The late, great Toni Morrison, a giant of U.S. literature, died in 2019, at the age of 88. (Her 91st birthday would have been this Friday.) Her absence looms large in the American culture—which is why the author was a natural subject for New Yorker critic Hilton Als’s latest curatorial outing at David Zwirner Gallery.
The group exhibition, “Toni Morrison’s Black Book,” is named after her 1974 book, a visual scrapbook presenting a variety of historical sources about African Americans. (It follows Als’s Zwirner tribute to another Black writer, James Baldwin, as well solo shows he organized about Alice Neel and Frank Moore.)
There was no shortage of artists eager to participate in the tribute to Morrison. The final list includes Walter Price, Julie Mehretu, Amy Sillman, Joseph Cornell, Jacob Lawrence, Kerry James Marshall, Helen Marcus, Chris Ofili, Irving Penn, and James Van Der Zee, among others.
We spoke to Price, Mehretu, and Sillman about their relationship to Morrison’s work, the importance of her legacy, and how the author inspired their contributions to the exhibition.