Dawn Williams Boyd, Sankofa, 2010, Mixed Media, 73 x 51 in
For an artist, having your work acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a signal, but rare, achievement.
Often ranked as one of the top 10 museums in the world, with holdings of more than two million paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings and artifacts spanning 300,000 years BCE to the present, the Met’s collection is as expansive as it is selective. And there is, of course, the highly anticipated annual benefit Met Gala, that draws about as much national attention (and money) to the museum’s costume collection as it does to the celebrities who show up in gowns and costumes tailored to instantly go viral. So, it was with equal measures of pride and disbelief that Atlanta artists Dawn Williams-Boyd and Julie Torres greeted the news that the 151-year-old institution had acquired their work a few weeks ago.
In the case of Torres, 41, her screen-print portrait of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was immediately included in the new Met exhibition, “Revolution, Resistance and Activism,” which opened July 29. For Boyd, 69, The Met’s purchase of her piece, “Sankofa,” marked the culmination of decades of telling complex stories about racial injustice, feminism and inequity through cloth paintings reminiscent of quilts. When she got the news, “I felt like jumping up and down,” Boyd said...