Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY Old Westbury presents Necessary Memories, a solo show by celebrated African-American woman artist Janet Taylor Pickett that explores Blackness through painting, works on paper, sculpture, and quilting. This exhibition is collaboratively curated by Dr. Jennifer Baahng, a leading scholar on Janet Taylor Pickett, and Dr. Hyewon Yi, the Director of Wallace Gallery. Necessary Memories features works from the 1970s to the present, including several that have never been shown to the public before. The exhibition commemorates the inauguration of the Black Studies Center and the recently accredited Black Studies major at SUNY Old Westbury, an initiative representative of the College’s strong social justice mission and racial diversity. The Black Studies Center is sponsoring the exhibition and public programs. In addition to this near survey of Taylor Pickett’s oeuvre at the Wallace Gallery, her most recent works will be on display at the Oceanside Museum of Art in California in May 2023.

Taylor Pickett’s work harks back to Romare Bearden, with its liberal use of collage, and its textile patterns suggest the influence of Henri Matisse. Her oeuvre is in constant dialogue with personal history and art history as it draws upon African-American quilting and the social and political activism of the 1960s and 70s. Often placing a sole Black woman in a singular narrative moment that speaks to the artist’s emphasis on representation, Taylor Pickett says, “My Blackness is a declarative statement in my work.” Her images reference the tradition of freed slaves in her native Michigan, home to many stops on the Underground Railroad. “I have a collection of pejorative, cliché things that we use to denigrate Black people,” says Taylor Pickett, as she coopts the derogatory images for her own purposes. For example, a watermelon motif appears in a number of works, including, in particular, Melon Dress. In other paintings, Taylor Pickett repurposes images of Ethiopian Omo women photographed in traditional, objectifying style. Addressing the racist exoticism and Othering of these figures, Taylor Pickett enhances the images with plant elements that transform the whole into what she calls “Exotica Botanica,” thus the alienating photographs become a celebration of joy as the women are returned to their full humanity. This mixing of formal elements with natural, social, and art historical references echoes throughout her oeuvre as it addresses representation while engaging with history. Janet Taylor Pickett’s work is timeless while still speaking particularly to our time.

Artist Biography

Janet Taylor Pickett (b. 1948, Ann Arbor, Michigan) is a painter and collagist, currently residing in California after having lived in New Jersey for many years. Taylor Pickett earned her BFA and MFA from the University of Michigan School of Art & Design, Ann Arbor. She continued her studies at Parsons School of Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York City; and the Vermont Studio Center. She was instrumental in establishing the Art Department at Essex County College in New Jersey and taught art and art history there for over thirty years.  Taylor Pickett’s work can be found in collections across the United States, including the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York City; Rutgers University, NJ; University of Michigan School of Social Work, Ann Arbor; Bristol-Myers Squibb, New York City; Philadelphia Museum of Art; University of Texas, Austin; and Harvard University Museums, Cambridge, MA.

Jennifer Taylor Pickett is represented by Jennifer Baahng Gallery in New York.

The opening reception for Janet Taylor Pickett: Necessary Memories is scheduled for Wednesday, March 15, 4:00 –7:00 pm. An Artist Talk and Panel Discussion will be held in the Gallery on Tuesday, March 28, 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm. Gallery Director Hyewon Yi will moderate panelists Janet Taylor Pickett, Dr. Jermaine Archer of the Department of American Studies and Director of Black Studies Center, and Dr. Danielle Lee of the English Department and faculty member of Black Studies Center.  An additional Reception and Exhibition Walkthrough with students is scheduled for April 12, 1:00 – 2:30 pm. During the week of Dr. Timothy Sams’s inauguration as the 6th President of SUNY Old Westbury, the Gallery will offer thirty-minute student-docent-led exhibition tours. Visitors may join a tour on April 10 through April 13 at 2:40 pm.

Gallery Hours of Spring 2023:

Mondays, Fridays, Saturdays: 12 pm – 5 pm, Tuesdays, 10 am – 6pm, Wednesdays, 12 pm – 8pm, Thursdays, 12pm – 7pm