The Gift

Emma Amos (American, 1937–2020) was a groundbreaking artist who worked in paint, print, and textiles to celebrate the lives of women, particularly women of color. 

The Gift: Emma Amos with Friends centers on Amos’s monumental portrait series The Gift (1990–94), recently acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art. This suite of 48 watercolor portraits, painted from life, depicts women artists, writers, and curators in Amos’s intergenerational community. Ranging from renowned figures—Elizabeth Catlett, Anna Deavere Smith, bell hooks, Lucy Lippard, Howardena Pindell, Faith Ringgold, Lorna Simpson, and Kay WalkingStick—to lesser-known individuals, the evocative paintings are united in a vast grid whose scale radiates the force of its subjects.

 “The Gift is not possible to negate,” Amos stated. “Those women are too powerful to ignore.” Made as a birthday present for her daughter India, The Gift animates the importance of creative community as a source of strength, support, and inspiration, which Amos learned from her mother. ​​Marking the first time The Gift has been displayed in nearly 20 years, The Gift: Emma Amos with Friends reveals the context for this work’s production and its legacies. 

Alongside The Gift, earlier portraits by Amos in the CMA’s collection as well as the artist’s own notebooks, manuscripts, and film footage documenting The Gift’s production highlight how kinship—biological and elected—was an enduring motivation for her art. This exhibition also features selected works by Amos to further contextualize The Gift within the artist’s decades-long practice.

The Gift: Emma Amos with Friends is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue inspired by a book proposal that Amos drafted but never realized during her lifetime. This catalogue includes essays by Rhea L. Combs, Carmen Hermo, Emily Liebert, and Gabriella Shypula, as well as a reprinted interview of Amos by bell hooks. The intersection of portraiture and community is explored through a roundtable discussion with contemporary artists Jordan Casteel, Aliza Nisenbaum, and Amy Sherald, moderated by Rhea L. Combs. The catalogue also features never-before-published archives, as well as biographies for each of The Gift’s 48 sitters. In tandem, the CMA is expanding the exhibition’s reach through a complementary digital resource rooted in The Gift.

Credit: Overview from museum website