The Phillips Collection Announces Plans to Exhibit Question Bridge: Black Males this Fall

The Question Bridge: Black Males project stimulates connections and understanding to represent and redefine black male identity in America.

Washington, DC—Beginning October 8, 2015, The Phillips Collection will exhibit Question Bridge: Black Males, a documentary-style video art installation that aims to represent and redefine black male identity in America. Since its inception in 2008, the project has recorded more than 1,600 questions and responses from black males of all ages and backgrounds that illuminate diversity of thought, character, and identity in America’s black male population. The Phillips joins the more than 30 cultural institutions that have exhibited this compelling installation.

“The Phillips Collection is committed to collaboration, innovation, and engagement with our world,” says Phillips Director Dorothy Kosinski. “The Question Bridge project exemplifies this mission by providing a platform for connection and conversation. The Phillips is proud to exhibit this thought-provoking installation that encourages a national conversation on race at a critical moment in American history.”

To foster honest expression and healing dialogue, the Question Bridge project allows one participant to ask a question while looking directly into the camera, and later another participant answers the question in the same way. The question-and-answer approach allows speakers to feel comfortable as they express their feelings on subjects that divide, unite, and puzzle. Artists Chris Johnson, Hank Willis Thomas, Kamal Sinclair, and Bayeté Ross Smith have recorded more than 160 men in nine American cities, documenting their exchange of ideas and then shaping that content into an engaging, five-screen video installation.

Through Prism.K12, the Phillips’s education initiative that connects the 21st-century museum to K-12 education through arts integration, the Phillips will work with DC Public School teachers and students to incorporate the exhibition into classroom content and core subject areas. Question Bridge: Black Males is on view at the Phillips from October 8, 2015, through January 3, 2016.