Noel W Anderson: Heavy is the Crown opens at Telfair Museums
October 12, 2021Savannah and Chatham County residents can see it free during Oct. 16 Free Family Day
SAVANNAH, GA (October 12, 2021) — Printed works, tapestries, and works on paper encourage visitors to reconsider their perspectives in Noel W Anderson: Heavy is the Crown, an original Telfair Museums’ solo exhibition of works by artist Noel Anderson that opened Oct. 1 at the Jepson Center.
From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Oct. 16, Savannah and Chatham County residents can view the exhibition as part of Telfair’s Free Family Day at the Jepson Center. They can also see Finding Freedom, a newly opened exhibition by the artist Sonya Clark.
Anderson’s works consider the Black experience and its legacies, manipulating and distorting found imagery from media and archives to expose Black masculine (mis)representation to structures of power, loosely bracketed between the time period of two “kings”—Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963 and Rodney King in 1992.
Anderson, who was born in 1981, holds MFAs from Yale University and Indiana University, and is area head of printmaking at New York University’s Steinhardt Department of Art and Art professions. At 6 p.m. Oct. 14, he will deliver a free lecture at the Jepson Center, with pre-registration required at telfair.org.
Noel W Anderson: Heavy is the Crown is organized by Telfair Museums and curated by Erin Dunn, curator of modern and contemporary art.
“By repurposing sourced media and archives related to the Black experience, Heavy is the Crown denies easy comprehension through various means of disruption,” Dunn said. “Noel Anderson’s work invites visitors to slow down, process, and be present in order to access some of the challenging imagery on view.”
About the artist:
Noel W Anderson (American, b. 1981) received an MFA from Indiana University in Printmaking and an MFA from Yale University in Sculpture. He is also Area Head of Printmaking in NYU’s Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions. In 2018, Noel was awarded the NYFA artist fellowship grant and the prestigious Jerome Prize. His solo exhibition Blak Origin Moment debuted at the Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati) in February 2017 and travelled to the Hunter Museum of American Art in October 2019. His first monograph, Blak Origin Moment, was also recently published.
About Telfair Museums:
Opened in 1886, Telfair Museums is the oldest public art museum in the South and features a world-class art collection in the heart of Savannah’s National Historic Landmark District. The museum encompasses three sites: the Jepson Center for the Arts, the Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters, and the Telfair Academy. For more information visit telfair.org.
