Exhibition Object Label
We All Have Dreams, We All Have Stories: An Exhibit of African American Artists’ Books
Library & Information Studies 855: Art Librarianship
The Kohler Art Library curated an exhibition, We All Have Dreams, We All Have Stories: An Exhibit of African American Artists’ Books to compliment the current exhibition at the Chazen Museum of Art. This exhibition highlighted artists’ books by African American and Black artists from the library’s extensive Artists’ Book Collection. As an assignment for the Library and Information Studies course, Art Librarianship, I wrote an object label for one piece in the exhibition. I learned about curating library and special collections exhibitions and the extensive research necessary to write a short object label. I wrote about the book, Black Panther Party Stamp Book by Kyle Goen. To write this label I researched the artist, the Black Panther Party and its notable members, and mail art.
February 2023
Kyle Goen, Black Panther Party Stamp Book
Printed on dry gym adhesive paper
United States, 2021
Edition of 100
The Black Panther Party Stamp Book responds to the 1989 Public Enemy lyric, “Most of my heroes still don’t appear on no stamp.” The Black Panther Party was a communist organization founded in the 1960’s in Oakland, California to fight for the basic human rights of Black people and combat police brutality. The FBI considered the group an enemy of the state. Postage stamps have long featured images of inspiring Americans; Goen’s imagined additions use the visual language of stamps to create retroactive endorsement of the Party by the U.S. Government. Members featured in the book include Fred Hampton, Lil Bobby Hutton, Angela Davis, Kathleen Cleaver, John Huggins, Ericka Huggins, Elaine Brown, George Jackson, and Bunchy Carter.