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Guest of Honor: "Souvenir II" by Kerry James Marshall

Exhibition January 8 − September 8, 2019
The Detroit Institute of the Arts welcomes Kerry James Marshall’s Souvenir II as guest of honor.

"Souvenir II"depicts the living room of one of Marshall's relatives, where there is a memorial that hangs over the sofa. The memorial reads" In Memory of "and depicts President John F. Kennedy, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and in the center between Kennedy is Martin Luther King Jr. The clouds floating over Marshall depict people in the form of angels, both black and white, associated with the Civil Rights Movement, which were brutally murdered in 1959–1970. The most striking part of the work is the image of a black angel with golden wings, which holding a vase flowers "Souvenir II" -. One of four paintings in the series, which tells about the loss of leaders in politics, literature, art and music.

Among the angels depicted in the clouds are Viola Liuzzo, a housewife and a 39-year-old mother of five children. She was shot dead by the Ku Klux Klan night riders on Highway 80 in Montgomery, Alabama. She returned home to Detroit after participating in the Selma-Montgomery marches after Bloody Sunday. To this day, she is known as the only white woman killed during the civil rights movement. Other angels depicted in the picture are Jimmy Lee Jackson, Medgar Evers, Denise McNair, Eddie May Collins, Carol Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, Andrew Goodman, James Cheney and Michael Schwerner, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark and Malcolm X - were brutally murdered during the civil rights movement.