Exhibition presents 11 commissioned portraits of people Kehinde Wiley met during a 2017 visit to St. Louis
(Artdaily.org)

The Saint Louis Art Museum presents “Kehinde Wiley,” a free exhibition of 11 commissioned portraits of people the artist met during a 2017 visit to St. Louis. The exhibition will be on view in galleries 249 and 250 from Oct. 19 through Feb. 10, 2019. Kehinde Wiley creates large-scale oil paintings of contemporary African-American subjects that address the politics of race and power in art. Recalling the grand traditions of European and American portraiture, Wiley depicts his models in poses adapted from historic paintings. Wiley studied the Saint Louis Art Museum collection to identify works he would reference in the exhibition. During a 2017 visit to St. Louis, he invited people he encountered in neighborhoods in north St. Louis and Ferguson to pose for the paintings. “Kehinde uses works in the Saint Louis Art Museum’s collection as a starting point for observations about race and representation throughout the histo