Black Abstract

In the fall of 2017 the The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. needed to advertise an exhibition featuring abstract works by multiple generations of black women artists in context with one another—and within the larger history of abstract art—for the first time. The original title of the exhibition was an unwieldy and confusing message: Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today. Officially we were required to keep this title, but we de-emphasized it in favor of a new and more evocative campaign headline, Black Abstract. We faced two challenges: the inherently niche nature of an abstract art exhibition, and the selection of a new audience for the museum to target: the African American art buff. Our assignment was to create a campaign that would attract the attention of this new audience, convince them to visit a museum they don’t habitually go to, and spread the word to a broader audience.