retrieve the objects. Upon her divorce from Charles
White in 1946, Catlett had decided to take residence in Mexico, where she had been completing
a fellowship. Popular shows like these attracted high-level clientele, such as Bill Cosby, who
acquired works for his personal collection and to serve as set pieces for The Bill Cosby Show
(1969 – 1971).
17
All of these shows were very profitable and netted many sales, with Dale later
reflecting:
The idea of buying art was a new concept for the community. Many people
were reluctant to spend a chunk of their paycheck on a single paycheck. So,
we sold mass-produced posters and silkscreened cards that helped draw part
of a marketing strategy to increase awareness of the original works by the
artists. We also developed a layaway plan, which helped a lot with sales.
18

Both Alonzo and Dale wanted to network Los Angeles based Black artists with more
nationally prominent Black artists in order to provide a sustainable platform and better
representation for both parties. The financial support also allowed them to support artists with
daring ideas and curate exhibitions that had intriguing installation designs. One of the most
remembered and controversial shows at Brockman Gallery was a solo exhibition featuring the
work of Noah Purifoy, a Black artist whose experimental practice made use of found materials to
create poetically and politically-potent works of assemblage. Purifoy was also Founding Director
of the Watts Tower Arts Center (1964-1966), where he created and organized youth arts
programs, concerts, and exhibitions. In 1971, he staged an interactive exhibit in the one-bedroom
apartment above Brockman Gallery, titled Niggers Ain’t Ever Gonna Be Nothin’ – All They Want

17
Davis and Mason, 140
18
Davis and Franz, 57

12
To Do Is Drink + Fuck (Figure 7). The show highlighted what Purifoy considered to be the
negative aspects of the Black community, such as rampant poverty, alcoholism, and unkempt
housing. Purifoy transformed the apartment into an uninhabitable living space, with empty liquor
bottles, cockroaches, and rodent droppings strewn all over the floor. The kitchen was putrid,
filled with a rancid stench from the rotting, moldy food that covered the countertops. A
malfunctioning television flickered in the living room, and Purifoy even rigged two mannequins
to have sex with one another in the bedroom while a curious baby looked on from the floor. The
show was a shocking commentary on Black life in the hood, and Purifoy elaborated on his
intentions in an interview:
Now, the blacks that I’ve interrelated with most of my life know nothing else
other than what I described here: all the poverty and how you escape it by
drinking and having sex. What I meant to communicate was that there’s more
to life than that. I don't know to what extent the people whom it was meant
for got to see it because they don’t come to the Brockman Gallery. But that’s
to whom it was directed, and that’s part of my original premise, to
communicate to my own people what I think they need to know in order to
better themselves. In Watts – that was my idea, not of bettering Watts, but to
get the hell out. You know, find some means by which you can get the hell
out of here and go somewhere elsewhere you can be influenced by some
other elements, because you’ll never improve yourself here.
19

Purifoy’s remarks about his exhibition speak to a core issue that often divides the Black
community: geography and economics. The social hierarchy that Purifoy referenced in speaking
about the people who “don’t come to Brockman Gallery” were the ones whose homelife he was
re-staging – specifically, poor Black residents of Watts. While Brockman Gallery was a space
run by two Black brothers, their site was in a privileged, middle-class neighborhood that stood in
total contrast to the working-class environment of Black life in Watts. While Purifoy worked
tirelessly to provide for the Black community through his work at the Watts Tower Art Center,

19
Karen Anne Mason. “Interview of Noah Purifoy.” African American Artists of Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA:
UCLA Center for Oral History Research, c. 1990), 30-31.

13
his plea to “get the hell out” encapsulates the struggles of Black life. There is a centuries-long
system in the United States that forces Black citizens to survive in a country that deprives them
of their civil liberties. Niggers Ain’t Never Ever Gonna Be Nothin’ was not simply about the
constructed environment on display, but how meaning is produced when staged by an art space,
in this case, Brockman Gallery. Purifoy challenged viewers to think critically about the “home”
they were visiting – was it familiar to them, whether it was representative of their home or
someone that they knew? Do people with “homes like this” even come to art galleries? And for
those that do, did Purifoy even stage the space correctly? A larger point was how even though
the Davis brothers opened Brockman Gallery as a safe space for Black people, that same
community was still suffering outside of its doors. In addition, the willingness of Alonzo and
Dale in allowing a show to be staged where nothing was for sale and the gallery received no
profit showcased their own activist spirit and encouragement of Purifoy’s practice. Alonzo
praised the exhibition years later, explaining: “It knocked everybody out. There was nothing for
sale. And it was an experience. It was site specific. Nobody else had been doing those kinds of
exhibitions at that time.”
20

While the core mission of Brockman Gallery was to give African American artists a place
to present their work, Alonzo and Dale ran it with an inclusive approach and curated exhibitions
that included non-Black artists. One of these group exhibitions, Oriental America (1969),
featured works from Asian and Asian American artists (Figure 8). There was a three-person
show that included work by two Black artists, Doyle Lane and John Riddle, and a white artist, Al
Porter, who was also the Art Supervisor for Secondary Art in the Los Angeles Unified School
District; this exhibition featured clay paintings and ceramic pots (Figure 9). Judy Baca, a

20
Davis and Mason, 106

14
Chicana artist and activist based in Los Angeles, contributed murals to Brockman Gallery during
the seventies. These exhibitions and commissions caused controversy, which Dale reflected on:
It was a place for artists who were struggling to get their work shown. That
struggle wasn’t always based in race. The primary focus was African
American artists because we were living in an African American community.
We opened the whole thing up. The assumption, though, was that it was for
African American people only. We got in hot water with African Americans
because we were allowing other groups to show at the gallery. There were
political forces at the time that felt that if you were not showing “black”
imagery then you had the wrong focus.
21

Along with organizing hundreds of inclusive exhibitions, the gallery hosted talks and
became an informal forum and gathering space for artists. This consistent stream of activity
helped to create a thriving arts community in Leimert Park Village and led Brockman Gallery to
be at the center of the Black Arts Movement in Los Angeles. But while Brockman Gallery was
run by two men, it would be foolish to exclude the Black women with whom they worked in
tandem. The period of the 1960’s to the 1980’s was a time when being a Black female creative
was considered especially radical due to sexism and misogynoir. Black women typically found
themselves excluded from the Civil Rights Movement, as most of the recognizable leaders were
male – Dr. King, Malcolm X, John Lewis, Jesse Jackson, etc. The sentiment was not much
different during the Black Power Movement, as their memorable image was one of Black
masculinity, nationalism, and rampant aggression. Joining the Women’s Liberation Movement
also proved to be a lonely experience, as it catered towards middle-class and wealthy white
women and didn’t offer much to the working-class Black woman. Beginning in the late sixties,
several Black female cultural workers around the country founded their own artist collectives,
publications, and galleries in order to reject the sexism within political movements and racism
from non-Black communities.

21
Davis and Franz, 54

15
One of these women was Suzanne Jackson, a visual artist who ran Gallery 32 (1968-70)
from her loft at 672 North Lafayette Park Place. This in-home gallery hosted numerous
exhibitions, as well as readings, performances, artist talks, and fundraisers for the Black Panther
Party. Some of Gallery 32’s most popular exhibitions featured works by Emory Douglas, David
Hammons, and children from the Watts Tower Arts Center. One of the gallery’s final shows was
The Sapphire Show (1970), which was the first survey of Black women artists to be staged in the
United States; all six participating artists had work that was featured in Brockman Gallery’s
exhibitions (Figure 10). As Brockman Gallery and Gallery 32 opened within a year of one
another, there was a natural rivalry:
They often shared opening weekends – Brockman debuted shows on Friday,
and Gallery 32 on Saturday – and some artists (Hammons, Washington,
Concholar). However, Brockman exhibited more established practitioners,
while Gallery 32 specialized in a younger, eclectic, and more political
group.
22

Years later, Alonzo admitted that the competition between the two spaces was
unnecessary and that many of their shared artists pitted them against one another: “She probably
allowed greater experimental kinds of things at her place. I’m not sure that she was as focused on
sales as we were, although she had to be to some degree. [Her gallery] had a whole other
mystique.”
23
Unfortunately, Gallery 32 did not have the same amount of financial and
community support as Brockman Gallery did. Ultimately, the business was not feasible and
Jackson ended Gallery 32’s operations after three years. However, it is important to recognize
that Gallery 32 made an impact on the Los Angeles art world during its short run and is a
recognizable business amongst the boom of Black run galleries in the late sixties.

22
Kellie Jones. South of Pico: African American Artists in the 1960s and 1970s (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2017), 154.
23
Davis and Mason, 115

16
The Davis brothers also worked with Black cultural workers in New York, where the art
scene had exhibited many failures in excluding artists of color, especially Black women. Similar
to what was happening in Los Angeles, several Black artists and creatives in New York founded
their own art spaces and boasted a roster of diverse artists. One of these people was Linda Goode
Bryant, who opened her gallery Just Above Midtown (JAM) in the heart of New York’s art
gallery establishment in November 1974. Bryant’s mission was to provide a platform for Black
artists to exhibit and sell their work, as curator Rujeko Hockley discussed in an essay:
Bryant and her dedicated cohort of friends, supporters, and volunteers placed
greater emphasis on live events, whether performances, meals, readings, or
lectures. At Fifty-seventh Street, through such efforts as their “Brunch with
JAM” series, they had attempted to cultivate and educate a black collector
base, hoping to create a model of financial sustainability for the gallery and
its artists, as well as to empower black participation in the mainstream art
world.”
24

Alonzo was one of twelve artists whose works were included in JAM’s inaugural
exhibition, Synthesis; five other participating artists – Elizabeth Catlett, Dan Concholar, David
Hammons, Suzanne Jackson, and Roho – had all participated in shows at Brockman Gallery
(Figure 11). “Linda had a different audience than traditional gallerists in New York City,”
Alonzo explained in an interview with the author. “She saw a need amongst artists who had
recently moved there or were already based in New York, and thankfully decided to include
artists who worked out of Southern California.”
25
Several Black visual artists would cross exhibit
at both Brockman and JAM, including David Hammons, whose emerging practice was supported
by Brockman Gallery and who participated in numerous exhibitions at JAM; Senga Nengudi
(who was then based in Los Angeles) debuted R.S.V.P. (1975-77), a sculptural installation with a

24
Rujeko Hockley, “Just Above Midtown Gallery” in We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85 / A
Sourcebook, ed. Morris Catherine and Hockley, Rujeko (Brooklyn, NY: The Brooklyn Museum and Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2017), 136.
25
Alonzo Davis. Zoom interview with the author. Conducted on July 13, 2022

17
corresponding performance, at JAM in 1977, alongside staging performances and public art
projects at Brockman Gallery; and Marren Hassinger had her first-ever solo exhibition at JAM in
1980 after heavily participating in group exhibitions across Southern California. Bryant was
unable to secure funds to sustain her business model, with JAM moving to a couple of different
locations before shuttering operations in 1986. However, the impact of JAM on the Black Arts
Movement is undeniable, as the gallery opened up many opportunities for West Coast Black
artists to envision a bi-coastal career.
1973 was an important year, not only for the Davis brothers, but for Leimert Park Village
and Los Angeles as a whole. Black activists scored a major political victory with the election of
Tom Bradley as Mayor of Los Angeles, the first Black person to hold this position. He began his
career as a young police detective and moved to Leimert Park Village with his family in 1950;
due to the neighborhood’s predominately white makeup, Bradley was forced to reach out to
white friends of his to negotiate the purchase of the house at 3807 Welland Avenue.
26
He became
politically active in the neighborhood, helping to organize the Leimert Park Democratic Club,
which consisted of Black and white members. When Bradley ran campaigns, his biggest support
came from the Leimert Park Democratic Club and other California Democratic Council Clubs
with a similar biracial makeup. Bradley and his family remained in Leimert Park even after he
won his first mayoral campaign; they did not leave until his second term as mayor in 1978, when
they moved to the Mayoral Mansion at 605 South Irving Boulevard. Tom Bradley spent twenty
years as mayor (1973-1993), the longest tenure of any mayor in Los Angeles history.

26
Jay Matthews, “L.A. Express: Mayor Tom Bradley Gets Ahead by Hanging Back.” The Washington Post website
(March 28, 1981), available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1981/03/28/la-express-mayor-
tom-bradley-gets-ahead-by-hanging-back/6880434d-5d54-4e97-9cb9-2c2ff0df79b0/

18
Spurred by their increased community involvement and nationwide attention, Alonzo and
Dale set-up a separate wing of the gallery in 1973 called Brockman Productions. Because the
gallery was a non-profit entity, they were able to receive funding from both local and federal
agencies, thus allowing them to expand their reach into greater Los Angeles. To fund this new
branch, they applied for and received grants from the Comprehensive Employment Training Act
(CETA) program, which was inspired by the Great Depression’s Works Progress Administration
(WPA) programs and meant to support artists in bettering their professional crafts. Brockman
Productions began by sponsoring youth art classes at the gallery; they would eventually create an
annual film festival and the Watts Towers Jazz Festival. They also produced music performances
with Horace Tapscott and his Pan Afrikan Arkestra, and sponsored the “Art in the Park” program
in Leimert Park Plaza. They even established a graphic arts program to recruit and train artists to
design and produce brochures, flyers, and invitations for Brockman Gallery and various non-
profit/community organizations they were associated with. Beginning in the early seventies, a
focus on street art allowed Brockman Productions to become the center of site-specific artwork
and the mural movement.
One of these programs was Ceremony for Freeway Fets, a public art project led by Senga
Nengudi and featuring Houston Conwill, David Hammons, and Maren Hassinger as co-
collaborators (Figure 12). Alongside Caltrans, Los Angeles’s public transportation system,
Brockman Productions fiscally sponsored this one-day, hourlong event in April 1978, which took
place under the overpass of the 110 Freeway in Downtown Los Angeles. The performance was
inspired by West African diasporic rituals and included music, dance, and assemblage. The
performer’s costumes were made out of everyday objects that Nengudi had sourced, such as
pantyhose creations that they wore as headdresses, or cloth structures that they wore on their

19
hands. Nengudi further activated the space by dressing the freeway pylons with pantyhose
sculptures and dancing with fabric tents that she had made (Figure 13). By using multiple
mediums and taking a diasporic approach to curating this performance, Nengudi transformed the
physical site into one for exploration and cultural identity. She later explained why it was
important for her to utilize an isolated freeway underpass in realizing her artistic vision:
I really liked the space because there were little tiny palm trees and a lot of
dirt. It wasn’t as extreme as it is now, but even at that time there were a lot of
transients who slept there; so there were little campfires and stuff. For me, it
had the feel of what I imagined an African village to be. Because it was under
the freeway it was kind of cloistered in a sense. You could have this rural
atmosphere in the midst of an urban setting.
27

While Brockman Productions’ received acclaim for their community programming and
performance projects, their cornerstone was the mural program. The West Coast Mural
Movement became popular in the 1960’s due to Chicano artists painting murals that built on the
tradition of famed Mexican muralists, such as José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David
Alfaro Siqueiros. Alonzo had a strong interest in public art and recruited several artists to
participate in a formal program, such as Mark Greenfield, Suzanne Jackson, Ulysses Jenkins,
Frank Romero, Joe Simms, Kent Twitchell, and Richard Wyatt (Figure 14). These artists were
known as the Los Angeles Street Graphics Committee (LASGC); Jackson contributed two
murals to the program and served as Brockman Gallery’s CETA Coordinator from 1977-78. In
an interview with the author, Greenfield described the committee’s origins:
We went to the wall on Crenshaw on 50
th
Street that had been tagged by
graffiti and decided that we were going to put beautiful art on there. One
Saturday we just started painting there, and by noon the LAPD pulled up and
cited us for defacing public property. But there was a Black city councilman,
Robert Farrell, who understood the importance of the arts. He got all the
charges dropped and even got us a stipend for our program.
28

27
Kellie Jones. “Telephone Interview with Senga Nengudi.” June 3, 1996
28
Mark Greenfield. Interview with the author, given in Pasadena, CA. Conducted on May 2, 2022.

20
From that point on, the Crenshaw Wall became a changing site, with the LASGC
producing a consistent stream of new murals to activate the space (Figure 15). The back walls of
the Otis Art Institute and the Inner-City Cultural Center were also utilized for murals. Many of
these murals depicted African American history, culture, freedom, and pride, with figures drawn
in heroic, monumental proportions, their faces filled with sober determination. “The beauty of
the wall is that it reflected the attitudes and changes in the community and the sensitivity of that
community,” Alonzo said. “We did try to stick within that Crenshaw community for a long time.
Once the CETA program came on, we went all over the city of Los Angeles with mural
pieces.”
29

Brockman Productions’ mural program ran from 1976 until 1981; once President Ronald
Reagan took office, he rapidly terminated the CETA program, which had been consistently
funded by his Democratic predecessor, Jimmy Carter. Alonzo wanted to continue the program
and pitched projects to the Los Angeles Bicentennial Committee and private donors; both efforts
failed.
30
However, the gallery would soon return to muralism as part of the 1984 Summer
Olympics, which took place in Los Angeles. Alonzo was selected to be the Director of the
Olympic Mural Project, which was subtitled “Art in the Fast Lane.” This public art project was
meant to showcase the cultural diversity of Los Angeles and was a part of the larger
programming for the Olympic Art Festival, which was directed by Robert Fitzpatrick. As
director, Alonzo commissioned works from six artists – Judy Baca, Frank Romero, Terry
Schoonoven, Roderick Sykes, John Wehrle, and Richard Wyatt – to bring the total number of
murals to ten; these were staged along Los Angeles’s freeways (Figure 16). As Alonzo
explained: “The concept was to select artists who were good, had a high standard of excellence,

29
Davis and Mason, 186
30
Lois Timnick. “A Dash of Art and Color for the 55-Mile-An-Hour Set.” The Los Angeles Times (June 23, 1984), 2

21
who had done two or more murals in and around the Los Angeles area, and that hopefully that
group of artists would be representative of the city and its various communities.”
31
Alonzo
himself contributed three colorful murals to the project: “Eyes of Consciousness,” “Reflections
of LA,” and “Eyes on ’84” (Figure 17). The latter mural was located on the southbound I-110
freeway at the Third Street ramp, directly adjacent from Judy Baca’s mural, “Hitting the Wall:
Women in the Marathon” (Figure 18).
Several of the murals created under Brockman Productions were affected by bad weather
and poorly maintained, thus rendering them unrecoverable. The murals that were a part of the
1984 Olympic Mural Project suffered the same fate, with many of them damaged for numerous
reasons: “Murals on the 110 freeway by Richard Wyatt (“James and Spectators”) and Roderick
Sykes (“Unity”) were damaged beyond repair because of highway construction in the late 1990s.
One mural on the 110, by Alonzo Davis (“Eyes on 84”) was so heavily weathered that
restoration isn’t possible.”
32
However, the majority of Brockman Productions’ murals were
preserved through photographs and artist sketches, and there have been larger efforts in the
twenty-first century to restore the Olympic Murals: “In 2007, CalTrans began to “hibernate” the
murals. The agency coated murals with an environmentally friendly organic material and
covered it with gray paint, which could be peeled away once funds are available for
restoration.”
33
Unfortunately, this course of preservation presents a dichotomy: while the murals
remain intact, they are not visible to members of the public who may wish to see them.

31
Davis and Mason, 189
32
Deborah Vankin, “Bringing back a piece of LA’s Olympic Glory.” The Los Angeles Times website (March 1,
2013), available at: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-xpm-2013-mar-01-la-et-cm-mural-restoration-
20130302-story.html
33
Carren Jao, “Uncovered Olympic Glories: Murals Restoration on the 101 Freeway,” KCET website (May 22,
2013), available at: https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/uncovered-olympic-glories-murals-restoration-on-the-
101-freeway

22
By the time the 1984 Summer Olympics ended, both Alonzo and Dale had grown weary
with the business. Dale taught at Dorsey High School during the entirety of Brockman Gallery’s
run, while Alonzo worked at local high schools and colleges, completed his master’s degree at
Otis College of Art and Design, and held various part-time jobs to make ends meet. “Even
though [running Brockman Gallery] was technically a part-time job for us, it was a full-time
commitment because we had to chase the artists and the art, and work out all details and aspects
of the gallery,” Dale explained.
34
Alonzo left Los Angeles in 1987, first moving to Sacramento
and later relocating to Maryland, where he is currently based. While Dale stayed in Los Angeles
with his wife and children, he hired Debbie Byars and Alicia Griffin to serve as Brockman’s
gallery managers and curators shortly after Alonzo’s departure.
Brockman Gallery and Brockman Productions closed their doors in 1989 after a twenty-
three-year run. As Dale expressed, “The business aspect was difficult. We never made any real
money. One of the best things we did was to invest in the arts we showed. We would buy a piece
or two from almost everyone – partly because we were embarrassed to have the finest work
around then not sell any of it.”
35
Alonzo corroborated Dale’s sentiment, stating: “We became
relatively sophisticated in the process as we sort of learned by doing. We were recognized
nationally for the kinds of exhibitions and challenging exhibits we put together. In some cases, a
lot of what we did was artistically excellent but financially unsuccessful.”
36
Although they
shuttered operations, Brockman Gallery spurred a tremendous amount of growth in Leimert Park
Village. Beginning in the 1970’s, artists, galleries, businesses, and spaces serving community art
and performances moved to Leimert Park, making it the hub of Black culture in Los Angeles. In

34
Dale Davis, Interview with author
35
Davis and Franz, 58
36
Davis and Mason, 106

23
1976, artist and historian Dr. Samella Lewis founded the Museum of African American Art at
4005 Crenshaw Boulevard. The artist Ramses opened his art studio and gallery at 4342 Degnan
Boulevard in the early 1980’s and stayed until 2000. The 1980’s brought in two cultural
strongholds that continue to thrive today: KAOS Network and The World Stage. KAOS
Network, which is housed at 4343 Leimert Boulevard, is a film and media center that provides
classes to the community, as well as host the Leimert Park Art Walk and Project Blowed, the
world’s longest running hip-hop open-mic. KAOS Network was founded in 1984 by Ben
Caldwell, a UCLA graduate and filmmaker whose films were screened at Brockman
Productions’ Annual Film Festival. The World Stage (4321 Degnan Blvd), was co-founded in
1989 by poet and activist Kamau Daáood and acclaimed jazz drummer Billy Higgins. Initially
formed as a loose art collective, it has been a host to famous Black writers and has been
instrumental in the formation of jazz groups and the South Los Angeles music scene.
37

Unfortunately, the late eighties and early nineties was difficult for Leimert Park Village,
as many patrons stopped coming in the evenings due to fear of gang violence. In 1991, George
Holliday, a plumbing salesman and amateur videographer, filmed Rodney King, a Black man,
being savagely beaten by four white Los Angeles police officers on a camcorder from his
apartment window. King’s situation was eerily similar to the plight of Marquette Frye twenty-six
years earlier, as he was pulled over for drunk driving and eventually attacked with batons and
clubs (Figure 19). Disturbed by this incident, Holliday submitted the video to KTLA. The airing
of the vicious beating on local and then national television sparked loud outcry, especially from
Los Angeles’s Black community, who had complained for decades about the systemic racism
and abuse they regularly faced from the LAPD. The subsequent trial and acquittal of the four

37
Details about the various Leimert Park Village based businesses were provided from: Toney, KCET website

24
officers led to the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising, which consisted of mass lootings, assaults,
destruction, and death, ultimately leading to the activation of the National Guard and the U.S.
Army to quell the violence in the streets and billions of dollars in property damages. The
aftermath of the rioting was only the beginning of a difficult decade for the city, which would
shortly thereafter be faced with increased racial tensions due to the televised O.J. Simpson
double murder trial (1994-95), brewing coastal rivalries in the hip-hop industry, and the LAPD
Rampart Scandal in the late 1990’s. While these controversies caused diverse communities to
become divided, Brockman Gallery had been a site of transformation, art, and culture which the
Black community has remembered fondly in the years since its closing. The gallery acted as the
cultural anchor of Leimert Park Village, which people would eventually find their way back to
after the chaotic nineties. In a 1997 article for Black Enterprise, writer Gil Robertson pointed out,
“The success that the Brockman Gallery enjoyed during the '70s and early '80s planted the seeds
for the bustling commercial district of today.”
38

38
Gil Robertson. “Inside Leimert Park.” Black Enterprise (June 1997), 336.

25
CHAPTER TWO: SHAKING THE TABLE: THE BLACK ARTS COUNCIL AND
THREE GRAPHIC ARTISTS AT LACMA

“The general public was not that aware of the contributions that African American artists had made to
American culture in general, in the nineteenth or even the twentieth century. It was a surprise to most people
when you came up with a list of 50 to 100 Black artists who had been working all that time; they said, “Well,
we’ve never heard of these guys.” Well of course not, because there’s no publication, there’s no exhibition.”
39

– David C. Driskell

In 1965, LACMA disaffiliated from the Los Angeles County Museum of History,
Science, and Art, leaving Exposition Park in South Central Los Angeles and moving to Miracle
Mile on Wilshire Boulevard, which is where the institution remains. While LACMA was
considered the city’s leading public museum, prior to 1968, the only exhibition to highlight the
work of a Black American artist had occurred in 1935 – a solo show of Beulah Ecton Woodard’s
sculptures. Sadly, this was quite common for art institutions throughout the United States:
Mainstream art museums did not begin organizing exhibitions of art by Black
Americans until the late 1920s. Inconsistent in their acknowledgement of the
quality and value of art by Black Americans and sporadically offered to the
public, these exhibitions did not indicate the rich history of diverse artistic
production by Black artists.
40

1968 was a year that brought much progressive change to LACMA. The Sculpture of
Black Africa: The Paul Tishman Collection, the first exhibition in over thirty years to feature
Black art, premiered at the museum that October and ran until January. A collective of the
museum’s Black security guards, led by Head of Security Sidney Glade and Sergeant William
Knight, organized the Black Culture Festival to celebrate Africa’s cultural heritage and Black
American art and culture, as well as serve as accompanying public programming for the Tishman
exhibition (Figure 20). The event took place on December 28, 1968 and received over 4,000

39
Daphne McWilliams and Sam Pollard (producers). “Black Art: In the Absence of Light”. HBO Max (February 9,
2021), Timestamp: 1:31 – 2:03
40
Bridget R Cooks. Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum (Amherst, MA:
University of Massachusetts Press, 2011), 89.

26
attendees, majority of them being African American.
41
Around this time, two Black employees,
Claude Booker and Cecil Fergerson, decided to join forces in order to pressure LACMA to
diversify across the museum. Booker was one of the museum’s arts preparators, as well as a
practicing artist, while Fergerson was a long-time employee of LACMA, starting as a janitor in
1948 and working as a preparator by 1964. Museum preparators are essentially the stagehands
for the galleries, as exhibitions would be impossible to mount without them. While curators are
involved with planning the exhibition’s layout, they are not the ones executing installation and
de-installation tasks. The fact that majority of LACMA’s Black staff were relegated to low-pay
preparator or janitorial work showcased how the institution upheld discrimination in restricting
the parameters of professional inclusion. Both Booker and Ferguson were concerned with the
absence of diversity in LACMA’s exhibitions, programming, and museum-wide staffing, such as
curators, departmental directors, senior leadership, and the board of directors. They realized that
they could not wait any longer for LACMA to simply welcome Black people into their doors and
chose to fight back against systemic racism, co-founding the Black Arts Council (BAC).
The BAC was an arts-based organization that sought to advance Black artists and their
work. As Booker described in a letter asking for membership support, “The purpose of this group
coincides with the more general, current desire of the black community to organize itself at all
levels – economic, political and social, and specifically to create in the community an awareness
of the important role all the arts have played in establishing the identity of black people.” (Figure
21) Realizing that the BAC had a real opportunity to make radical changes at LACMA, Booker
contacted J. Stanley “Stan” Sanders, an African American Rhodes Scholar and attorney. At the
time, Sanders was working for a large law firm in Beverly Hills – Wyman, Bautzer, Rothman,

41
Details about the Tishman exhibition and the Black Culture Festival were provided on: Cooks, 91

27
and Kuckel – but lived in Watts. Booker was interested in meeting Sanders because he thought
they would need legal assistance in putting the organization together. During their initial call,
Sanders was impressed with Booker’s ideas and invited him and Fergerson to his home to learn
more:
They came by and talked about how they had on the job complaints about
their work schedules, pay scale, and the fact that the museum would sort of
use them, similar to how whites used Blacks on the plantation. They did all
the menial work at the museum; Claude [Booker] said it wasn’t going well
because the museum didn’t respect their opinion on art because they were
entry-level employees. I suggested that we form a non-profit and come up
with a name and initial incorporators. I would get their exempt status and
charitable designation from California and the federal government, and in
exchange I would do the legal work in connection with the organization.
Claude thought it was a great idea.
42

With Sanders now on board, the BAC formalized their operations by awarding their
leaders with titles: Booker was Chairman and President, Fergerson was Secretary, and Sanders
was Administrator and General Counsel (Figure 22). After giving a presentation about their new
organization to a middle-class Black church in Los Angeles, Booker and Fergerson recruited two
Black artists, Donald Dowd and Bob Heliton, into the BAC. Dowd became the organization’s
Treasurer and Heliton served as the Graphic Artist.
43
With a core leadership team now in place,
the BAC submitted a proposal to LACMA’s Board of Directors that requested programming that
highlighted Black cultural workers, art, and culture. The museum committed to curating more
exhibitions that solely featured Black artists and agreed to host a three-evening lecture series; the
latter took place in 1969 and featured lectures by Dr. Samella Lewis, Charles White, and John
Riddle, as well as a panel event between Black jazz musicians and Black artists Gloria Bohanon,

42
J. Stanley Sanders. Interview with author, given in Los Angeles, CA. Conducted on May 9, 2022.
43
Karen Anne Mason. “Interview of Cecil Fergerson.” African American Artists of Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA:
UCLA Center for Oral History Research, c. 1990 – 1994), 118-119.

28
Dan Cocholar, John Outterbridge, and Arenzo Smith.
44
In addition, the BAC coordinated
community programming featuring Black artists throughout Southern California:
Consequently, the BAC also worked extensively outside the museum,
organizing field trips for students to art exhibitions, giving lectures in schools
and clubs, and curating exhibitions of black art in diverse venues: restaurants,
malls, banks, schools, and cafeterias. The BAC also was integrally involved
in developing arts programming for the Watts Summer Festival.
45

The formation of the BAC influenced important changes that would be implanted at
LACMA in the first half of the seventies. The museum’s all-white board welcomed their first
African American trustees: Charles Z. Wilson, UCLA’s Chancellor for Academic Programs,
joined in 1971, and Robert Wilson, the first African American stockbroker in Los Angeles,
joined in 1972 and remained a board member until 1985.
46
LACMA ultimately kept their
promise to curate a series of exhibitions that would rectify the absence of Black art in their
programming and permanent collection. The first of these was Three Graphic Artists, which was
shown at the museum from January 26 – March 7, 1971, before traveling to the Santa Barbara
Museum of Art from March 20 – April 18, 1971. The show was curated by Ebria Feinblatt,
Curator of Prints and Drawings at LACMA, and Joseph E. Young, Curatorial Assistant; both
Feinblatt and Young were Jewish. The featured artists were Charles White, David Hammons,
and Timothy Washington, who all took different approaches to the figurative image and were
selected by Young due to their works on paper. White was a respected painter, printmaker, and
esteemed professor at the Otis College of Art and Design; both Hammons and Washington were
former students of White’s. Hammons started making body prints in 1968 by coating himself in
vegetable fat and pressing his body onto printing paper, then applying pigment and revealing the

44
Cooks, 94
45
LACMA Staff, “Two Centuries of Black American Art at LACMA: Who’s Who,” LACMA website (July 9,
2016), available at: https://www.lacma.org/two-centuries-black-american-art-lacma-whos-who
46
LACMA Staff, LACMA website

29
saturated image on the surface (Figure 23). Washington developed a radical technique of etching
into enamel paint on sheets of metal, thus exploring power dynamics and racial theory (Figure
24). All three artists had exhibited their work in solo and group exhibitions at numerous Black
owned galleries in Los Angeles, including Gallery 32, Heritage Gallery, and Wylan Gallery.
Forty-one prints/drawings were featured in Three Graphic Artists, with eighteen pieces by
White, twelve by Hammons, and eleven by Washington. White’s exhibited works span seven
years, whereas Hammons’ and Washington’s works were created in the preceding two years.
Due to the large number of works presented, not every single piece will be discussed in this
thesis, but instead a couple that are standouts in how they encompass each artist’s practice and
the exhibition’s theme.
As Brockman Gallery was the only commercial gallery for Black artists in Los Angeles at
the time, Joseph Young reached out to them and inquired about artists to include in the show.
While Brockman operated outside of the purview of major institutions, they decided to sponsor
Three Graphic Artists. “We didn’t know if LACMA truly believed in what was happening at the
time [with Black art], or if the social forces at the time made the exhibition possible,” Dale
admitted. “Charles White was recognized as the leader of the pack, and he had contacts with
David and Timothy. All three of them were based in the neighborhood and lived within walking
distance of Brockman Gallery.”
47
White had participated in group exhibitions at Brockman, and
both Hammons and Washington were represented by the gallery. Their inclusion in the show
flowed naturally, and Young explained the nature of the selected works in his catalogue essay:
All of the works displayed are intended by the artists subtly to invite the
viewer into a thoughtful, contemplative state of awareness – of himself and
the larger role he plays as a social creature. Indeed, it is the universal
expression of man’s basic humanity which makes this exhibition significant

47
Dale Davis, Interview with author

30
for all persons who are genuinely interested in the continuing expansion of
Western art.
48

By 1971, Charles White was a master draftsman and mentor for younger generations.
Included in the exhibition were works from both his Wanted Poster series and J’Accuse series,
which he started in the mid-1960’s, among other works. The Wanted Poster pieces (four of
which appeared in the show) were directly inspired by advertisements for slave auctions and
poster rewards for runaway slaves. For Wanted Poster No. 17 (1970), he painted two
contemporary figures on stylized crinkled paper, connecting the threads of slavery, racialized
violence, and confederacy (Figure 25). While runaway slave posters generally did not provide a
nuanced sketch of the body, White instead presented a forlorn African American woman
supporting an emaciated African American child. The word “SOLD” is included at the very top,
reminding viewers that slavery transformed African Americans into things; being a “thing” was
what slavery was all about, and White’s Wanted Poster series forced viewers to encounter that
painful sentiment time and time again.
White’s J’Accuse series features charcoal and ink wash drawings that largely examine the
disenfranchisement of African Americans, casting them into states such as homelessness and
poverty, and embody the artist’s growing frustration with the lack of civil rights in the United
States. The phrase J’Accuse (“I accuse”) is a reference to the notorious Dreyfus affair: in 1894, a
Jewish officer in the French army, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, was falsely accused of spying for
Germany. This was a reflection of broad societal and institutional anti-Semitism. In 1898, author
Émile Zola wrote an open letter, “J’Accuse,” to French President Félix Faure, accusing him of a
military and judiciary cover-up.
49
J’Accuse #1 (1966) features an elderly Black woman shrouded

48
Joseph E. Young, “Three Graphic Artists” in Three Graphic Artists: Charles White, David Hammons, Timothy
Washington, ed. LACMA. (Los Angeles, CA: LACMA, 1971), 4.
49
Émile Zola. “J’Accuse…! Lettre au Président de la République.” L’Auorore (January 13, 1898), 1.

31
in a large black cloak and wearing gloves and a hat (Figure 26). The only part of her body that is
not covered is her face, which holds clouded eyes and a passive expression. In J’Accuse #5
(1966), White captures a Black man with a downcast expression and a furrowed brow as he
walks (Figure 27). Similar to the elderly Black woman, this figure is wearing an oversized coat,
shirt, and pants. There is no context given to either of these subjects, so the viewer is left to
wonder what their stories and personal experiences are. But one can tell by their facial
expressions that they have experienced distress. The large clothing speaks to a sense of
vulnerability; instead of imprisoning their bodies, it protects them – a kind of armor made from
cloth – from further trauma and harm.
David Hammons’ featured works were his provocative and haunting body print series.
Some of them directly cite civil liberties abuses, such as Injustice Case (1971), which refers to
Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale’s first criminal trial (Figure 28). In 1969, Seale was
one of the “Chicago 8”, a group of activists who were tried for conspiracy following violent
protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention. In a violation of the Sixth Amendment, Seale was
prevented from selecting a lawyer of his choice and further barred from defending himself.
Following successive vocal outbursts in the courtroom, Judge Julius Hoffman ordered Seale to
be bound and gagged. The resulting courtroom sketches exposed the oppressive face of the U.S.
justice system. Injustice Case embodies physicality, as Hammons uses his own body to restage
Seale’s courtroom humiliation, thus giving the image a certain raw vulnerability. As scholar
Bridget Cooks noted, “The doubleness in the immediacy of Hammons’s image as self-
representation and as a surrogate for Seale’s demonstrates the interconnectedness of the personal

32
and political.”
50
Injustice Case was shown in Hammons’ first ever solo exhibition at Brockman
Gallery in 1970; the Davis brothers bought the piece and lent it to LACMA for the show.
Hammons is known for clever word play and manipulating multiple meanings of various
symbols, particularly in Spade (Power for the Spade) (1969) (Figure 29). Throughout the late
sixties and the seventies, the term “spade” was used as a racial slur against African Americans,
which confused Hammons: “I was trying to figure out why Black people were called spades, as
opposed to clubs. Because I remember being called a spade once, and I didn’t know what it
meant; nigger I knew, but spade I still don’t. So I took the shape, and started painting it.”
51
While
the usage of the slur baffled him, Hammons decided to subvert its meaning by creating a visual
epithet, resulting in Spade. In this image, Hammons uses a card of spades and replaces the
traditional composition with his own body print. The artist would continue using this symbol as
an element for many of the prints and performance works that he produced in the 1970’s.
In Black First, America Second (1970), Hammons painted two Black men cradling the
American flag. The man on the left looks distressed, while the figure on the right wears a somber
expression (Figure 30). One can assume that by clinging onto the flag, these two Black men are
holding on to some hope that this country will protect them. To survive being Black in the
United States, one must remember that one is Black first and American second. Hammons called
attention to the fact that what the American flag symbolizes – liberty, justice, and equality –
rarely extends to African Americans.

50
Cooks, 95
51
Kellie Jones. “Interview: David Hammons.” ART PAPERS (July/August 1988), available at:
https://www.artpapers.org/interview-david-
hammons/#:~:text=I%20was%20trying%20to%20figure,shape%2C%20and%20started%20painting%20it

33
Brockman Gallery lent nine of Timothy Washington’s eleven exhibited works. He
experimented with etching onto sheets of metal and presenting the metal itself as the work,
instead of transferring the images onto paper. In One Nation Under God (1970), the artist
explored reparations and an unrealized land distribution proposal for newly freed slaves in the
South at the end of the Civil War in 1965 (Figure 31). “Forty acres and a mule” became popular
shorthand for a pledge made by Union General William Sherman to the formerly enslaved that
was later overturned, powerfully conveying unfulfilled promises of the past. The usage of
aluminum and black paint gives the painting a ghostly essence, which Young eagerly touted:
A technique present in the artist’s first aluminum picture is still found in his
later works. Washington initially sprays a sheet of aluminum with enamel
paint and then carefully scratches the plate with an etching needle. Most
artists would consider this a “dry-point” technique, would ink the resultant
plate, and would print from it. This, however, is not the case for Timothy
Washington, though he is fully aware that he could print from many of these
engraved plates.
52

Another featured piece by Washington, Raw Truth (1970), further exemplifies his interest
in mixed media and assemblage (Figure 32). He first painted a standing figure bending a stick
with a leering cow over their shoulder atop a black aluminum plate. He then engraved a sculpture
of a wooden yoke meant for herding cattle within the print. In a statement given to the curators,
Washington explained the piece’s meaning:
I feel that a given society or the system that we live in can only bear a certain
amount of pressure before it breaks down. That's why in Raw Truth there is
the bending of the stick. The cow in relation to the figure applies to life itself
and its relationship to knowledge. The cow demands a certain amount of
responsibility, and in return we get milk from it. This is a give-and-take
situation which l feel should be applied to life.
53

52
Young, 9
53
Young, 10

34
Three Graphic Artists received mixed reviews from both critics and visitors. Art critic
Henry J. Seldis praised the quality of each artist’s works, particularly Hammons’ body prints, but
expressed discomfort with the social and political overtures that the works exuded: “Whatever
objections are being raised to this exhibition ought to be judged with reference to the excellence
of the images these artists have created rather than to the degree of fury that can be found in their
pictorial protests.”
54
Seldis did not take issue with the inclusion of Black artists at LACMA, but
did not understand the artists’ concern with the timely state of United States politics and civil
rights grievances. Instead of focusing on the presented artwork’s content, Seldis placed more
value on the artistic process instead of both technique and the social message of Black
experiences. Furthermore, Three Graphic Artists was criticized for its relegation to a minor
gallery space that was solely allotted to LACMA’s Print and Drawings Department.
The BAC was particularly upset that White, an established artist whose work had
received national acclaim, was denied a prominent solo show in the main exhibition galleries. By
1971, White had participated in numerous exhibitions at venues including The Metropolitan
Museum of Art and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, was the recipient of several national
fellowships and awards, and his work was in public collections and popular amongst private art
collectors, including Lorraine Hansberry, Gordon Parks, and Sidney Poitier.
55
Due to this, some
felt that White’s inclusion in Three Graphic Artists was a shortcoming given his illustrious
career and the fact that Hammons and Washington were emerging artists who had exhibited for a
far shorter time than White, and mostly in college affiliated galleries and Black owned art
galleries in Los Angeles. Because they had also been White’s students at one time, there were
concerns that putting them on equal footing was a generational transmission that devalued

54
Henry J. Seldis. “Black Trio Blends Art, Anger in Graphics.” The Los Angeles Times (January 26, 1971), J1
55
J. Edward Atkinson. “Charles White” in Black Dimensions in Contemporary Art, 120.

35
White’s work. With Fergerson leading the charge, members of BAC organized a protest and
picketed the exhibition’s opening: “We had this big meeting to decide what we were going to do,
because the black art community was split on whether to have the show or not. So the ones who
agreed with me and Claude [Booker], we decided to picket the show.”
56
However, Dale Davis
disagreed with BAC’s displeasure:
We got so much backlash for that show! Artists boycotted the exhibition! We
walked through the gate of the museum, proud of these outstanding artists
who had been given this rare opportunity. But meanwhile, we were being
cursed by our own folks. I think there was jealousy, resentment, and anger
from these artists because LACMA selected this small group to represent the
whole black community. It was a great selection, but many artists were upset
because they had been left out. People thought the artists in the show were
sellouts for working with [and] even showing controversial work at
LACMA.
57

The intercommunal bickering and resulting protest highlighted the double-edge to
institutional recognition, particularly during this time when opportunities for Black artists were
so scare. The artists who were accepted by the institution (in this case, LACMA) were labeled by
some as sell-outs, yet trailblazers to others who hoped that Three Graphic Artists would be the
launching point for more diverse exhibitions. Although tensions were high, Dale stated that
Brockman Gallery continued working with the Black Arts Council because both entities wanted
to create more financial opportunities for Black artists. Ultimately, Young negotiated purchases
of one work from each participating artist for LACMA’s permanent collection at $3,500/per
artist, with Alonzo Davis handling the sales and Brockman Gallery receiving 50% of each sale.
58

Deciding to move on from the controversy, the BAC made sure that LACMA did not renege on
their agreement regarding exhibitions. LACMA and the BAC went on to co-organize Los

56
Fergerson and Mason, 152
57
Davis and Franz, 58
58
Fergerson and Mason, 152

36
Angeles 1972: A Panorama of Black Artists, which was held from February 8 – March 19, 1972
(Figure 33). The show was co-curated by Carroll Greene Jr., an African American independent
curator and advocate for Black artists whom the BAC had recommended to LACMA’s board,
and Maurice Tuchman, LACMA’s Modern and Contemporary Art Curator. The exhibition was a
survey of Black contemporary artists living and working in Los Angeles; fifty-two artists
participated in Panorama, including David Hammons, John Outterbridge, Noah Purifoy, and
Betye Saar, and each artwork was available for sale or rental. While the opening reception was
heavily attended, reactions to Panorama were divided (Figure 34). A lot of the criticism was
directed towards the exhibition’s location in a small, basement level gallery, which later became
the museum’s Art Rental and Sales Gallery. A particularly ignorant review in The Los Angeles
Times did not help matters, with critic William Wilson disagreeing with Greene’s curation,
insulting the quality of the works, and showing prejudice towards the artists’ themes: “Why
doesn’t this art take the form of slogans, comix, or graffiti? Why is it not in a form, language and
place accessible to ghetto people without the carfare to get uptown? What is it doing in the
museum at all?”
59
Wilson’s racist assessment of the exhibition and Black people as a whole
proved that while the BAC had made progress, there was much more work to be done in
encouraging non-Black audiences to acknowledge the validity of Black art and the achievements
of Black contemporary artists in Los Angeles. Fergerson noted that they could not get any Black-
run publications to write a review of the show and denounced Wilson: “He doesn’t know what
black protest art is. We were very displeased with this whole article. William Wilson’s a bigot.

59
William Wilson. “County Museum Showing Work by Local Blacks.” The Los Angeles Times (February 13, 1972),
V50.

37
He can’t help it. He’s a bigot, or else he’s never taken time to find out what black art’s all about.
So he can’t write about it intelligently.”
60

By 1974, cracks were beginning to show in the BAC’s leadership. Fergerson conceded
that the long hours that he and Booker spent running the council caused strain on both of their
marriages, as their wives suspected that they were not actually working, but instead conducting
extramarital affairs.
61
Both men were growing increasingly dissatisfied with LACMA, as they
suspected that the Three Graphic Artists and Panorama shows were signs of tokenism instead of
proof of a commitment to showing Black art and artists. In addition, the museum had not made
much progress in diversifying their higher-level employment. In 1969, Dr. Samella Lewis was
hired as Education Coordinator and worked in tandem with the BAC to create racially diverse
programs that benefitted the public and the museum’s children’s programs. However, she
resigned from her post after one year due to frustration with LACMA’s lack of inclusivity; in
return, the museum received a heap of criticism for Lewis’s departure.
62
Also in 1969, Fergerson
sought a promotion and was dismayed to learn that while he had received a new title as Museum
Assistant, none of his actual duties changed. He filed a successful worker’s discrimination
lawsuit against LACMA and was promoted to Curatorial Assistant in 1972, working under
Tuchman. While speaking about Lewis’s brief employment, Fergerson opined that the museum
showcased false solidarity in hiring her:
They had no problem with not ever having any black professionals on the
staff. And they had always been very protective of their curatorial
department, right? But they knew that they did need somebody black whom
they could point at, “We’ve got somebody.” And there came an opening in
the education department, so to say, “We hired somebody,” they hired her in

60
Fergerson and Mason, 149
61
Fergerson and Mason, 157
62
LACMA Editors, “In Memoriam: Samella Lewis (1923-2022),” LACMA Unframed website (June 8, 2022),
available at: https://unframed.lacma.org/2022/06/08/memoriam-samella-lewis-1923%E2%80%932022

38
the education department. It was brought on because of pressure put on by
the Black Arts Council.
63

Booker’s biggest source of frustration with LACMA was that he had advocated for the
development of an African American art department and pressured the board to hire an African
American curator, which they declined to do. Soon after, he began working with a group of
fellow Black activists who were determined to open a major arts institution in Los Angeles that
would be exclusively dedicated to African American art and culture. This museum was
ultimately realized as the California African American Museum (CAAM), which was chartered
by the state in 1977, opened in 1981, and moved to their current location in Exposition Park in
1984. Sadly, the BAC’s run came to a screeching halt with the untimely death of Booker on
December 6, 1974. While it has been widely reported that he suffered a heart attack, Sanders
explained that Booker’s death was much more tragically complicated:
Claude was hit by a car and taken to the hospital. He was discharged after a
couple of days but they gave him a hard cast, which was too tight. He
complained about this, and it turned out that he had developed a blood clot in
his leg due to the cast. He was actually on his way to stay with me, but
stopped by his brother’s house first. While he was there, he started breathing
heavily and soon collapsed to the ground. The clot had traveled to his upper
organs and he suffered a heart attack. He died. He was so young; he was only
36.
64

Sanders emphasized that Booker was the heart and soul of the BAC; the organization
ceased operations shortly after his death. However, Booker’s passing did not mean that their
influence was erased from the museum. Back in 1972, members of LACMA’s board had
expressed interest in organizing a major exhibition of African American art, timed to coincide
with the United States bicentennial in 1976. The BAC helped lay the groundwork for this
exhibition, suggesting the man who would ultimately guest curate the exhibition: David C.

63
Fergerson and Mason, 170
64
Sanders, Interview with author

39
Driskell. He was an established African American artist, curator, and scholar, as well a professor
of art at Talladega College, Howard University, and Fisk University. He was a firm believer that
African American art needed to be amplified in the art history canon, and had contributed essays
and articles to several exhibition catalogues and publications about the subject. As curator Taylor
Renee Aldridge opined in an essay commemorating Driskell’s career:
Driskell insisted that Black art is American art, and by paradoxically
dissecting and platforming the long-marginalized and quieted legacy of art
contributions made by Black artists in America, his exhibition would help
insert such histories within the previously ahistorical narrative of American
art in the second half of the twentieth century.
65

LACMA’s board ultimately approved Driskell, who organized the major exhibition Two
Centuries of Black American Art (September 30 – November 21, 1976) (Figure 35). The show
included over 200 objects spanning 1750 to 1950 and, unlike Three Graphic Artists and
Panorama, was staged in LACMA’s main galleries. The exhibition’s opening reception was
packed and proclaimed “Two Centuries of Black American Art Day” by Mayor Bradley (Figure
36).
66
By this time, Bradley was a strong supporter of the Black Arts Movement, as he
nominated Fergerson to create a Black History Week program in 1976 and later advocated for
the 1984 Olympic Mural Project to be installed on freeway walls. Two Centuries was a popular
show, later traveling to the High Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, and The
Brooklyn Museum; the catalogue has been noted as a standout publication about African
American art history. While Fergerson was a curatorial assistant at this time, he was sadly not
invited to partake in any aspects of organizing the exhibition. However, Booker was mentioned
in the closing paragraph of the catalogue’s preface, which was written by Rexford Stead,

65
Taylor Renne Aldridge. “Game Changer: Dr. David Driskell.” Gagosian Quarterly (Summer 2021), 202.
66
Author Unknown. “Black American Art Day Proclaimed by Mayor Bradley.” The Skanner (October 14, 1976),
10.

40
LACMA’s Deputy Director: “A final acknowledgment must be made in the instance of the late
Claude Booker. Founder of the Black Arts Council and a former staff member of the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art, Mr. Booker long insisted that an exhibition not unlike Two
Centuries of Black American Art come to pass.”
67
Stead’s acknowledgement of Booker and the
BAC was an admission that they were justified in pushing for such an exhibition to be held at
LACMA.
The influence of the Black Arts Council on LACMA and the Black Arts Movement is
undeniable. The opening of Three Graphic Artists served as a starting point for future exhibitions
on historical and contemporary Black artists at LACMA; this action opened the museum doors to
the Black community and invited them inside. While progress was admittedly slow, Kellie Jones
noted that LACMA was much more willing to diversify their programming than other museums:
It was arguably the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) that
made the most inroads in presentations with African and African American
content. As with many other cultural (and other) institutions across the
country, this was certainly a response to the social climate and to African
Americans’ greater demands for full access.
68

In addition, major institutions could not ignore the importance of Black owned art spaces,
as Three Graphic Artists would not have been possible without Brockman Gallery. The Davis
brothers supported the exhibition and their represented artists, supplied the necessary loans, and
handled the sales that would support the participating artists and diversify LACMA’s collection.
As Alonzo reflected years later, “The artists needed to make an impact on the institution, and it
didn’t need to be a token space or situation. The treatment was first class, the art was first class,
the exhibition was first class, and the response to it was serious – it was financial.”
69

67
Rexford Stead, “Preface,” in Two Centuries of Black American Art, ed. Driskell, David (Los Angeles, CA: Los
Angeles County Museum of Art and New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1976) 10.
68
Jones, South of Pico, 162
69
Davis and Mason, 127

41
CHAPTER THREE: SOMEPLACE TO GATHER, SOMEPLACE TO HEAL: THE
UNDERGROUND MUSEUM

“Access became the core of The Underground Museum’s mission. Our museum would be a home stocked with
art, books, food, flowers, ideas, hope, dreams, and anything else the community needed.”
70
– Karon Davis

The poet and scholar Elizabeth Alexander terms those born in the last twenty years as
“The Trayvon Generation.”
71
She recognizes that today’s youth are burdened with brutal and
violent images that document the many murders committed against African Americans, often at
the hands of police officers. George Holliday’s twelve-minute videotape could be argued as the
first viral video, as it was played repeatedly on the news and during the police officers’ trial.
Holliday could also be credited with starting the practice of recording and circulating images of
Black people being abused or killed by the police on a cell phone. This became much easier to
do once cell phone cameras were introduced in the mid 2000’s and the imagery could be
uploaded onto social media sites. Recent examples include the recorded police killings of Eric
Garner, Walter Scott, and George Floyd.
The Black Lives Matter movement, founded in 2012 by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors,
and Opal Tometi in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s murder, was born in a digital space of this
trauma. The movement evolved from a hashtag on Twitter to a global organization that seeks to
protect and insist on the value of Black lives around the world. The turbulence of today’s
acrimonious political climate and heightened racial divisions draw strong comparisons to the
1960’s, when activists protested in numerous ways: on the streets, through written text, or by
creating art. As writer Ciarán Finlayson recently noted, “The renewal of Black Lives Matter has
entailed, in addition to the proliferation of anarchist slogans, a refreshed collective desire to

70
Karon Davis and Qianjin Montoya, “Equal Access to Beauty” in Black Light, 86.
71
Elizabeth Alexander. The Trayvon Generation. (New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing, 2022).

42
preserve, expand, and resolve the gains of the 1960s.”
72
Similarly to how the Davis brothers
opened Brockman Gallery as a safe space for Black artists during the stormy sixties, another
Black-owned art space would open forty-five years later with kindred principles – The
Underground Museum, founded by Noah Davis and his family in 2012 (Figure 37).
Noah Davis was an African American artist whose figurative paintings of Black life,
culture, and experiences received acclaim, as his works challenge negative perceptions of Black
people. Too often when we think of Black art, we are actually imagining depictions of Black
trauma, violence, and death. On the contrary, Noah’s paintings disrupt traditional modes of
representation for Black people by creating counter-narratives of desire and relief. In an
interview, Noah discussed why Blackness deserves to be explored in all aspects through art:
Race plays a role in as far as why my figures are black. The paintings aren’t
political at all though. If I’m making any statement, it’s to just show black
people in normal scenarios, where drugs and guns are nothing to do with it.
You rarely see black people represented independent of the civil rights issues
or social problems that go on in the States. I’m looking to move on from that
stage.
73

Noah’s roots as an artist began with his family. His mother, Faith Child-Davis, is a
former teacher who encouraged Noah and his brother, Kahlil Joseph, to be creative and produce
art. Joseph is an artist and filmmaker who has directed music videos for several Black artists,
including Flying Lotus and Sampha; he was also one of the original directors for the companion
film to Beyoncé’s Lemonade (2016). Born and raised in Seattle, Noah left to attend The Cooper
Union in New York. He stayed in New York briefly after graduating, but eventually moved to
Los Angeles in 2004 and set up a studio space in Boyle Heights. Joseph was also living and

72
Ciarán Finlayson. “Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America.” Artforum, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Summer
2021), 261
73
Ben Ferguson, “Noah Davis,” Dazed Digital website (February 9, 2010), available at:
https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/6483/1/noah-davis

43
working in Los Angeles by this time, thus the two brothers were reunited. In 2005, Noah met his
future wife, Karon, an artist who attended USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and whose father is
legendary actor Ben Vereen. They began making artwork alongside one another and married in
2008 during Art Basel Miami Beach. That weekend was pivotal for both Noah’s personal and
professional life, as he was a participant in the Rubell Family Collection’s exhibition 30
Americans. The show solely featured African American artists, and Noah was the youngest artist
whose work was exhibited. While Noah soon received gallery attention and his works generated
buzz, he was much more than a painter – he was also a brilliant curator and community organizer
who wanted to provide an art and culture hub for the Black community. While he contemplated
the idea for a couple of years, it would eventually develop into The Underground Museum.
Deana Lawson, a New York based photographer who would cultivate a strong relationship with
the museum, explained what she thought Noah’s intentions were:
I think Noah had a knack for identifying what matters in this moment –
which conversations, which sort of relationships, with communities and
individuals coming together. That’s one of the greatest things about the
Underground. It’s not just the art, but who comes to the space, and so forth.
One thing about being an amazing artist is taking risks and Noah did that
with the Underground. He knew what risks to take. He could’ve just been
about painting, but he thought beyond his own work: he thought about
making a space for not only his work, but for other artists as well.
74

One of the biggest inspirations who pushed Noah to open The Underground Museum was
his father, Keven Davis, a sports and entertainment attorney who unfortunately did not live to see
the museum come to fruition. Not long after his brain cancer diagnosis in 2011, Keven was
confined to hospice.
75
Although he was very sick, he implored his family to continue pursuing
their dreams, particularly in arts and education, and encouraged Noah to open an art space. As

74
Helen Molesworth. “Deana Lawson” in Noah Davis, 53
75
Sonya Krishnan, “Lawyer Keven Davis was a mentor to young artists,” The Seattle Times website (January 6,
2012), available at: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/lawyer-keven-davis-was-a-mentor-to-young-artists/

44
Karon recollected, “He wanted us to create something to benefit ‘our people,’ our community of
artists, creatives, and dreamers. Upon his passing in 2011, Keven left Noah an inheritance. Noah
considered this money his father’s investment in the museum.”
76
Armed with financial backing,
Noah sought to fulfill his vision and honor his late father’s wishes.
The Underground Museum was located at 3508 W. Washington Boulevard, in the
neighborhood of Arlington Heights. The building itself consisted of four storefronts, which Noah
converted to galleries and studio spaces (Figure 38). In the early years, Noah, Karon, and their
son Moses resided there, with Noah also running his studio practice out of the museum.
Interestingly, the museum’s location was an evolving discussion, one which designer, filmmaker,
and longtime family friend Daniel DeSure spoke about years later:
Originally it was called Inner City Avant-Garde and it started when we were
in the Boyle Heights studios. And he talked about it being somewhere in
Boyle Heights, somewhere downtown. He’d put it on the back burner a bit
and then bring it back. He’d say, “I wanna start this art space.” And then he
found the space on Washington Boulevard. The first day he got the key, he
put a mattress on the floor, and he and Karon would stay there. I didn’t really
know what it was gonna be. It was a lot of open space. He started putting
together some shows. You could see it slowly forming, the community.
77

Ultimately, the Davis family settled on Arlington Heights. The choice of location is very
purposeful, as The Underground Museum is situated where Black and brown people live. While
the museum was not established to solve larger issues such as poverty, joblessness, and
gentrification, it offered a space for creativity and contemplation in the hopes that increasing
access to art will inspire, educate, and transform lives. As Karon once explained:
For Noah, the museum was a righteous demand for equality in terms of
access to beauty. Los Angeles can be very segregated. Like many cities, its
people tend to congregate amongst themselves. The people of Arlington
Heights are mostly black and Latino, but the two populations don’t usually
relate to one another. But there are pockets where culture connects folks, like

76
Davis and Montoya, 87
77
Helen Molesworth. “Daniel Desure” in Noah Davis, 107

45
ingredients in gumbo. Our hope was that The Underground Museum would
become a place where neighbors could meet one another on neutral ground
and create relationships based on shared pride for their community.
78

As with any other museum, loans were essential. Noah and Karon tried to borrow works
for their exhibitions but were initially denied access, so they advanced their mission by relying
on themselves and artists and collectors that they knew. The museum’s inaugural exhibition,
Imitation of Wealth, took place in late 2013, and the main question pondered was, “What is
considered to be ‘high quality art’?” (Figure 39) Imitation of Wealth consisted of objects made
entirely by Noah; they served as re-creations of works originated by non-Black, blue-chip artists,
such as a vacuum cleaner by Jeff Koons, a ‘date’ painting by On Kawara, and a bottle rack by
Marcel Duchamp. By creating his own versions of these famed pieces and situating them in a
predominately Black and Latinx neighborhood, Noah investigated the role of accessibility and
who is able to see artwork that is deemed to be of “better” quality. This gesture raised key
questions: what makes it “better”, and who is allowed to determine its quality? Why is Arlington
Heights considered an “unlikely” location to view “good” art? Is it because it mainly houses
marginalized people? It is important to note the quotation marks around the words better,
unlikely, and good, which indicate how the terms signal classism. Continuing to foreground the
founder’s practices, the museum’s next exhibition was a solo presentation of Karon’s sculptures
and paintings. While these shows generated buzz about the museum, it was only the beginning of
The Underground Museum’s popularity.
In July 2014, the museum organized The Oracle, a group exhibition that juxtaposed
ancient and contemporary artworks (Figure 40). The show included sculptures from painter
Henry Taylor and collages from interdisciplinary artist Kandis Williams, who are both longtime

78
Davis and Montoya, 88

46
friends of the Davis family, and ceramic sculptures by Ruby Neri. Five of the works in the
exhibition were loaned by Jeremiah Cole, a family friend and collector of rare African art who
was impressed with Noah’s mission; these loans included nineteenth century carvings from
Sudan. Lastly, Kahlil Joseph debuted his short film m.A.A.d. (2014) as a double film projection.
The film is a freeform, dreamlike fifteen-minute exploration of the city of Compton,
accompanied by songs from rapper Kendrick Lamar’s autobiographic album, good kid, m.A.A.d.
city (2012). Lamar is also from Compton and had hired Joseph to create the supporting visuals
for his opening act on rapper Kanye West’s Yeezus Tour (2013-14). These moving images would
evolve into the separate m.A.A.d. film. The decision to exhibit a variety of works across centuries
in The Oracle was praised by critics:
There’s a quote that pops up in white letters fleetingly in Joseph’s video,
from angry poet-playwright Amiri Baraka: “We used to know we were
stronger than the devil,” it says, appearing not long before images of black
men levitating upside down, like bats, hanging from lampposts stronger than
something, even if it’s not the devil. “The Oracle” makes such connections,
between old rituals for side-stepping bad energy and new ones, feel
accessible, and accessibility is so often what’s missing from conversations
about art.
79

The Oracle received a lot of attention and visitors, one of them who would soon become
an important addition to The Underground Museum: Helen Molesworth, the newly minted Chief
Curator of MOCA. 2014 was meant to be a year that stabilized MOCA, as the previous two years
had been extremely turbulent due to clashes between Director Jeffrey Deitch and Chief Curator
Paul Schimmel. Both men eventually left the museum, with Schimmel controversially fired by
the board in July 2012 and Deitch resigning in September 2013. In January 2014, the
appointment of Philippe Vergne as Director of MOCA was announced, followed a couple

79
Catherine Wagley, “The Underground Museum’s New Exhibit Combines Contemporary Work With Centuries-
Old African Art,” LA Weekly website (August 21, 2014), available at: https://www.laweekly.com/the-underground-
museums-new-exhibit-combines-contemporary-work-with-centuries-old-african-art/

47
months later with the appointment of Molesworth. Their hiring’s were meant to rebuild the
museum after years of uncertainty and boost community engagement with exciting exhibitions,
programming, and initiatives.
80
Molesworth viewed The Oracle and became acquainted with the
Davis family; she was so impressed by Joseph’s work that she added m.A.A.d. to MOCA’s
exhibition schedule, where it was shown as the 2015 exhibition Kahlil Joseph: Double
Conscience. Joseph also gifted the film to MOCA’s collection (Figure 41).
As Molesworth’s relationship with the Davises grew, they received devastating news:
Noah was diagnosed with a rare form of terminal soft tissue cancer. Realizing that he didn’t have
much time left, Noah fearlessly asked Molesworth if MOCA would be willing to lend works to
the museum. Unlike the other institutions that the Davises had previously asked, Molesworth
agreed to initiate what would evolve into a groundbreaking partnership:
The Underground had started to feel to me like an artwork in and of itself. I
was completely turned on by the hopefulness of it all. No more trying to
change things slowly from the inside. Fuck it. The general vibe of the
Underground (and of Noah in general) was a tacitly shared: “These folks
fucked up … let’s just make this shit ourselves.” At least that’s what it felt
like to me, and I confess that I wanted in. And it turned out that Philippe
wanted in too.
81

Vergne and MOCA’s board quickly approved the partnership and agreed to support The
Underground Museum for the next three years. The guidelines of the partnership were simple:
Davis would curate a series of exhibitions that would include works from MOCA’s permanent
collection, alongside works from other participating artists. As explained in the press
announcement, “For their collaboration, Molesworth gave Davis the book she describes as ‘the
bible,’ the behemoth three-ring binder that lists every work in MOCA’s nearly 7,000 piece-

80
Sarah Cascone, “Helen Molesworth Hired as Chief Curator of LA MOCA,” Artnet News website (May 30, 2014),
available at: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/helen-molesworth-hired-as-chief-curator-of-la-moca-30461
81
Molesworth, “Some Years Count As Double”, 165

48
collection.”
82
After leafing through the binder, Noah provided Molesworth with a road map for
their collaboration in the form of eighteen exhibition proposals. By the time the partnership
began, Noah was gravely ill and unable to provide a public statement. He sadly passed away on
August 29, 2015, leaving the museum in the hands of his family and Molesworth. They decided
to continue his mission and further cement his legacy; as Joseph noted:
The Underground Museum was bigger than Noah in a way. It’s all spirit. And
spirits can often take things way further than a person can. If that’s God’s
plan, and Noah becomes spirit, and not a very limited human being, my
money is that he’s able to do more on the other side.
83

The first exhibition at The Underground Museum under the partnership was William
Kentridge: Journey to the Moon (June 2015 – February 2016), which showed the white South
African artist’s multi-channel video installation 7 Fragments for George Méliès (2003),
alongside two other films (Figure 42). Kentridge’s focus on social and political narratives and
realities was a good fit for The Underground Museum’s mission, and highlighted their roster of
local, national, and international artists and the diversity of their practices. The exhibition
received high praise, with critic Aaron Horst writing:
As the work changes, Kentridge suggests narratives beyond our control, as
well as the struggle of memory to retain itself by way of processes of erasure
and recurrence. The Underground Museum’s brick shows through under
several of the projections, adding another layer of texture, and perhaps
unintended acknowledgment of the piece.
84

The third exhibition as part of the partnership was Artists of Color (June 2017 – April
2018), a group show that surveyed the quality of color in various mediums from the 1960’s to

82
Carolyn A. Miranda, “An unassuming storefront. A major museum. A collaboration that takes museum art to the
people of LA,” The Los Angeles Times website (July 20, 2015), available at:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-cam-underground-museum-noah-davis-showcases-works-
from-mocas-collection-20150717-column.html#page=1
83
Miranda, The Los Angeles Times website
84
Aaron Host, “William Kentridge at The Underground Museum,” Contemporary Art Review LA website (July 22,
2015), available at: https://contemporaryartreview.la/william-kentridge-at-the-underground-museum/

49
present (Figure 43). Some of the pieces included Dan Flavin’s Untitled (To Charles Cowles)
(1963), one of his famous light sculptures; Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s Forbidden Colors (1988), a
monochromatic triptych that has the colors of the Palestinian flag, which had been banned at the
time by the State of Israel; Diana Thater’s RGB Windows for MOCA (2001), which was
beautifully installed outside; and EJ Hill’s text-based installation, We Deserve To See Ourselves
Elevated (2017), which speaks to amplifying Blackness. As Katya Khazei emphasized, “The
space is filled with immersive installations, sculpture and paintings by artist’s who have used
color to express emotions and evoke energy and tranquility. The exhibition also aims to illustrate
the significance of color beyond art.”
85
In comparison with the contents of the exhibition, the
title Artists of Color is actually an oxymoron. The assumption would be that The Underground
Museum was only featuring literal artists of color in the exhibition, but the show was purely
about the formal colors of each works, not each artist’s ethnicity. Artists of Color received high
praise, and it is undeniable that the partnership put The Underground Museum on the map and
attracted national attention, praise, and financial support.
An experience at The Underground Museum went beyond their exhibitions, as their vast
public programming and community initiatives received acclaim. There was a bookstore, a
summer film series, music and dance performances, a monthly produce stand, a wellness
program that includes yoga and meditation, and a holiday block party. The content of each of
these programs was energized by the Davis family’s quest for excellence. After Noah’s passing,
the museum extended outside and built The Purple Garden, a tranquil, contemplative area
surrounded by lush vegetation, crystals, and sculpture (Figure 44). Visitors could either lounge
on the comfortable grass or the provided benches and chairs; brightly colorful parasols were also

85
Katya Khazei, “Why You Need To Check Out ‘Artists of Color’ at The Underground Museum,” Artzealous
website (September 20, 2017), available at: https://artzealous.com/artists-of-color-at-the-underground-museum/

50
available for visitors to shade themselves on a hot day. The majority of the museum’s public
programming took place in this space, and it was utilized by several well-known creatives:
Solange Knowles debuted her widely acclaimed album A Seat at the Table (2016) there; Ruth
Carter, the Academy Award winning costume designer for Black Panther (2018), participated in
a conversation about her work; and Barry Jenkins, director of Moonlight (2016), held a screening
of the film. The latter event took place the night after the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, and the
Q&A evolved into an open conversation about the audience’s distress at Donald Trump’s win.
This sentiment showcased how much people viewed The Underground Museum as a safe space
to express their emotions. Jenkins later reflected on the meaningful event:
“I was struck by what a diverse crowd it was – tons of black folks, people
from the neighborhood, white, Latino, Asian. And I thought, this is
America,” says the director, whose film went on to win the Oscar for best
picture. “Nothing could replicate the feeling that we had that night. It was
almost like group therapy, all of us out there under the stars, witnessing this
thing that we’d made and using it to bring us together.”
86

It is important to dispel two common misconceptions about The Underground Museum,
the first being that it was a satellite space for MOCA. Shortly after the partnership between
MOCA and The Underground Museum began, writer Bianca Barragan falsely described the
latter museum as just that:
The Museum of Contemporary Art has three Los Angeles locations – one in
West Hollywood, at the Pacific Design Center; one on Grand Avenue in
Bunker Hill; and one in Little Tokyo. But now, somewhere in the middle,
there’s a new MOCA arriving in an existing art gallery, bringing pieces from
the museum’s permanent collection to the gallery’s home in a nondescript,
one-story building on Washington Boulevard in Arlington Heights, just south
of Koreatown and east of Mid-City.
87

86
Diane Soloway, “How the Family-Run Underground Museum Became One of L.A.’s Most Vital Cultural Forces,”
W Magazine website (November 8, 2017), available at: https://www.wmagazine.com/story/underground-museum-
los-angeles-kahlil-joseph-noah-davis
87
Bianca Barragan, “Inside MOCA’s New Little Satellite Space in Arlington Heights,” LA Curbed website (July 22,
2015), available at: https://la.curbed.com/2015/7/22/9938124/moca-underground-gallery-arlington-heights

51
Barragan’s incorrect representation about the partnership is concerning, as there are no
public proprietary or legal documents that indicate that MOCA had any ownership over The
Underground Museum. While the museum’s partnership-related exhibitions are archived on
MOCA’s website, the space itself has never been listed as one of MOCA’s affiliated sites. A
partnership is simply two entities working together, therefore, MOCA did not acquire The
Underground Museum in any capacity by loaning them works from their collection. The sole
purpose of said partnership was to honor Noah’s wishes and enhance The Underground
Museum’s exhibitions. In addition, these exhibitions were posthumously curated by Davis and
credited back to The Underground Museum, not MOCA.
The second misconception is one that Brockman Gallery also faced: that the museum
was only run by Black people and the exhibitions solely featured Black artists. While the vast
majority of The Underground Museum’s programming highlighted Black visual artists and
sought to redress the exclusion that said artists often face in art institutions, several non-Black
artists were included in group exhibitions at the museum. In addition, non-Black people helmed
the museum’s operations in some capacity for majority of the time it was open. In early 2014, the
museum presented the group exhibition Veils, which featured the work of nearly forty artists and
presented works inspired by mechanism. Several of the participating artists were not of color,
such as Chris Burden, Kaari Upson, Jeffrey Vallance, and Francesca Woodman, and the
exhibition was guest curated by two non-Black women, Jhordan Dahl and Ariana
Papademetropoulos. Water & Power, the fourth exhibition posthumously curated by Noah that
premiered in 2018, featured works by Olafur Eliasson, Hans Haacke, and James Turrell – all
non-Black artists – and Fred Eversley and Robin Coste-Lewis, two Black artists. While
Molesworth was controversially fired from MOCA in March 2018 (with Vergne resigning only

52
two months later due to public backlash), she maintained a strong working relationship with The
Underground Museum, co-curating the 2019 exhibition Lorna Simpson: Summertime and the
Noah Davis retrospective (2020-2022). She also brought the Davis family to MOCA’s galleries
(ironically, Noah had worked at MOCA’s bookstore when he first moved to Los Angeles), re-
staging Imitation of Wealth as part of MOCA’s “storefront” series in 2015 and curating the 2018-
19 exhibition One Day at Time: Kahlil Joseph’s Fly Paper at MOCA’s Pacific Design Center. In
addition, three of Noah’s paintings have been acquired by MOCA.
Upon Noah’s passing in 2015, the Davis family hired its first director, arts professional
Megan Steinman, who is a white woman. In her role, she was in charge of overseeing the
museum’s leadership team and staff, meeting fundraising goals and supervising finances,
curating exhibitions and developing programming, and managing the museum’s institutional and
community partnerships, among other tasks. Steinman held this position for five years before
stepping down in 2020, and later touched on how she made sure to be sensitive in navigating a
museum known for highlighting Black art and life:
From a position of sensitivity and honesty of how this all works and how we
structure our lives is to be a conscious participant. So that means sometimes
not being in the room and removing yourself from the room if it means that
the energy that is necessary for the room requires no white people in it. How
can we also provide the space and structure for that room to exist and not be
in it, and not be so involved that we need to be there, front and center, all the
time? It was much more important for me to forward the mission of the
museum; I worked in service of the museum. It wasn’t about me.
88

While The Underground Museum was proudly owned by a Black family of artists, it also
showcased artists of all colors and trusted non-Black people in handling operations. That is very
important, because the idea is around context creation, storytelling, and how artists of color have

88
USC Roski School of Art and Design. “Lunch with Creatives: Alumni Series – Megan Steinman & Roski
Professor Suzanne Lacy.” YouTube (January 28, 2021), Timestamp: 16:10 – 19:55

53
been historically marginalized within art history. If we want to adjust that arc and reveal that
there is no linear narrative to art history, we have to continue to put everyone at the table – even
if that means there will be moments that, as Steinman stated, non-Black people have to step out
of the room so that people of color can continue to heal. But that does not necessarily mean that
anyone who is not a person of color has to be pushed out of these reparative conversations and
movements entirely. Molesworth also touched on this sentiment when discussing her continued
relations with the museum after Noah’s passing:
The conversations I was having at the UM I was not going to have at MOCA.
Conventional cultural institutions, whether it’s fashion or movies or
museums, they’re born of 300 years of whiteness. So it’s not a simple thing
to say, “OK, now we’re going to open the doors, and black people are going
to come in, and it’s all going to be the same.” Those spaces were by, for, and
about white people. So what does it mean to really shift your orientation and
give away some of the authority?
89

After closing in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, The Underground Museum
reopened in January 2022 with Noah Davis’s eponymous exhibition. The show, which premiered
at David Zwirner Gallery (New York) in January 2020, featured several of Noah’s figurative
paintings of Black people and culture. This exhibition was staged for six weeks before a wholly
unexpected statement from the Davis family announced that the museum would be closing its
doors indefinitely while they re-structured their operations and further processed Noah’s
passing.
90
At the time of this writing, The Underground Museum has not re-opened.

89
Soloway, W Magazine website
90
Zachary Small, “The Underground Museum Has Closed,” The New York Times website (March 19, 2022),
available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/19/arts/design/underground-museum-los-angeles.html

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CHAPTER FOUR: RECLAIMING THE BLACK BODY: NON-FICTION AT THE
UNDERGROUND MUSEUM

“If Black people have historically been reduced to our bodies – bought, sold, displayed, and used as chattel –
what does it mean for an art form to take that former commodity as its medium? Is it an act of reclaiming?
Healing? Theft?”
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– Tavia Nyong’o

For years, there have been urgent calls for museums to provide a forum and gathering
space for artists confronting urgent social, political, and cultural issues. While every exhibition
has its own narrative – with the artworks presented in a particular order – which stories are told
in the museum space? Furthermore, does their presentation do the story justice? One of the most
controversial debates in the art world relates to the representation of the Black body. Black
suffering and death have been made a spectacle for decades, usually through the circulation of
photography and video, and museums are no exception to this lack of agency. The story of the
Black body is often put on display without proper historical, social, and cultural context. Take
the Netflix anthology series Black Mirror (2011 – Present) for example, which closed its fourth
season with an episode titled “Black Museum” (Figure 45). The titular museum’s centerpiece is a
hologram of Clayton Leigh (Babs Olusanmokun), a Black man on death row who was convicted
on conflicting evidence. Told in flashbacks, we watch as Clayton is manipulated into selling his
consciousness over to Rolo Haynes (Douglas Hodge), the white male proprietor of the museum,
and made into a freethinking, feeling, and emotional hologram of himself. Visitors can pull a
lever and “execute” Clayton, whose conscious hologram is chained to an electric chair, and
receive a token souvenir of Clayton’s twisted and tortured face. The popularity of this attraction
– which was not approved by Clayton – leaves his hologram in a vegetative state, as he
remembers every giggling guest who pulled that lever, and sparked public protests, causing the

91
Tavia Nyong’o, “Between the Body and the Flesh: Sex and Gender in Black Performance Art,” in Radical
Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art, ed. Oliver, Valerie Cassel (Houston, TX: Contemporary Art
Museum Houston and New York, NY: D.A.P., 2013), 26.

55
museum’s attendance to dwindle to white supremacists and sadists. While the entirety of the
Black Mirror series approaches the future as a concept that should be treated with both
trepidation and excitement, oftentimes when we discuss the future, we reference the present.
The challenge for art spaces is whether or not they can address the pain and suffering that
Black people so often face without making a mockery of the subject. Noah Davis proved that
they could in Non-Fiction (2016-2017), the second exhibition he posthumously curated as part of
The Underground Museum’s partnership with MOCA. The show is a mediation on the racialized
violence that has been inflicted on Black people in the United States for centuries, and several of
the exhibited works address intergenerational Black trauma. Non-Fiction included ten works
from eight artists, and majority of the exhibition was displayed throughout the two main
galleries. MOCA lent works from Marion Palfi, Henry Taylor, and Kara Walker; the remaining
works were directly loaned by the remaining artists – Theaster Gates, Robert Gober, David
Hammons, Deana Lawson, and Kerry James Marshall. A vast amount of public programming
accompanied the exhibition, from a summer film series, to artist talks, to meditation sessions in
The Purple Garden. Non-Fiction was also significant in that it was the first exhibition to be
staged at The Underground after Noah’s passing, which Karon touched on in the press release: “I
am so proud to shepherd Noah’s vision. The show is from his well of exhibitions for the
community. His spirit is still producing powerful work and inspiring us all.”
92

Before discussing the exhibition’s content, it is important to address what happened in the
United States throughout its year-long duration. In the four years since The Underground
Museum’s founding, the Black Lives Matter movement had quickly risen to prominence in

92
Karon Davis and Eva Seta, “The Underground Museum, in Collaboration with The Museum of Contemporary Art
(MOCA), Presents Non-Fiction,” MOCA website (March 21, 2016), available at:
https://www.moca.org/storage/app/media/Press%20Releases/2016/Non-
fiction_TheUndergroundMuseum_MOCA.pdf

56
protesting police murders and physical assaults on Black people. The summer of 2016 was filled
with violent and political upheaval, as Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were both murdered,
the Pulse Nightclub shooting resulted in 49 deaths and 53 injuries, and the U.S. presidential race
became increasingly acrimonious. There was an unmistakable tension that was further dividing
the country, and that agitation reached a fever pitch when Donald Trump won the election that
November. By the time Non-Fiction ended, five months after Trump was inaugurated, the
country was in a completely different mindset than when the exhibition opened due to the hostile
political climate.
The cluster of works in the first gallery directly tackled white supremacist violence and
the United States’ sordid history of racial discrimination. Robert Gober’s Hanging Man /
Sleeping Man (1989) is a screen-print wallpaper composition depicting two alternating images,
one of a white man sleeping peacefully and the other of a Black man hanging from a tree (Figure
46). Situated in the center of this wall is a silver-gelatin photograph by Marion Palfi, Wife of a
Lynch Victim (1949) (Figure 47). This is a black-and-white portrait of a Black woman, who was
the widow of Caleb Hill Jr., a lynching victim. Grouping together these two works, made forty
years apart, is very impactful, as both pieces illustrate the terrifying reality of lynching. The
wallpaper, which is brightly colored and resembles the walls of a nursery, placed with a small,
colorless photograph, creates a disturbing juxtaposition. The two mediums are used to illustrate
two stories with the same circumstances, and raise many questions: is the white man sleeping
peacefully because he does not have to worry about being lynched, or did he commit this
lynching himself and is at peace with that? What happened to Hill’s widow after he was
murdered? The tales of Ku Klux Klan members kidnapping and lynching Black people in the
dead of night are as common to the United States as apple pie. The Black man hanging from the

57
tree and the photographed widow are both victims of this terror, and no words are needed to
connect them.
To the right of Gober’s and Palfi’s works was The Means to an End…A Shadow Drama
in Five Acts (1995), a five-part etching by Kara Walker (Figure 48). This piece is situated in the
Antebellum era and depicts a Black woman helping her daughter escape from slavery.
Unfortunately, her daughter is caught by a slave owner and subsequently strangled to death for
her disobedience. The characters are portrayed as simple, black silhouettes, rendering it
impossible for viewers to see a change of expressions in a story that encapsulates slavery, family
separation, the desire to be free, and the pain and suffering that this young runaway encounters
upon her capture and eventual murder. This grouping of works was especially praised by critics:
The curatorial intent is clever and creates visual relationships between the
work, especially seen in this area, with Palfi’s window looking on to the
travesty of the young silhouette refugee’s tragic death, additionally posing
questions about our own position as viewers, our position witnessing these
atrocities, the position of the families left behind in pain from these actions,
and the current media portrayals of the black death spectacle.
93

Directly adjacent from Walker’s work was As Seen on TV (2002), an installation by
Kerry James Marshall (Figure 48). He is an acclaimed painter who produces works that feature
Black subjects solely painted in ebony black in various scenarios, whether that be everyday
domestic tasks, lush landscapes, or portraiture. Marshall contributed two pieces to Non-Fiction,
and interestingly enough, neither were paintings. As Seen on TV consists of a flower-decorated
cross, a video still of the cross, and a notecard bearing the installation’s title placed on a tiny
altar. The cross’s legs include the text “Baptist Church,” a direct reference to the 16
th
Street
Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963, in which KKK

93
Evan Senn, “The Honest Beauty of Non-Fiction at the Underground Museum,” Art and Cake LA website (April
25, 2017), available at: https://artandcakela.com/2017/04/25/the-honest-beauty-of-non-fiction-at-the-underground-
museum/

58
members set off an explosion during Sunday School. The bombing killed four little Black girls
and injured many others, marking a critical turning point in the Civil Rights Movement that led
to the passing of the landmark Civil Rights Act less than a year later. Images of the destroyed
church were shown on television and printed in magazines for the world to see. Marshall tied in
his own personal history to this horrific incident, as he was born in Alabama in 1955 and would
have been seven years old in 1963, only a couple of years younger than the girls who were killed.
David Hammons’ In the Hood (Gray) (1993/2016) was encased in a backlit container,
just to the right of Marshall’s installation (Figure 49). This work is a grey athletic hoodie that is
torn at the chest and updated from its original presentation of being nailed to the wall. This
version instead hung from the ceiling and was illuminated, causing the hood to appear as a
floating ghost. In the Hood uses the hood as a symbol of death, as this work is a clear nod to
Trayvon Martin’s murder. The pointed tip at the hoodie’s top also touches on the evil history of
the KKK, who wear white hooded masks in order to conceal their identities. The placement of
this clothing showed the duality of the same story – a victim who was murdered in an act of
racial violence and the perpetrators of said acts. Several critics came to the same assessment:
The sporty hood is like the humble cowl worn by a penitent monk crossed
with the inescapable echo of the modern hoods worn by the craven Ku Klux
Klan. It hovers in a luminous space that merges a chapel with a closet – a
place of sanctity and one of fear. The sculpture is emblematic of the
exhibition’s “Non-fiction” title, which draws a bright line beneath this art’s
powerful, personal testimony.
94

Noah’s organizing of this particular gallery called upon the dead in order to remind
viewers of what is omitted on a day-to-day basis. These works presented a breakdown of the
personal experiences of Black death and trauma across many centuries – slavery in the

94
Christopher Knight, “Review: Heinous history as potent muse in Underground Museum’s ‘Non-Fiction’,” The Los
Angeles Times website (May 19, 2016), available at: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-
nonfiction-underground-20160513-snap-story.html

59
nineteenth century, mid-twentieth century lynching’s and KKK attacks, and contemporary
conversations surrounding violence against Black people in the twenty-first century:
These works too are minimal, well executed, and coexist nicely with the
others in the room. But again, this aesthetic unity is so pervasive that it’s
almost insidious. It subsumes the violence present in so many of the works
into a familiar curatorial system, which, whether intentional or not, is perhaps
appropriate: systemic violence, systemic silencing, and deep, systemic bias is
key to the show’s content. Non-Fiction opened at a moment when lynching
was having a surreally disturbing resurgence, in news streams and
conversations about activism.
95

Upon transitioning into the next gallery, viewers encountered two photographs from
Deana Lawson, who would later have an acclaimed solo exhibition, “Deana Lawson: Planes”
(2018-2019) at The Underground Museum. The first photograph was Cowboys (2014), which
depicts two young Black men riding horses at night (Figure 50). While their jeans and boots
indicate that this is a contemporary photograph, they are also wearing leather cowboy hats and
slacks. There is a complex history to the American cowboy, who explored the West Coast and
captured its land for the United States, but displaced and murdered many Native Americans in
the process. Furthermore, this photograph gives weight to the legacy of Black American
cowboys, who are often rendered invisible in mainstream film and television imagery, which
solely depicts American cowboys as white. Lawson’s second exhibited photograph was The
Garden, Gemena, DR Congo (2015), which showcases a fully nude Black couple sitting next to
each other in the lush jungle of the Democratic Republic of Congo (Figure 51). This
contemporary couple resembles Adam and Eve, with a twist: the first known couple is almost
always portrayed as white, but Lawson instead shows off this couple’s dark, beautiful Black

95
Catherine Wagley, “Non-Fiction at The Underground Museum,” Contemporary Art Review LA website (June 13,
2016), available at: https://contemporaryartreview.la/non-fiction-at-the-underground-museum/

60
skin. In both of these photographs, the artist challenges traditional Western concepts and history,
the colonization of said imagery, and the erasure of Black bodies from prehistoric humanity.
Not far from Lawson’s works was Marshall’s second exhibited piece, Heirloom and
Accessories (2002) (Figure 52). This is a trio of layered inkjet photographs that contain
multitudes: the most visible aspect are the necklaces attached to long chains that feature framed
photographs of white women. In the background, there is a faded image of a lynching taking
place. It is implied that these white women are not only accessories in terms of jewelry, but also
to murder. White women have long been complicit in the history of racial terror enacted on
Black people, specifically falsely reporting Black people of committing crimes.
Approaching the end of the exhibition, Henry Taylor’s large painting, Warning Shots Not
Required (2011), stretched across many planes and is multilayered in its content (Figure 53).
This epic historical painting portrays Stanley “Tookie” Williams, the founder of Los Angeles’s
Crips street gang, who was convicted of four counts of murder in 1981 and ultimately executed
in 2005. A complicated figure in the culture of South Los Angeles and beyond – larger-than-life
gangster, professional bodybuilder, and, in his later years, an advocate for anti-gang education –
Williams served his death-row sentence at San Quentin. Taylor paints Williams in front of a high
prison wall, on which the work’s title phrase is clearly meant as a threat. Beneath the phrase,
Taylor spray-painted some other words – to some, they may read as “So they say”, a meta-
commentary on the prison’s warning, but they are partially obscured by overpainting, leaving
only a phrase of tragicomic resignation: “So hey.” As in many of Taylor’s paintings, fragments
and symbols pile up around a main theme, among them a group of mourners, a plate of noodles
(perhaps signifying a last supper), and an equine form bucking for freedom.

61
The last object in the exhibition was Theaster Gates’ Sheol (2013) (Figure 54), a large
black box attached to the wall and comprised of various mediums – wood, rubber, metal, roofing
paper, and tar – that double as domestic items. Gates uses these household materials in order to
explore the evocative power of the color black and how it can be used as a metaphor for Black
life and death. The black paint used is very slick, reflective, and simply elegant, causing the light
to dance against the box. However, the color black is also often used to represent death, which
ties into the name of the piece: “Titled ‘Sheol,’ the darkness of the underworld told in the
Hebrew Bible is reframed using the Modern abstract motif of a traditional black-painting. Sheol
is a place where all souls convene after death, whether they are righteous or wicked.”
96

Non-Fiction extended past the gallery walls. Affixed to each of the bathroom doors were
one of two signs: “Whites Only” or “Colored Only,” both of which deny access depending on the
race of the person attempting to enter the bathroom. These historical markers were used all over
the United States less than sixty years ago due to racial segregation laws and policies. Their
purpose in Non-Fiction is to remind the audience how explicit discrimination was mobilized in
order to make African Americans feel unwelcome in public environments. By following the
guided pathway, viewers reached the door that led to The Purple Garden upon conclusion of this
exhibition. This placement could be interpreted as being the light at the end of this desolate
tunnel of sickening, terrifying racial violence. Lastly, while object labels were provided, there
were no didactics that explained the individual pieces. Instead, museum staff walked audiences
through the show and discussed the works. Accessibility to art is one of The Underground
Museum’s cornerstones, and access also means creating one’s own relationship with artists and

96
Knight, The Los Angeles Times website

62
ideas. Visitors can make the most astounding observations, especially if one is open to listening.
Karon spoke about how this curatorial strategy had a positive effect on the viewing experience:
We often learn about the work from visitors. One woman said that for her,
Robert Gober’s Hanging Man / Sleeping Man (1989) represented the way
that systemic racism hangs in our everyday lives like wallpaper: a silent but
permanent backdrop. Another woman taught her fellow visitors about the
tradition of black cowboys. We often overhear debates and moments of
shared introspection. Everyone is having a conversation together. Noah, us,
the artists, the artworks, the audience. It’s a beautiful thing.
97

Museums will always hold a strong place in the world, simply because they are the main
institutions that present art. It can be difficult to recommend ways that institutions can better
represent Blackness, because not all art spaces are capable of achieving this adequately. They
maintain a huge amount of power in deciding the parameters of their inclusion, as well as how
they exhibit and display Blackness. Exhibiting artists of color during times of protest are
traditionally ways for institutions to show that demands for better representation are “heard” and
that the museum is aware of the social unrest happening outside of their walls. Once the
pitchforks are lowered, the institution typically reneges on their false solidarity. However, Non-
Fiction was a reparative exhibition curated by a Black man that both addressed Black trauma and
challenged the colonialist notion that the Black body is a mockery. The exhibited works
examined what it means to be Black within dominant systems of racism and violence, while also
embracing new modes of Black identity, power, and representation. If museums want to
highlight Blackness and Black artwork in any meaningful way, they must take note of The
Underground Museum’s directive – listen to the community’s wants and needs, as well as create
a hospitable environment where sustained research on Black artists’ practices can be undertaken.

97
Davis and Montoya, 89 and 90

63
CONCLUSION

“Artist run alternative spaces have existed for decades in American cities and have long been essential to
artists’ ability to experiment and create dialogues with and for their communities. […] No longer
“alternative”, an implicitly disparaging characterization that suggests they exist external to more essential
critical dialogue, they are instead vital epicenters for art and the conversations around it in the United
States.”
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– Jane Panetta

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the relationship between Black artists and
major art and cultural institutions is complex and often onerous. Institutions continue to
exacerbate marginalization; even when they embrace Black artists, it is often a form of
tokenization. Such factors have caused many Black artists to seek a public for their art that is not
overseen by another institution, instead founding their own counter-institutional spaces. But are
these acts of fostering community and creative invention considered institution building?
Alonzo and Dale Davis founded a commercial gallery and later added a nonprofit
affiliate; while the physical space closed in 1989, Brockman Gallery continues on as an archive
and remains an important historical touchstone in the timeline of Black artist-run spaces. The
Davis brothers devoted themselves to their community at a time when artists of color
encountered very few opportunities to show their work, thus building a market for diverse
contemporary art in Leimert Park and providing a groundwork for future efforts that might have
otherwise been absent. But Dale insisted that they didn’t view their space as an institution:
“What is an institution? We didn’t have certain qualifications. Usually, institutions are funded to
a major tune. [Brockman Gallery] was informal. I would call it a cultural collective that involved
institutions. It was institution building without being an institution.”
99
The vast majority of the
exhibitions and programming at Brockman Gallery centered on the experience of Black life in

98
Jane Panetta, “Civic Lessons: Notable Characteristics of America” in Whitney Biennial 2019, ed. Rujeko Hockley
and Jane Panetta (New York, NY: Whitney Museum of American Art and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2019) 100.
99
Davis and Franz, 56

64
the United States, either marking the anxiety of surviving in the wake of constant racial injustice,
or deviating from the notion that Blackness is constricted to themes of trauma, death, and
violence. As Kellie Jones declared, “Black artists were defined by protest in the 1960s and
1970s. They focused on black dissent, which was legible and perhaps easier to manage and
understand, rather than configurations that encompassed the abstract and uncategorizable.”
100

Brockman Gallery was a space in which Black artists could be free from institutional exclusion
and create work that had the opportunity to not only be viewed by a large audience, but also be
available for purchase – a rarity for a generation of Black artists living and working during both
the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements.
The Underground Museum was once the Davis family’s home, and they made sure that
anyone who entered their doors feels at home, too. That feeling enticed people from the street
into the bookstore, through the gallery doors, and to The Purple Garden, where they were free to
spend as much time as they want. Visitors were also encouraged to get up close and personal
with the works and make their own connections, thus emphasizing the importance of building a
relationship with artwork that is free from others’ opinions and theories. However, it is worth
noting that The Underground Museum had an active Board of Directors, with high-profile
members ranging from Mark Ankner to Arthur Lewis and Hau Nguyen to Aileen Getty. Unlike
Brockman, in which Alonzo and Dale led the gallery in tandem until its last two years, The
Underground Museum had a clear hierarchal structure, with an appointed Executive Director,
Karon serving as President, and Kahlil fulfilling duties as Creative Director. Despite this, Karon
has also stated that their museum was not an institution:
The Underground Museum operates on creation, as I see it, while institutions
operate on rules and structure. The word institution can evoke feelings of
intimidation: a sterile place absent of emotion, constructed to make visitors

100
Jones, South of Pico, 261

65
feel humbled in the presence of greatness. We are humbled when people
enter our doors.
101

Karon’s assertion frames The Underground Museum as more of a work of art than an
institution. Noah used the original four dilapidated storefronts as a blank canvas and designed
and molded the space as if using his paintbrush: lines were created by the walls, the Donald
Judd-inspired bar, and the planter boxes. They were balanced by the organic shapes, bulbous
bushes, slender cypress trees, and amethyst crystals in The Purple Garden. Every touch was
deliberate and every detail considered, rendering The Underground Museum as evolving space.
Although Noah is no longer living and the museum has closed, the strong foundation that he
built proves that The Underground thrived in transitional times. Venus X, a designer and DJ who
was close friends with Noah, asserted that Noah’s determination in opening the museum has
been incredibly impactful on the Black community:
I think it’s important to know the effect he’s having through the Underground
on a lot of black people and a lot of young people of color who don’t see
themselves in the art world and don’t really get any forms of representation at
that level. So, when I say that the story is beautiful, it is really about how
powerful he was that he left something behind that does exactly that for a lot
of people. And it’s very incredible, important work, and I’m glad he went so
hard in those last months of his life to make sure it was left behind.
102

While these artist-initiated sites do utilize terms that are often associated with institutions
– Brockman Gallery and The Underground Museum – they present a range of forms along which
such counter-institutional practices have taken shape. Both families were interested in operating
physical sites whose operations challenged or criticized institutions, and originally included
investigations of the role that physical spaces (galleries, museums, and community spaces) and
positions of creative control (curators, museum directors, and board members) play in

101
Davis and Montoya, 90
102
Helen Molesworth. “Venus X” in Noah Davis, 125

66
influencing what is considered notable and worthy of inclusion in exhibitions. While both
families insist that their spaces were not institutions, an interesting pattern has emerged in the
building of a community space as a means of radical revision. Through acts of self-organization,
these sites opted out of wearied attempts to change institutions from the inside and instead turned
to the task of building a space from the ground up. Using their art practices as starting guides,
Brockman Gallery and The Underground Museum established safe spaces for marginalized
communities. And while both of these spaces did ultimately partner with major institutions in
varying capacities, their goal was not a wholesale repudiation of institutional activity, but instead
an approach that aimed to effect inclusion on their own terms.
In the last decade, several artist-run venues whose missions have a strong emphasis on
art, activism, community engagement, and highlighting diverse communities have continued to
transform the Los Angeles art and culture scene. Crenshaw Dairy Mart (CDM) was founded in
February 2020 by artists Patrisse Cullors, noé olivas, and alexandre ali reza dorriz, all of whom
collectively graduated from USC’s MFA in Art program in 2019. Their gallery is located at 8629
Crenshaw Boulevard in Inglewood, a neighborhood known for community programming and
organizing protests (Figure 55). However, since the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered their doors
only a month into opening, CDM has focused their efforts on public art and community
organizing. Some examples of their recent projects include the painted mural Saint Nip (2020), a
memorial to slain South Central rapper Nipsey Hussle. This work was commissioned by artists
Paul Cullors and Oto-Abasi Attah and featured on CDM’s exterior walls. In partnership with
CDM, olivas and his wife, curator and writer Ana Briz, launched “the domingo project”, in
which they develop mobile art projects and deliver produce to communities in need in a 1967
Chevy Step-Van. In May 2021, CDM’s founders partnered with MOCA x Art Rise and installed

67
abolitionist pod [prototype] (2021) in the parking lot at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
(Figure 56). This geodesic dome is a physical template for community gardens and spirituality.
This collaboration between a community-driven space and a major institution shows continued
attempts to embrace alternative art models by the larger art world:
The community artist has long been an ill-defined and misunderstood
category, often interpreted as connoting efforts “outside” the art world, and
thus – given high art’s tendency towards elitism – inviting some friction
between the community arts and artists whose social practice or participatory
work is more centered in the institutional world.
103

Another space, Summaeverythang Community Center, was opened in March 2020 and is
an extension of artist Lauren Halsey’s studio that is located at 300 S Grand Avenue, Suite 4100
(Figure 57). Halsey’s practice is comprised of fantastical collages, architectural structures, and
sculptures that highlight South Central’s Black community. Her studio is an open space for
community members and collaborators to view her work and contemplate. In the early days of
state mandated lockdowns, Halsey decided to balance her active art practice with a new
collaborative art project – produce distribution meant to support low-income families (Figure
58). She used her own funds and sourced outside donations in order to jumpstart the project,
describing its operations in an interview with the author:
We do it every Friday, and that’s basically the bulk of my week, doing this
produce work with my girlfriend, friends, cousins, and studio assistants. I’ve
converted the community center next door to my studio that I had originally
planned on opening in late summer into this food program where we do the
assembly line prep work together, build the boxes, and deliver them to
families in Watts for free on Friday mornings.
104

Halsey’s entire practice is, of, and for South Central. Rather than solely creating and
making art, she sought to better people’s lives in a moment of displacement, death, and fear. She

103
Catherine Wagley. “Learn from this Community: Resisting Hierarchy Through a Return to Community Arts.”
CARLA, Issue 25 (August 13, 2021), 24.
104
Adrianne Ramsey. “Lauren Halsey” in SPINE (San Francisco, CA, 2020), 51.

68
wanted to empower people on the ground and in the streets, so instead of looking at art as the
only solution, she figured out how to provide accessibility through food.
Lastly, Art + Practice was co-founded in 2014 by artist Mark Bradford, social activist
Allan DiCastro, and philanthropist and collector Eileen Harris Norton as an art gallery and non-
profit to benefit foster youth (Figure 59). They knew that they wanted to establish a
contemporary art space that would bring institutions into their community in order to provide
free access to contemporary artists of color. But they also wanted to address a need in the
community, which was further explained by Sophia Belsheim, their current Director: “Mark
grew up in the community and was aware that there was a large concentration of foster youth.
L.A. County has the highest concentration of foster youth in the United States, with 40,000 foster
youth. 18 to 20,000 of those youth live in zip codes near Art + Practice.”
105
The space offers
mentorship, education, and art classes to foster youth, acting as a safe home. As for their gallery
operations, Art + Practice does not employ any in-house curators; however, they have initiated
several partnerships with major institutions (majority of them being in Los Angeles) in order to
organize exhibitions, public programs, and conversations. These museums have included The
Broad, Hammer Museum, Getty Research Institute, Frick National Art Museum (Nashville, TN),
the Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, MD), and most recently the California African
American Museum. In a full circle moment, Art + Practice is located at 4334 Degnan Boulevard
– the same building that housed Brockman Gallery. The organization consistently acknowledges
their former tenant, such as hosting a conversation between Alonzo and Dale and curator Naima
Keith in 2015 (Figure 60). In that same year, Dale participated in a residency at Art + Practice, in

105
Sophia Belsheim. “Museum and Artist-Run Spaces in South L.A. Today.” Visions and Voices Event: South of
Expo: Art, Artists and Cultural Spaces Since the 1960s, April 30, 2022. California African American Museum (Los
Angeles, CA). Roundtable 2

69
which he compiled the official archive of Brockman Gallery and Brockman Productions. “We
saved about 95% of what we published, which includes fliers, brochures, handwritten notes, and
comments from artists such as Betye Saar and Elizabeth Catlett,” he explained. “Art + Practice
provided new high-tech equipment to archive all the on-site documents and assigned a specialist
who helped me scan the documents and organize them correctly.”
106
This ephemera was acquired
by the Los Angeles Public Library in 2019.
While there are intricacies and challenges of operating an independent art space, it is
important to view DIY and grassroot models as liberation tools that can achieve excellence
outside of the confines of institutional structures. Accessibility begins with comfort, and the
vision for Brockman Gallery and The Underground Museum was that they would be welcoming.
These venues provided safe spaces for diverse communities to gather, a platform for
marginalized artists to showcase their work, and a mechanism for highlighting voices who have
been traditionally excluded from the commercial arts sector.

106
Dale Davis, Interview with author

70
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Aldridge, Taylor Renee. “Game Changer: Dr. David Driskell.” Gagosian Quarterly (Summer
2021), 202

Alexander, Elizabeth. The Trayvon Generation. New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing, 2022.

Atkinson, J. Edward (ed). Black Dimensions in Contemporary American Art. New York, NY:
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Author Unknown. “Black American Art Day Proclaimed by Mayor Bradley.” The Skanner
(October 14, 1976), 10

Barragan, Bianca. “Inside MOCA’s New Little Satellite Space in Arlington Heights.” LA Curbed
website (July 22, 2015), available at: https://la.curbed.com/2015/7/22/9938124/moca-
underground-gallery-arlington-heights

Belsheim, Sophia. “Museum and Artist-Run Spaces in South L.A. Today.” Visions and Voices
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75
APPENDIX OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Los Angeles following the Watts Rebellion (1965).
Courtesy of Harry Drinkwater

Figure 2. Remnants of a destroyed car during the Watts Rebellion (1965). Courtesy of Harry
Drinkwater

76

Figure 3. Dale and Alonzo Davis with their father in front of Brockman Gallery. Courtesy of
Brockman Gallery Archives

Figure 4. The exterior of Brockman Gallery (4334 Degnan Boulevard). Courtesy of Brockman
Gallery Archives

77

Figure 5. Brockman Gallery’s inaugural opening (January 1967). Courtesy of Brockman Gallery
Archives

Figure 6. Betye Saar, The Divine Face and Hand, 1971. Acrylic, gouache, and ink on paper.

78

Figure 7. Announcement for Niggers Ain’t Gonna Be Nothin’ – All They Want To Do Is Drink +
Fuck (1971) at Brockman Gallery. Courtesy of Brockman Gallery Archives

Figure 8. Announcement for Oriental America at Brockman Gallery (1969). Courtesy of
Brockman Gallery Archives

79

Figure 9. Announcement for a group exhibition featuring Doyle Lane, Al Porter, and John
Riddle at Brockman Gallery. Courtesy of Brockman Gallery Archives

Figure 10. Announcement for The Sapphire Show at Gallery 32 (1970). Courtesy of Suzanne
Jackson

80

Figure 11. Promotional poster for Just Above Midtown’s inaugural exhibition, Synthesis (1974).
Courtesy of Linda Goode Bryant

Figure 12. Senga Nengudi, Ceremony for Freeway Fets, 1978. Photo Credit: Roderick “Quako”
Young

81

Figure 13. Performance detail – Senga Nengudi, Ceremony for Freeway Fets, 1978. Photo
Credit: Roderick “Quako” Young

Figure 14. Los Angeles Street Graphics Committee (L-R): Alonzo Davis (seated), Ronald
Welton, Kinshasha Conwil, Mark Greenfield, George Combs, Ulysses Jenkins, Joe Simms (lying
down), Houston Conwill, and Lester Gones, 1974. Courtesy of Mark Greenfield

82

Figure 15. Mark Greenfield, He, She, and It (1975). Courtesy of Mark Greenfield

Figure 16. Map of the Los Angeles Olympic Mural Sites (Summer 1984). Courtesy of The Los
Angeles Times

83

Figure 17. Installation view of Alonzo Davis’s murals (L-R): “Eyes on ‘84”, “Eyes of
Consciousness”, and “Reflections of LA”, as part of the 1984 Summer Olympics Mural Project:
“Art in the Fast Lane.” Courtesy of Alonzo Davis

Figure 18. Installation view of Judy Baca, “Hitting the Wall: Women in the Marathon” (1983-
84), as part of the 1984 Summer Olympics Mural Project: “Art in the Fast Lane.” Courtesy of
Judy Baca

84

Figure 19. LAPD beating of Rodney King (still), 1991. Video taken by George Holliday

Figure 20. Flyer for the “Black Culture Festival” at LACMA (1968). Courtesy of LACMA

85

Figure 21. Letter from Claude Booker describing the organization and asking for membership
support. Courtesy of Brockman Gallery Archives

Figure 22. Stan Sanders, John Riddle, and Claude Booker during a Black Arts Council meeting.
Courtesy of Claude and Ann Booker.

86

Figure 23. David Hammons in front of his work in Three Graphic Artists. Courtesy of LACMA

Figure 24. Timothy Washington in front of his work in Three Graphic Artists. Courtesy of
LACMA

87

Figure 25. Charles White, Wanted Poster #17, 1971. Oil drawing, 60” x 40”

Figure 26. Charles White, J’Accuse #1, 1966. Charcoal drawing, 50” x 36”

88

Figure 27. Charles White, J’Accuse #5, 1966. Charcoal drawing, 50” x 36”

Figure 28. David Hammons, Injustice Case, 1970. Mixed-media, 63 x 40 ½ inches

89

Figure 29. David Hammons, Spade (Power for the Spade), 1969. Grease, pigment, and
silkscreen on paper, 51 ½ x 33 ½ inches

Figure 30. David Hammons, Black First, American Second, 1970. Body print and silkscreen,
40” x 30”

90

Figure 31. Timothy Washington, One Nation Under God, 1970. Engraving on aluminum and
added color, 35” x 48”

Figure 32. Timothy Washington, Raw Truth, 1970. Engraving on aluminum and assemblage,
including cast iron, wood, nails, a zipper and a leather baseball mitt, with hand coloring, 35” x
24”

91

Figure 33. Flyer for Los Angeles 1972: A Panorama of Black Artists at LACMA (1972).
Courtesy of Brockman Gallery Archives

Figure 34. Richard Wyatt, Carroll Greene, Jr., and Claude Booker at the opening reception for
Panorama (1972). Courtesy of LACMA

92

Figure 35. Poster for Two Centuries of Black American Art at LACMA (1976). Courtesy of
LACMA

Figure 36. David C. Driskell, Alonzo Davis, and Mayor Tom Bradley at the opening for Two
Centuries of Black American Art (1976). Courtesy of Brockman Gallery Archives

93

Figure 37. Noah Davis speaking at a film event at The Underground Museum. Photo by Alberto
E. Rodriguez and Courtesy of WireImage

Figure 38. The exterior of The Underground Museum (3508 W. Washington Boulevard). Credit:
Carolyn A. Miranda / The Los Angeles Times

94

Figure 39. Installation view of Imitation of Wealth, curated by Noah Davis, at The Underground
Museum (August – November 2013). Photo by Karon Davis and Courtesy of The Underground
Museum

Figure 40. Installation view of The Oracle, curated by Noah Davis, at The Underground
Museum (July – September 2014). Courtesy of The Underground Museum

95

Figure 41. Installation view of Kahlil Joseph, m.A.A.d. (2014) in Kahlil Joseph: Double
Conscience (2015) at MOCA Grand Avenue. Photo by Brian Forrest and Courtesy of The
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Figure 42. Installation view of William Kentridge: Journey to the Moon, curated by Noah Davis,
at The Underground Museum (June 2015 – February 2016). Photo by Brian Forrest

96

Figure 43. Installation view of Artists of Color, curated by Noah Davis, at The Underground
Museum (June 2017 – April 2018). Photo by Lita Albuquerque

Figure 44. Exterior view of The Purple Garden. Photo by Adrianne Ramsey

97

Figure 45. Still of “Black Museum” (Season 4, Episode 6), as part of Black Mirror, 2017.
Courtesy of Netflix

Figure 46. Robert Gober, Hanging Man / Sleeping Man, 1989. Screen-printed wallpaper; Marion
Palfi, Wife of a Lynch Victim, 1949. Gelatin silver print.

98

Figure 47. Kara Walker, The Means to an End…A Shadow Drama in Five Acts, 1995. Etching,
aquatint on paper.

Figure 48. Kerry James Marshall, As Seen on TV, 2002. Enamel on plastic vase, plastic flowers,
framed video still, wood and glass shelf with steel bracket and chain.

99

Figure 49. David Hammons, In the Hood (Gray), 2016. Athletic sweatshirt hood, wire,
monofilament.

Figure 50. Deana Lawson, Cowboys, 2014. Photographic print.

100

Figure 51. Deana Lawson, The Garden, Gemena, DR Congo, 2015. Photographic print.

Figure 52. Kerry James Marshall, Heirlooms and Accessories, 2002. Inkjet prints on paper.

101

Figure 53. Installation view of Henry Taylor, Warning shots not required, 2011. Acrylic,
charcoal, and collage on canvas.

Figure 54. Theaster Gates, Sheol, 2013. Wood, roofing paper, rubber, metal, and tar.

102

Figure 55. The exterior of Crenshaw Dairy Mart (8629 Crenshaw Boulevard). Courtesy of
Crenshaw Dairy Mart

Figure 56. Crenshaw Dairy Mart, abolitionist pod [prototype], 2021, at The Geffen
Contemporary at MOCA (May 2021). Credit: Giovanni Solis

103

Figure 57. Documentation of Summaeverythang’s operations. Credit: Mariah Tauger / The Los
Angeles Times

Figure 58. Contents of a Summaeverythang sponsored produce box. Photo by and courtesy of
Lauren Halsey

104

Figure 59. Exterior of Art + Practice (4334 Degnan Boulevard). Credit: Sean Shim-Boyle

Figure 60. Naima J. Keith, Dale Brockman Davis, and Alonzo Davis in conversation at Art +
Practice (Los Angeles) on February 17, 2015. Courtesy of Naima Keith and Art + Practice

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Asset Metadata

Creator Ramsey, Adrianne (author)

Core Title Blackness and belonging: the impact of Brockman Gallery and the Underground Museum on Los Angeles Art and Culture

School Roski School of Art and Design

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere

Degree Conferral Date 2022-12

Publication Date 12/13/2022

Defense Date 12/12/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag African American art history,African Americans,Art,art and culture,Art History,Black art,Los Angeles,museums,OAI-PMH Harvest

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Jones, Amelia (committee chair), Arceneaux, Edgar (committee member), Campbell, Andy (committee member)

Creator Email atramsey@usc.edu,atramsey125@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC112620684

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