For Artist Kerry James Marshall, Everything is Possible

From the historical sense that, throughout the American experiment, very little has been possible for black people; to a generational sense that, despite a great deal of change in American society through time, a great deal still isn’t possible; to Kerry James Marshall’s personal sense that, nonetheless, everything is possible: That’s the short version of the story that his work has been telling — mostly in paint but also in sculpture, photography and installations — since he became the first member of his family to go to college, graduating from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles in 1978. In that interval, Marshall has become a preeminent American artist, one whose work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian, the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a dozen other major American museums. He has received a MacArthur fellowship and his paintings can command over 2 million dollars at auction.

From “Kerry James Marshall is Shifting the Color of Art History” by Wyatt Mason for the New York Times, 2016; Marshall’s “Self Portrait” 2016

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