Appreciating beauty: Art exhibit centers the Black experience

In a painting, a young Black boy somersaults on a patch of green grass against a bright blue sky. A police cruiser passes behind him, its taillights visible at the right edge of the composition. 

 

Titled “Joy and Pain,” the painting is by visual artist Mario Moore ’13 M.F.A. The child is his nephew. The scene captures the blend of joy and foreboding that can mark the childhoods of Black males in the United States.

 

“‘Joy and Pain’ deliberately is thinking about Black boys’ lives and Black people’s lives and how you can exist in one body having happiness and giddiness and being a child with hopes and goals, the beauty of life and aspirations, but at the same time in that same body, you have to deal with that trauma you are alerted to usually at a very young age and as a young boy,” Moore has said of the painting. 

 

Moore’s painting is currently on view at Yale Divinity School (YDS) as part of an exhibition of artworks by Yale-trained artists that, in a variety of media, represent themes of identity, power, and the Black experience. The works, on display in the Croll Family Entrance Hall, were shared by Jessica and Kelvin Beachum (a veteran offensive lineman for the National Football League’s Arizona Cardinals), who own an extensive art collection that attempts to illuminate American history and contemporary life.