Post Black Male: Blurring the Color Line

In this paper, Ms. Sanderson uses Thelma Golden's words from within lectures, interviews and catalog essays to build a working definition of Post Black and demonstrate how this manifests within the Black Male exhibition. Ms. Sanderson notes the influence of the identity of the institutions the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Studio Museum of Harlem over the respective exhibits--Black Male and Freestyle-- how they informed them conceptually, and how Golden's move from the one institution to the other would mark a change in philosophy and vision for the Studio Museum, by placing a newfound curatorial emphasis on the complexity of blackness and black artistic vision. Ms. Sanderson argues that the revolutionary nature of the Freestyle exhibition was due in part to the role of Golden as the curator of Black Male, presenting the innovations of that exhibition as the nucleus of Post Black.