Image by Flickr user Montwerx

The Gibbes Museum of Art will present the Smithsonian traveling exhibition Ancestry and Innovation: African American Art from the American Folk Art Museum beginning July 31.

The exhibit explores self-taught African American artists from the rural South and the urban North. Some of the highlights of the exhibit are complex and vibrant quilts, paintings, works on paper and sculpture by contemporary African American artists.

Gibbes Executive Director Angela Mack had this to say in a press release:

“We’re delighted that objects from New York’s American Folk Art Museum will be featured throughout our second floor galleries in this exciting exhibition offered through the Smithsonian. The folk art tradition is a strong component of the history of art in the South. Ancestry & Innovation allows us to provide a context for this creative story.”