Old Colored School

2010

Not on view

By the time Buchanan began creating her shack sculptures in the 1980s, she had been researching the longstanding improvisational architecture of the Southern working class. She photographed wooden shacks, shotgun houses, barns, and shanties across Georgia and the Carolinas, then composed small-scale houses out of splintered, rough slabs of Georgia heart pine wood and cedar—the former being the wood often used to build the larger houses. The bright daubs of paint that decorate Old Colored School give double meaning to what reads as a dilapidated schoolhouse from the era of Jim Crow.

Artwork Details

Title: Old Colored School
Artist: Beverly Buchanan (American, Fuquay, North Carolina 1940–2015 Ann Arbor, Michigan)
Date: 2010
Medium: Wood and paint
Dimensions: 20 1/4 × 14 3/4 × 18 1/2 in., 10.2 lb. (51.4 × 37.5 × 47 cm, 4.6 kg)
Classification: Sculpture
Credit Line: Hortense and William A. Mohr Sculpture Purchase Fund, 2017
Object Number: 2017.270a, b
Rights and Reproduction: Jane D. Bridges
Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

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Wall Column, Beverly Buchanan American, Concrete and paint — Wall Column
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