Emory Douglas Exhibition Marks Laveronica Gallery's 10th Anniversary

Laveronica Arte Contemporanea in Modica, Sicily, celebrates its tenth anniversary with a solo exhibition of Emory Douglas, the former Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party. Titled "Freedom Is A Constant Struggle," the show runs from August 22 to December 15, 2017. Douglas, born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1943, grew up in San Francisco's black ghettos and experienced poverty and incarceration before joining the Black Panther Party in 1967 at age 24. As art director of The Black Panther newspaper—published weekly from 1967 to 1976—he created hundreds of iconic covers that influenced liberation movements across Latin America, Asia, and Africa. His work was never intended for commercial sale but as political messaging, addressing racial issues, poverty, discrimination, imperialism, immigration reform, political prisoner freedom, and labor rights. Party members plastered his posters on walls, buses, and gas stations, inspiring thousands of young black Americans. Though the Black Panther Party dissolved in 1982, Douglas's oeuvre of thousands of images, posters, comics, and collages remains a powerful visual interpretation of ideological struggle. For the exhibition, Douglas insisted that some of his most iconic images be reproduced as murals inside the gallery by Sicilian street artists, reflecting his belief that art is a social act and community binder.