Examining the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement.

After 1968: Contemporary Artists and the Civil Rights Legacy includes newly commissioned and recently produced work by ten emerging contemporary artists. Conceived in tandem with Road to Freedom: Photographs from the Civil Rights Movement, this exhibition takes the transformative year of 1968 as its departure point.

These artists—born in or after 1968—have processed the visual and historical data of that year, including images from the High Museum of Art's singular archive of civil rights photographs. They have created works in all media that honor the legacy of the civil rights movement while exploring its ongoing relevancy and influence upon subsequent generations in diverse ways.

The exhibition explores how each artist's experience of and relationship to culture and their own artistic practice has been informed by the freedoms engendered by the Civil Rights movement. For some of the artists, the images of 1968 provide context and serve as inspiration; for others, it is the ethos and spirit of progressive change that 1968 represents that inspires their work. All the artists approach issues of race, identity, commodity culture, American violence, and personal agency with fresh eyes, aware that their inherited legacy shapes a distinct worldview that is in some way a tangible legacy of that radical time.