Barbara Bullock

Woodmere Art Museum is pleased to present Barbara Bullock. Bullock's practice in the visual arts across more than six decades in Philadelphia is grounded in community engagement, teaching, and collaborative projects implemented with both children and adults in a broad range of contexts, including K-12 schools, museums, community organizations, and public spaces. Socially-driven artists are accepted as part of the mix in the arts today, but this was not always the case. Bullock stands out as a pioneering figure in Philadelphia whose work extends outside the studio and into the city, especially into the city’s Black communities, with an embrace of African art as inspiration, declaration of strength, and path to reclaiming an ancestral cultural identity. Forcefully, but gently with the beauty of her art and teaching, Bullock takes a stand for social justice, working in the cultural and educational spheres of Philadelphia.  

Bullock's work as an educator informs the ideas and visual language of the art she made in the studio, and visa versa. The exhibition will include many of the objects that Bullock made to inspire students and participants in community projects such as game boards, pop-up books, hats, fans, boxes, altars, and miniature theaters. They share a vocabulary of figurative elements, animal forms, patterns, textures, and colors that characterize Bullock's studio practice.