An exhibition exploring the undertold stories of African American artists who sought new possibilities, inspiration and environments in the Nordic countries in the 20th century opens at Scandinavia House on November 26, 2024. Nordic Utopia? African Americans in the 20th Century looks at the significance of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden as destinations for African American cultural figures including Doug Crutchfield, Herb Gentry, Dexter Gordon, William Henry Johnson, Howard Smith and Walter Williams through a range of artifacts, artworks (music, paintings, drawings, sculpture, ceramics, textiles), and documentary evidence (photography, film, and journalistic writing). Organized by the National Nordic Museum in Seattle by co-curators and ASF Fellows Ethelene Whitmire and Leslie Anne Anderson, where it debuted in March 2024, the exhibition will now be on view at Scandinavia House through March 8, 2025.
Image credit: Walter Williams, Southern Landscape, 1977 – 78. Mixed media. Photo courtesy of the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland College Park.
