{
"data": {
"id": 160326,
"accession_number": "1998.186",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Backdrops, Circa 1940s, 1998. Lorna Simpson (American, b. 1960). Screenprint on two felt panels; left: 66.2 x 42.7 x 0.4 cm (26 1/16 x 16 13/16 x 3/16 in.); right: 66.1 x 42.7 x 0.4 cm (26 x 16 13/16 x 3/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Dr. Gerard and Phyllis Seltzer Fund, 1998.186. \u00a9 Lorna Simpson, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Backdrops, Circa 1940s",
"creation_date": "1998",
"creation_date_earliest": 1998,
"creation_date_latest": 1998,
"artists_tags": [
"female",
"Black American Artists"
],
"culture": [
"America"
],
"technique": "Screenprint on two felt panels",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Prints",
"collection": "PR - Screenprint",
"type": "Print",
"measurements": "Left: 66.2 x 42.7 x 0.4 cm (26 1/16 x 16 13/16 x 3/16 in.); Right: 66.1 x 42.7 x 0.4 cm (26 x 16 13/16 x 3/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"left": {
"height": 0.662,
"height_inch": 26,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0625,
"width": 0.427,
"width_inch": 16,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.8125,
"depth": 0.004,
"depth_inch": 0,
"depth_inch_fraction": 0.1875
},
"right": {
"height": 0.661,
"height_inch": 26,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.427,
"width_inch": 16,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.8125,
"depth": 0.004,
"depth_inch": 0,
"depth_inch_fraction": 0.1875
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": "edition 3/35",
"copyright": "\u00a9 Lorna Simpson, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth",
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "numbered 3/35 and signed in graphite on verso",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 188479,
"title": "From Rembrandt to Rauschenberg: Recently Acquired Prints",
"description": "From Rembrandt to Rauschenberg: Recently Acquired Prints. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 17-November 26, 2000).",
"opening_date": "2000-09-17T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 204176,
"title": "Our Stories: African American Prints and Drawings",
"description": "Our Stories: African American Prints and Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 24-May 18, 2014).",
"opening_date": "2014-01-24T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 455214,
"title": "Photographs in Ink",
"description": "Photographs in Ink. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 20, 2022-April 2, 2023).",
"opening_date": "2022-11-19T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Main Gallery Rotation (gallery 229): April 13, 2009 - September 11, 2009.",
"opening_date": "2009-04-13T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "In this work, Lorna Simpson confronts the historical fact that African American women were rarely glamorized in Hollywood productions of the 1940s; their role in films was most often limited to that of household servant. The left panel depicts a melancholy African American woman in a white dress posing amid a fake moon and stars. The blurriness and muted contrasts achieved by printing on felt render the woman's skin, hair, and dress almost indistinguishable from the contrasts of the stage set. On the right a detail of singer Lena Horne is barely recognizable because the edges of the support sever her face and body. The illegibility and near invisibility of the women in each image aligns with Simpson's exploration of the marginalization of black women in American culture.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79981337"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1998.186",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Dr. Gerard and Phyllis Seltzer Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 160326,
"creators": [
{
"id": 904,
"description": "Lorna Simpson (American, b. 1960)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Lorna Simpson uses photography to invert cultural stereotypes about race, class, and gender by decoding and reordering visual and verbal languages. Born in Brooklyn, she began taking documentary photographs throughout the United States and abroad in the late 1970s. While in graduate school at the University of California, San Diego (M.F.A., 1985), Simpson began to question the objectivity of such images and examine how these documents are generally perceived. In the mid-1980s, Simpson garnered critical acclaim for her series of large-scale black-and-white portraits of Black men and women. Photographed from behind and inserted into stark, flat backgrounds, Simpson juxtaposed her anonymous portraits with poetic text fragments to reveal underlying racial and gender stereotypes in American culture. In 1990, Simpson became the first African-American woman to present a one-person exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1960",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1998-11-23T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1998,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1998",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "cover",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": "3",
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-01 06:52:10.490000"
}
}