How Do You Spell America #6
Artist:
Willie Cole
(American, born 1955)
Place made:United States
Date: 1993
Dimensions:
49 x 96 in. (124.5 x 243.8 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by the Brown Foundation Contemporary Art Acquisition Fund, Janet L. Brown, the Guillermo C. Nicolas & James C. Foster Art Fund, Christopher C. Hill, Dr. Harmon and Harriet Kelley, Zoe A. Diaz, Stacey Hill and Erick Schlather, and an Anonymous Donor
Object number: 2012.17
Copyright: © Willie Cole
Label Text
Willie Cole’s blackboard is an acrostic poem. Reading across it, one finds sentences like “American Malaise Eases Right Into Chronic Apathy” and “A Melting Post Empire Rejects Immigrants Coming Ashore.” These dystopian lessons are mined from the news cycle: Cole wrote down words from television news pundits and The New York Times beginning with the letters A, M, E, R, I, C, and A. Cole’s use of the blackboard as medium is loaded with associations, from the embattled classrooms of the era of school segregation to the blackboard paintings of artists like Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, and Joseph Beuys.
(Yinshi Lerman-Tan, 2020)
(Yinshi Lerman-Tan, 2020)
Not on view
In Collection(s)
The San Antonio Museum of Art is in the process of digitizing its permanent collection. This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect SAMA's complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of such records is ongoing.
This resource has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor.
