Exhibits & Events

Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum is excited to announce Carrying On: Black Panther Party Artists Continue the Legacy, a new exhibition celebrating the works of former Black Panther Party artists: Gayle Asali Dickson, Emory Douglas, Malik Edwards, and Akinsanya Kambon. Curated by Colette Gaiter, Carrying On... showcases the legacy and current work of these cultural pioneers together for the first time to honor their lifelong commitments to people, justice, liberation, and the freedom to express their creative visions. This exhibition will be on view from January 27 to March 15, 2025. In celebration of Black History Month, a panel discussion with the artists and curator will take place on Saturday, February 8 from 3-4 pm, followed by an opening reception from 4-6 pm.

These four artists were teenagers and young adults when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended legal segregation and discrimination in the United States. They grew up in the Jim Crow era, restricted by laws and practices that affected every aspect of their lives and severely limited opportunities to pursue their dreams. Through talent, perseverance, and serendipity, they became and remain artists.

The Black Panther Party and The Black Panther newspaper are the common denominators unifying their early artistic careers. As Curator Colette Gaiter explains, “Carrying On... brings together four artists who participated in a radical justice experiment that resonates today over half a century later. Emory Douglas joined the Black Panther Party (BPP) in 1967 and practiced the Party’s mantra, “Each one teach one.” He later worked with Gayle Asali Dickson, Malik Edwards, and Akinsanya Kambon at various times on The Black Panther newspaper in the early 1970s. Edwards and Kambon joined the BPP after serving in Vietnam. Like Dickson and Douglas, they saw a way to work for liberation. The artists’ early work (made during the late 1960s- early 1970s global social movements and uprisings against oppression of all kinds) alongside their later and current work reveals personal and artistic evolutions. Dickson and Edwards use spiritual elements in their art just as they did in their lives to transcend oppression and bring others along with them. Douglas and Kambon connect with ancestors for the same purpose. Various media and work styles represent the artists’ need to increase their expressive range and expand their thinking. From the beginning, each artist used their talents and insights to visualize a radical future and motivate others to imagine beyond their current conditions. Their work helped make lasting changes in the world. Carrying on the BPP’s teachings, all four artists still work with communities, telling visual stories that sustain a steady movement toward liberation for everyone.”

In the decades following their work at The Black Panther newspaper, each artist has expanded their ways of using figures to represent realities and communicate aspirational ideas. Carrying On... will feature drawings, paintings, clay sculptures, graphic design, digital prints, and images generated from Artificial Intelligence (AI) prompts. The juxtaposition of viewing the artists’ early work next to their later and current work will also offer insight into the artists’ perspectives on social progress and change, while celebrating their dedication to the belief that art motivates and inspires people to work for their own liberation.