Before the Americas, currently on view at the University of Maryland Global Campus Arts Program, is not a particularly intuitive title, at least not at first. It suggests a return to a pre-Columbian landscape of forests, mountains and Indigenous worlds untouched by the modern infrastructure and urban sprawl that now define the Americas. But that is not the exhibition Cheryl Edwards has assembled.
What Edwards is actually pointing toward is something more precise and more difficult to visualize–the persistence of cultural memory. Specifically, the exhibition traces lineages that originate in Africa and extend through the Americas, shaped by forced migration, colonial histories and the complex layering of identity among Black, Latino, Afro-Latino and Caribbean artists. For many of the artists included, these histories are not abstract—they are embedded, carried and reinterpreted through form, material and image.
It is worth acknowledging that the exhibition arrives with a degree of political baggage. Originally slated for the Art Museum of the Americas, Before the Americas was canceled after a Trump administration appointee withdrew previously allocated funding, citing DEIA initiatives. The decision generated predictable headlines. What received far less attention was the depth of scholarship and curatorial rigor behind the exhibition itself.
That oversight is unfortunate, because Edwards’ achievement here is substantial.
Once the premise is understood, the curator’s intent with this exhibition quickly becomes clear. The show includes a range of media—prints, sculpture, video—but it is anchored primarily by painting and not by emerging or marginal figures. The roster includes artists such as Amy Sherald, Sam Gilliam, Elizabeth Catlett, Alma Thomas, David Driskell and Loïs Mailou Jones, among many others. The accompanying catalogue, also assembled under Edwards’s direction, provides extensive historical and critical context, far beyond what can be addressed in a short review.
Rather than attempt a comprehensive survey, it is more useful to focus on how the exhibition functions in space.
Group exhibitions with strong thematic frameworks often struggle visually. Even when the conceptual argument holds, the works themselves can clash—competing palettes, divergent scales, incompatible formal structure. That is not the case here. One of the most compelling aspects of Before the Americas is the degree to which the works cohere.
Despite clear stylistic differences, there is an underlying harmony across the exhibition. Color relationships align. Compositions move with a shared rhythm. Transitions between works feel deliberate rather than incidental. A wall that includes James Phillips’s The Other John, Michelle Talibah’s One, and Alonso Davis Jr.’s Kalimba Series No. 8 demonstrates this particularly well. The works do not mirror one another, but they do not compete either. They settle into adjacency in a way that feels resolved. The rest of the exhibition follows this example with remarkable consistency.
That cohesion allows individual works to hold their ground without requiring isolation.
Amy Sherald, Puppet Master, 2008. Oil on canvas, 74 x 52 1/8 inches. Collection of DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities
Amy Sherald’s Puppet Master (2008) is one of the more revealing inclusions. Painted before her widely recognized portrait of Michelle Obama, it offers a view into an earlier phase of her practice. The painting centers on a male figure—formally composed, but surrounded by elements that destabilize the scene. A water tower rests on his head. A whale-like puppet extends from his hand. A jacket drapes over his arm in a gesture that reads somewhere between service and performance. The background, rendered in tones resembling oxidized copper, introduces a material illusion that further complicates the space.
Compared to Sherald’s later work, which tends toward clarity and restraint, Puppet Master is more layered, more ambiguous. It is less about representation than about construction—how identity is staged, mediated and held together.
Alma Thomas, Lunar Surface, 1970. Acrylic on canvas, 34 x 391/8 inches. Collection of Katzen Arts Center, American University.
Nearby, Alma Thomas’s Lunar Surface (1970) reinforces the exhibition’s connection to abstraction and to Washington’s art history. While often associated with the Washington Color School, Thomas’s work maintains its own distinct sensibility. The painting’s inclusion here is both fitting and well considered.
Lou Stovall, In the Moment, 2012. Silkscreen on paper, 20 x 40 inches. Collection of Addison/Ripley Fine Art Gallery
That point is echoed in Lou Stovall’s In the Moment (2012), another abstract work positioned across the gallery. Together, these paintings underscore a key argument: that abstraction, often treated as a neutral or universal language, has always been shaped by specific cultural and historical experiences.
Other works engage more directly with figuration and narrative.
Loïs Mailou Jones, Studio Still Life, 1970. Watercolor on paper, 19 x 24 inches. Collection of Eric Key
Loïs Mailou Jones’s Studio Still Life (1970) offers a quieter moment within the exhibition. Painted in watercolor, the composition captures an interior scene—paint tubes, a bottle, a portrait that suggests Charlie Chaplin. The brushwork is loose, immediate. There is no attempt to refine or perfect the image. Instead, the painting reads as a record of presence: the artist at work, the studio as both physical and psychological space.
Loïs Mailou Jones, Untitled (African Dancers), 1996. Silkscreen print, 271/4 x 24 inches. Collection of Leslie Oliver Ellison.
Jones’s later work, Untitled (African Dancers) (1996), included here as a silkscreen print, shifts into a more graphic mode. Three figures move across a flattened field of red and blue, their forms simplified but controlled. The transition between these works—between intimacy and design—reflects the breadth of her practice.
Martha Jackson Jarvis, Ancestor’s Bones: Sounds from the Sea III, 2014. Mixed-media drawing: black walnut ink, watercolor, oil, raw pigment, collage,
and photo transfer, 42 x 67 inches.
Martha Jackson Jarvis’s Ancestors’ Bones: Sounds from the Sea operates differently. Executed primarily in watercolor, the work builds movement through layered, fluid forms. It evokes an underwater environment—coral, currents, organic structures—but resists literal depiction. The composition pulls the viewer inward, into a space that feels both physical and symbolic.
Curlee Raven Holton, It Is Not a Mask, It Is a Faith, 1993. Cut-plate etching on wove paper, 37 x 27 inches.
Curlee Raven Holton’s etching It Is Not a Mask, It Is a Faith overlays human figures engaged in ritual across the surface of an African mask. The title clarifies the intent: the mask is not an object to be viewed in isolation, but part of a living system of belief and practice.
Manuel Mendive, Barco Negrero, 2012. Serigraph, 18 x 24 inches. Collection of Adlai L. Pappy, MD.
Several works confront historical trauma more directly. Afro-Cuban artist Manuel Mendive’s Barco Negrero depicts a slave ship, its cargo unmistakably human. The painting’s surface, however, is anything but somber in a conventional sense. Figures move with a kind of surreal energy—sea creatures, hybrid figures, shifting lines. The visual language recalls aspects of contemporary Central American art, for example that of Salvadoran Fernando Llort, evident in its colorful, flat and lightly abstracted forms that draw on both Indigenous and West African sources. Despite the feeling of a storybook illustration, the subject matter remains grounded in the brutality of the transatlantic slave trade. The tension between the two registers—formal play and historical violence—is what gives the work its force.
Georges Liautaud, Crucifixion, 1959. Cut and hammered iron, 46 x 401/2 x 9 inches. Collection of the Art Museum of the Americas.
A related intensity appears in Georges Liautaud’s Crucifixion (1959), constructed from cut and hammered iron. The figure of Christ is reinterpreted through the artist’s material language, shaped by his experience working on Haitian railroads. The addition of serpentine forms wrapping the body introduces another layer of meaning, connecting Christian iconography to broader symbolic systems.
![Claudia (Azia) Gibson-Hunter – [You Got to Give Up the Stuff That holds You Down]](https://www.eastcityart.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Claudia-Azia-Gibson-Hunter-–-You-Got-to-Give-Up-the-Stuff-That-holds-You-Down.jpg)
Claudia “Aziza” Gibson-Hunter, You Got to Give Up the Stuff That Holds You Down, 2023. Acrylic paint and colored pencil on paper, 98 x 50 3/4 inches.
Toward the back of the gallery, Claudia Aziza Gibson-Hunter’s You Got to Give Up the Stuff That Holds You Down (2023) commands its own space. The work, combining acrylic and colored pencil on irregularly cut paper, extends beyond the conventional rectangle. Edges shift, forms overlap, and color relationships drive the composition. It is a large, assertive painting, but not an overwhelming one. The structure holds.
Melanie Royster, Summer’s Sunset, 2023. Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 inches.
Melanie Royster’s Summer’s Sunset (2023) offers a different kind of resolution. Two figures emerge from dense vegetation under a saturated, orange sky. Their forms are intertwined with the landscape, suggesting not separation but integration. The painting avoids sentimentality, but it does not avoid beauty either.
There are many other works that could be discussed, and the exhibition rewards extended viewing. What ultimately distinguishes Before the Americas is not any single piece, but the consistency of its execution. Edwards has built an exhibition that operates on multiple levels—historical, cultural, formal—without losing clarity.
It is, above all, a structured exhibition. The argument is present, but it is not forced. The works are given space to articulate it. The strength of the show lies in the level at which all of the artists are operating. These are heavy hitters, but the exhibition resists turning any one of them into a focal point. No single work overshadows another. Instead, the works hold their ground collectively, and it is that balance—more than any individual piece—that gives the exhibition its weight.
Before the Americas is on view at University of Maryland Global Campus Campus February 15-May 10. The galleries are located 3501 University Boulevard East, Adelphi, MD 20783. Open Daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Free Parking. For more information visit: https://www.umgc.edu/administration/arts/exhibits/before-the-americas-exhibition
