Darrel Ellis: Regeneration
Co-organized by The Baltimore Museum of Art and The Bronx Museum.
As moving as it is complex, the multifaceted work of Darrel Ellis (1958–1992) restages a lost vision of Black selfhood and domesticity. His oeuvre has presented a formidable challenge to curators and scholars over the last thirty years for its unfinished tenor, a perception heightened by his untimely death due to AIDS-related causes at age 33. Although Ellis’ work was included in important contemporary surveys during his lifetime, including the 1989 exhibition Witnesses: Against Their Vanishing, organized by Nan Goldin, only now is it beginning to garner the attention it deserves. The exhibition Darrel Ellis: Regeneration offers the first comprehensive, scholarly survey of this pioneering artist, whose highly original merging of painting, printmaking, and photography anticipated current artistic interest in archive, appropriation, and personal narrative.
Exhibition Images
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Darrel Ellis, Self-Portrait after Photograph by Peter Hujar, 1989. Brush and black ink and wash over charcoal on Asian-fiber paper mounted on canvas. Baltimore Museum of Art, purchase with exchange funds from the Pearlstone Family Fund and partial gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.; BMA 2019.159 -
Darrel Ellis, Untitled (Aunt Lena and Grandmother Lilian Ellis), 1990. Gelatin silver print with colored ink (hand coloring). Collection of Frank Franca. © Darrel Ellis Estate, Candice Madey, New York, and Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles. -
Darrel Ellis, Untitled (Grandfather Thomas and Cousin Irving), c. 1990. Gelatin silver print. The Baltimore Museum of Art: The William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund, BMA 2019.160. © Darrel Ellis Estate, Candice Madey, New York, and Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles. -
Darrel Ellis, Untitled (Laure on Easter Sunday), c. 1989–1991. Gelatin silver print with colored ink (hand coloring). Courtesy of Candice Madey, New York, Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles, and The Darrel Ellis Estate. © Darrel Ellis Estate, Candice Madey, New York, and Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles -
Darrel Ellis, Untitled, c. 1988–1991. Chromogenic print. Courtesy of Candice Madey, New York, Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles, and The Darrel Ellis Estate. © Darrel Ellis Estate, Candice Madey, New York, and Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles -
Darrel Ellis, Untitled (Laure, from Father's Photograph), ca. 1990. Gelatin silver print. Bronx Museum of the Arts Collection, Gift of Scot and Julie Cohen 2006.4