Fitchburg State University’s first art exhibition of the academic year will feature the thought-provoking work of artist Keith Morris Washington, whose large-scale landscapes depict lynching sites from across the United States.
“Within Our Gates: Site and Memory in the American Landscape” will be on display in the Hammond Hall Art Gallery at 160 Pearl St. from Tuesday, Sept. 3 through Friday, Oct. 11. There will be an opening reception and gallery talk with the artist at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 20. Admission is free and open to the public.
Washington’s landscapes, titled for the deceased and the locations of their deaths, do not depict the lynchings themselves, rather they show their sites as they exist now, investigating a past still present. The works are displayed along with contemporary news accounts of the crimes that occurred there.
The exhibition includes works depicting the site of the killing of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyo., in October 1998, and Cooksey Dallas in Johnson City, Tenn., in July 1920.
The paintings are visually remarkable in their own right, referencing 19th and 20th century American and European traditions of landscape painting including the Hudson River School, Luminism, and Impressionism.
Fitchburg State Professor Jeff Warmouth, chair of the Communications Media Department, has followed Washington’s work for 25 years, including exhibitions at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Concord Center for the Visual Arts, and Fitchburg Art Museum.
“His paintings are stunningly beautiful on their own, but once you add the dimension of the historical context, they become supercharged,” Warmouth said. “There's so much going on, from the conceptual aspect of interpreting history, to the artistry and aesthetic choices: the compositions, the colors, the brushwork, the frames within frames that break the landscape up into grids and geometry, to the emotional resonance as we empathize with the people whose lives were violently ended. Contemplating these works is an incredibly powerful experience.”
Washington is a professor of studio foundation at Massachusetts College of Art & Design. His work is featured in the collection of the Fitchburg Art Museum, and he has had solo exhibitions in California, New York and Rhode Island.
Read about upcoming exhibitions on the Fitchburg State website at fitchburgstate.edu/campus-life/arts-and-culture/art-galleries.