Video Description: Type of Video:  Tour*

Kehinde Wiley rose to stard­­om as the master painter behind President Barrack Obama’s portrait at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C..  In this video, Mr. Wiley and the exhibit curator speak about Wiley’s artistic style and influences and a new series of artwork painted for the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM).

This video is one of many in our “Art in Exhibition” video series.

In addition to the lesson plans and activity ideas included with the Teacher and Student Tools below, here’s a few quick suggestions for use of this video:

• In the video, Mr. Wiley refers to the relationship between art museums and the community.  Ask students to consider the following questions:  What do you see as the role of art museums in communities today?  If you were to exhibit your work at a local museum, what community message would you want to send?
• In the video, Mr. Wiley refers to the influence of art history on his work.  Ask students to consider the following questions:  What periods or movements from art history influence their own work?  How?  Is there an era of art history they’d like to learn more about?

*Tour videos (1-6 minutes) take students to laboratories, museums, studios, workspaces, and diverse “in the field” and community locations related to the area of study.  For more information on different types of videos available in the Educate.Today collection, download “Educate Today Types of Videos.”

To view additional sample videos from the Educate.Today collection, click here.

More on the Artist and the Exhibition:
“There’s something kind of wonderful that these grand narrative paintings are all based on a single chance moment in the streets of St. Louis,” he said while describing a preference for capturing the everyday person over the rich and famous. The subjects behind Wiley’s paintings at SLAM all originate from a trip to North St. Louis and Ferguson in 2017, where Wiley and his team street cast models for the series.

The everyday men and women memorialized in his grand, large-scale paintings look immensely familiar. Wiley lauds the work as being a “celebration of 21st century culture.” When he spoke with the models, he requested that they wear clothing in which they felt comfortable – that reflected their own personal style. So the models wore camouflage and Nike t-shirts. They wore jean shorts and midriff tops with tattoos fully on display.

However, the poses they assume hold a different kind of familiarity. As part of this project, Wiley took inspiration from masterworks within SLAM’s collection, so these everyday people take on the roles once reserved for the wealthy and the white. The models assume “poses of colonial masters, the former bosses of the old world.” It is a potent subversion of classic western art to see the democratization of power with portraiture extend to men and women who have historically endured so much powerlessness by virtue of the color of their skin. The portraits reflect a personal narrative, both of the subjects and the artist himself.

“So much of what I do now is a type of self-portraiture,” he said. With this series, Wiley has brought a refreshing and long overdue vibrancy to portraiture within the walls of the Saint Louis Art Museum.

Kehinde Wiley grew up in South Central Los Angeles and is a graduate of both the Art Institute of San Francisco and Yale University.  He currently resides in New York City.