We Radical Women Wanted a Black Revolution (for M.H.)

Stacy Lynn Waddell

Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art

About this Brooklyn Icon
The Brooklyn Museum is commemorating its 200th anniversary by spotlighting 200 standout objects in its encyclopedic collection.

Stacy Lynn Waddell sees her role and her work as part of an intergenerational conversation with other Black artists. This portrait of Maren Hassinger, an artist featured in the acclaimed Brooklyn Museum exhibition We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85, honors the legacy of Hassinger and her peers. The work also engages in contemporary discussions of memorialization, monuments, and the Black Lives Matter movement: Hassinger stands above an empty plinth that once supported a statue of Confederate General Beauregard. Her T-shirt sports the acronym for the title of the historic exhibition, which glows like a protest slogan against the complex, gold-leaf background.

Characterized by her use of gilding, fire, and alchemical processes, Waddell’s practice explores issues of personal experience, American culture, and history. Physical and material transformations are utilized in works that honor underrecognized African American figures, primarily in portraiture that parlays symbols of power and privilege into an examination of who is valued, remembered, and celebrated.

***

Gallery Label

Stacy Lynn Waddell creates layered goldleaf portraits of influential yet historically overlooked subjects. Here , she depicts experimental artist Maren Hassinger wearing a shirt commemorating the Brooklyn Museum’s 2017 exhibition We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85, which featured Hassinger’s work. Both artists witnessed history in New Orleans that year, as protestors rallied for Black Lives Matter and community members removed an equestrian statue of Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard. In her portrait, Waddell pictures Hassinger on the sculpture’s pedestal with a miniaturized Beauregard. Resplendent and oversize , Hassinger steps over the diminished racist man.

ARTIST Stacy Lynn Waddell, American, born 1966

MEDIUM Composition gold and aluminum leaf with gouache, watercolor, acrylic, and Sumi ink on paper

DATES 2017

DIMENSIONS 100 1/2 × 52 in. (255.3 × 132.1 cm) frame: 106 1/2 × 57 1/2 × 3 in. (270.5 × 146.1 × 7.6 cm)

COLLECTIONS Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art

ACCESSION NUMBER 2018.23

CREDIT LINE Gift of the Contemporary Art Committee and purchased with funds given by Deborah Rechler

PROVENANCE June 19, 2018, purchased from the artist by the Brooklyn Museum.

Provenance FAQ

MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view

RECORD COMPLETENESS

Not every record you will find here is complete. More information is available for some works than for others, and some entries have been updated more recently. Records are frequently reviewed and revised, and we welcome any additional information you might have.