Joe Minter

Joe Minter’s (b. 1943) practice weaves celebrations of African American history among religious devotions, illuminating multi-generational experiences of blackness in the United States. In 1989, he began his project titled African Village in America, currently installed in and around his home in Birmingham, Alabama. The ongoing series records and retells history, depicting the sacrifices and contributions of African Americans. A smorgasbord of found objects and recycled gadgets, the sculptures refer to a long and dedicated fight for equality. While Minter’s most recent work takes on the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter Movement, he has been tackling such matters for decades. Ancestral African culture, the horrors of slavery, the triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement, the courage of African American soldiers––these histories are interwoven within Minter’s archive, inviting divine mercy and striving for peace.

Joe Minter (b. 1943) lives and works in Birmingham, Alabama. Previous solo exhibitions include Joe Minter, Sculpture 1995-2012 at James Fuentes Gallery (New York, NY) in 2019 and Once That River Starts To Flow at the Atlanta Contemporary (Atlanta, GA) in 2018. His work is included in various public and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY), the Souls Grown Deep Foundation (Atlanta, GA), the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington DC) and the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA), among others.

His work has been included in In the Presence of Our Ancestors: Southern Perspectives in African American Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Minneapolis, MN) in 2021, History Refused to Die: Highlights from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Gift at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY) and Revelations: Art from the African American South at the De Young Museum (San Francisco, CA) in 2018, and the groundbreaking Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art of the South at the Michael C. Carlos Museum (Atlanta, GA) in 1996.

Download full CV