"The death knell has been rung for print media many times over in the past decades: thousands of local newspapers have shuttered, digital readership has shot up, and journalism has suffered a crisis. But if print really is dead, you wouldn’t know it from “Multiplicity: Blackness in American Collage,” a smart survey that features dozens of pieces that invest precious publications with new life.
Take Helina Metaferia’s Headdress 61 (2023), featuring artist Chase Williamson donning a grand, collaged headdress. This headdress is partially formed from newspaper clippings sourced from archives in Nashville, the city where Williamson was employed at the time, working as a curatorial fellow at the Frist Art Museum. Certain headlines are visible—one advertises a report on integration efforts in Birmingham, Alabama—while others are tucked away beneath images of demonstrations held following the 1968 killing of Martin Luther King, Jr. The yellowed, puckered quality of the clippings causes Williamson’s crown to appear golden..."
