Benny Andrews

Benny Andrews is a painter in many genres and has been a controversial and civically engaged artist living and working in New York City for over 30 years. His work has been shown all over the world, and his activism challenged racism in the practices of institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney.

Andrews recalls his inspiration for protest as a desire to show the world the wide breadth of his work, his paintings depicted people, beyond color lines, yet often his representations of Blacks rarely got shown. He was able to instigate a movement that demanded and achieved more, if not better, representations of Blackness in New York museums.