Raggin' On

"When artist Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson, a MacArthur "genius" award recipient, passed away in 2015, she left her estate to the Columbus Museum of Art. Crammed with an array of work ranging from monumental tapestries she called RagGonNons to intricate "sacred manuscript pages" on paper-thin sheets of deerskin, her house and its contents reflect her passion "to fill in the blank pages of African American history with art." Combining text with pen and ink and watercolor drawings, she created button- and beaded- encrusted journals to record her experiences in Europe, South America, and the Middle East and others to expound on the layers of meaning embedded in her work. These objects from the home, which served as her sanctuary and anchor, provide an intimate view of Robinson's creative process. Essays in the catalogue will present new scholarship on Robinson's efforts to correct the omissions of traditional history through work based on her African roots, ancestral ties to slavery, and the Northern Migration. Other essays will explore the confluence of academic training and folk traditions that make her work so distinctive; the importance of her home as a physical, spiritual, emotional foundation; the feminist themes that recur and reverberate in her work; her use of non-traditional materials in the context of contemporary art; and the journal entries she carefully penned and edited late in her career"--