Celebrate Dana C. Chandler Jr. and AAMARP Day in the City of Boston at the ICA with FREE admission on April 7, and visit Say It Loud: AAMARP, 1977 to Now. 

About the Exhibit

Founded in 1977 by influential artist, educator, and activist Dana C. Chandler Jr., the African American Master Artists-in-Residence Program (AAMARP) at Northeastern University is one of the few longstanding residency programs for Black artists in the United States. With the university’s support, AAMARP has stood at the intersection of art, activism, and community for nearly five decades. A vital outgrowth of the Black Arts movement in Boston, AAMARP was envisioned as both an artistic haven and a cultural force—providing a “living focus” on “the diverse dynamics of African American aesthetics,” according to an early program description. Conceived as a Black artist-run alternative art space, AAMARP offered more than free studio space—it nurtured a thriving hub for exhibitions, poetry readings, dance performances, lectures, films, workshops, and public gatherings. Today, the program is still supported by Northeastern University and operates as a vibrant, intergenerational collective of thirteen transnational artists whose works across media offer a rich and varied reflection of the arts of Africa and its diaspora.

Countless artists have been involved with AAMARP, either as residents, exhibiting artists, or program participants. Say It Loud presents a dynamic selection of artworks by thirty-nine artists differently affiliated with AAMARP from its founding in 1977 to the present. During this period, the history of the program has unfolded across three locations: first, at 11 Leon Street on Northeastern’s campus, then in a rented space at 590 Huntington Avenue, and finally, its current location at 76 Atherton Street in Jamaica Plain. Pieced together between archival documents and personal recollections, the histories recounted here are necessarily fragmented, incomplete, and at times contested. Say It Loud offers an in-depth look at the program through the lens of sixty artworks made or exhibited there, even as the program’s full scope exceeds any one exhibition. Tracing the evolution of AAMARP through the artists’ voices, their engagement with global artistic and political movements, and their deep-rooted sense of community, this exhibition illuminates a living archive of creative resistance, cultural memory, and artistic excellence.

Artists in the exhibition: Benny Andrews, Ellen Banks, Gloretta Baynes, Calvin Burnett, Ambreen Butt, Dana C. Chandler Jr., Jeff Chandler, Allan Rohan Crite, Milton Derr, Sharon Dunn, Marlon Forrester, L’Merchie Frazier, Tyrone Geter, Ricardo “Deme5” Gomez, Paul Goodnight, Reginald L. Jackson, Michael Jones, Shea Justice, Kofi Kayiga, Khalid Kodi, Marcia Lloyd, Vusumuzi Maduna, Bryan McFarlane, Stanley Pinckney, Hakim Raquib, James Reuben Reed, Rudolph R. Robinson, Renée Stout, Edward Strickland, Susan Thompson, Arnold Trachtman, Wen-ti Tsen, Barbara Ward, Keith Morris Washington, Don West, Rene Westbrook, John Wilson, Richard Yarde, and Theresa-India Young.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue surveying the program’s rich history through scholarly texts and an extensive chronology illustrated by archival materials and artworks.

Credits

Say It Loud: AAMARP, 1977 to Now is organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Mannion Family Curator, with Meghan Clare Considine, Curatorial Assistant.

Support for Say It Loud: AAMARP, 1977 to Now is provided by The Coby Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, The Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Exhibition Fund, and The Kristen and Kent Lucken Fund for Photography.

The publication is supported by Wagner Foundation.