Closing Reception for Black Joy As Power and Resistance

Join us for the closing reception of our Black History Month exhibition! Meet the artists and enjoy free refreshments and wine while having the opportunity to see work previously exhibited at places like MOMA, Whitney Museum of American Art, and The High Museum of Art.

As the signature event of our twelfth annual celebration of Black History Month, The Art Center is proud to present Black Joy as Power and Resistance: African American Printmakers. Throughout the history of African American art, printmaking has occupied a uniquely powerful position as both an artistic and political medium. Reproducible, accessible, and inherently democratic, the print has long served as a vehicle for storytelling, resistance, education, and cultural affirmation. For African American artists, printmaking has not merely been a technical process, but a strategic tool—one that allows images, ideas, and histories to circulate beyond elite institutions and into the hands of the communities whose lives they reflect.

This exhibition features works by master African American printmakers of historical significance, including Faith Ringgold, Sam Gilliam, and Elizabeth Catlett, whose work is represented in major museum collections such as The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the High Museum of Art. We are deeply grateful to the Hammonds House Museum and the Experimental Printmaking Institute in Pennsylvania for making it possible to present these exceptional works in Johns Creek.

In dialogue with these masters, the exhibition also highlights the work of prominent contemporary printmakers working throughout the Southeast, each offering a distinct and powerful perspective on the Black American experience—one that affirms joy as both a form of resistance and a source of enduring strength.