The Eye, the Mind, and the Heart In Honor of Clark Poling

was carried to the South by Minniefield's enslaved ancestors. She used this plant-based dye, mahogany bark, and crushed oyster shells—a material used in the architecture of the coastal regions of both West Africa and the American South— to create these large-scale paintings. As Minniefield inserts her own body as life-sized self-portraits into the series, each work is a prayer. Like the Ring Shout, its ritual affirms Black life and asserts Black identity to conjure a new world and to imagine a new freedom today.

Indigo Prayers: A Creation Story is presented in conjunction with Minniefield’s Praise House, which recreates the small, single-room structures in which enslaved people gathered to worship. The first in the series of Praise Houses was constructed at Oakland Cemetery in conjunction with Flux Projects to celebrate Juneteenth 2021 and to honor the over 800 enslaved people interred in the cemetery’s African American Burial Grounds. While Minniefield’s Praise House at Oakland has now closed, she plans future locations in downtown Decatur, on Emory University’s Atlanta campus, and at South-View Cemetery, where Congressman John Lewis was laid to rest. Z

This exhibition is made possible by the Massey Charitable Trust.

The Eye, the Mind, and the Heart: In Honor of Clark Poling

From january 15 through march 6, the Carlos Museum presented The Eye, the Mind, and the Heart: In Honor of Clark Poling.

During his thirty-three years at Emory, Clark Poling served as professor and chair of Art History, director of the Michael C. Carlos Museum (formerly the Emory University Museum of Art and Archaeology), and faculty curator emeritus of Works on Paper. As director of the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Poling managed the major reorganization and reinstallation of the collections, worked alongside Michael Graves to design the 1985 renovation of the old Emory Law School building and developed the museum's first series of special exhibitions. Poling was an internationally recognized art historian whose work in early twentiethcentury French and German art and theory was highly regarded in the field.

This exhibition recalls Poling's work and the Art History Department's foundational course, Art/ Culture/Context II (Art History 102). The show reflects on his deeply held belief that studying works of art in person was essential in order to develop the eye, the mind, and the heart. These works are drawn from the museum's collection of Works on Paper, many of which were acquired during Poling's tenure.Z

This exhibition is made possible by the Massey Charitable Trust.

below Clark Poling. Photo courtesy of the Poling family.