Vivian Browne: My Kind of Protest

A long overdue volume which re-establishes Vivian Browne as an important and dynamic American artist with an expressive hand and expansive world view.

Vivian Browne’s (1929-1993) varied career spanned more than three decades, from her early portraits and landscapes in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, her Little Men series of 1966-69, through her final San Joaquin and King’s Canyon paintings of the very early 1990s, completed just before her death in 1993. This highly active career was framed by Browne’s lasting political engagement and activism, that included being an initial director of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC), born out of a response to the Metropolitan Museum’s failure to include a single Black Harlem-based artist in its 1969 exhibition, Harlem on My Mind, and her active memberships of Where We At (WWA), the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA), and the feminist art collective Heresies, from the early 1970s through her death in 1993.

This volume presents about 62 paintings, prints, and works on paper across several major bodies of work, alongside ephemera highlighting Browne’s enduring activism and teaching work. Drawing upon previously unknown works and archives that have recently become available, this is a significant contribution to the history of twentieth century American art. It accompanies a major exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, OH, and at The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, in 2025.

Amara Antilla is an independent curator.

Adrienne L. Childs is an independent art historian, curator and senior consulting curator at The Phillips Collection.

Darby English is the Carl Darling Buck Professor of Art History and the College Modern and Contemporary Art, Cultural Studies, University of Chicago.

Ethel Renia is the former assistant director of Research and Communications at Ryan Lee Gallery, New York.

Lowery S. Sims is an American art historian and curator of modern and contemporary art known for her expertise in the work of African, African American, Latinx, Native and Asian American artists.