Organize: Building an Exhibitionary Complex

In chapter 3 the focus moves from artistic creation to institution building. It provides an overview of how African American artists in postwar Los Angeles managed to create institutional structures through magazines, exhibitions, galleries and museums of their own (Black Art Quarterly, the Watts Summer Festival, Alonzo Davis and Dale Brockman Davis’s Brockman Gallery, etc.). It also explores how cultural workers such as Cecil Fergerson and Samella Lewis sought to integrate existing American establishments (i.e., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art). The role of art collectors is considered as well.