Vivian Browne: My Kind of Protest

Vivian Browne's (1929-1993) varied career spanned more than three decades, from her early portraits and landscapes in the late 1950s and early '60s, her Little Men series of 1966-69, to her final San Joaquin and King's Canyon paintings of the very early 1990s, completed just before her death. This highly active career was framed by Browne's lasting political engagement and activism, that included being an initial director of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC), born out of a response to the Metropolitan Museum's failure to include a single Black Harlem-based artist in its 1969 exhibition, Harlem on My Mind, and her active memberships of Where We At (WWA), the Women's Caucus for Art (WCA), and the feminist art collective Heresies, from the early 1970s until her death in 1993. This volume presents about 62 paintings, prints, and works on paper across several major bodies of work, alongside ephemera highlighting Browne's enduring activism and teaching work. Drawing upon previously unknown works and archives that have recently become available, this is a significant contribution to the history of twentieth century American art.