Overview:
The African American Museum in Fair Park is showcasing the work of Clementine Hunter, a self-taught Louisiana artist who painted the realities of Black life on Melrose Plantation. The exhibition, Sunday Call to Church: The Art of Clementine Hunter, features dozens of Hunter's paintings that capture the rhythms, rituals, and realities of Black life, including baptisms, funerals, and everyday scenes. Hunter's work is significant for its insistence on placing Black people at the center of narratives from which they were often erased. The exhibit is a celebration of storytelling and spirit, and a reminder that art rooted in truth can outlive its moment, becoming its own kind of ancestor.
The African American Museum in Fair Park opens its newest exhibition, Sunday Call to Church: The Art of Clementine Hunter, a sweeping and deeply personal retrospective of the self-taught Louisiana artist whose work captured the rhythms, rituals, and realities of Black life on Melrose Plantation. Born in 1887 in Clouterville, Louisiana, Hunter painted the world she knew: its joys, its labor, its spirit, and transformed her everyday memories into one of the most significant bodies of folk art in American history.
The Exhibition team for this exhibit consists of a knowledgeable host of curators, archivists and more: Lakeem Wilson, Associate Curator; Ernest Moore, Facilities and Logistics Manager; Faith Golden, Archivist; MMD Designs, Fabrication and Graphic Support and Mikayla Magee, Mural Artist.
Across dozens of paintings from private collections and the museum’s extensive archive, the exhibit reveals Hunter’s extraordinary ability to document a world that disrupts several paradigms across mainstream art history.
A Spirit-Led Artist with an Unbreakable Vision
Clementine Hunter began painting in the 1920s, using leftover supplies gifted to her by visiting artists. A cook and housekeeper on Melrose Plantation, she painted not for profit but for expression.
“Spirituality was her foundation,” Wilson explains during the exhibition tour. Angels, ancestors, and sacred watchers appear throughout her work floating above cotton fields, hovering near church pews, or lingering over funeral processions. Hunter firmly believed these spirits protected her and her community. They shape the emotional language of many pieces on display, including early depictions where her intertwined “CH” signature offers clues to the decade of her creation.
Her life was not untouched by the legacies of enslavement. Though she painted well after emancipation, plantation life persisted in Louisiana into the mid-20th century, and yet Hunter’s world, painted in bright colors and bold strokes, radiates joy, memory, and storytelling, not despair.
Everyday Life as Epic Narrative
Hunter’s work chronicles daily life with cinematic clarity. In the exhibit, visitors encounter scenes such as:
‘Saturday Night’
One of the exhibit’s highlights, this painting captures an entire universe in a single frame: dancing, drinking, arguments, laughter, and a bar fight all coexist in a vivid tableau. It’s life: messy, vibrant and communal.
Title: Saturday Night, Courtesy of African American Museum
Uncle Tom’s Garden
A vibrant spray of blooms coat the painting in radiant shades of yellow, orange, crimson and blue in this scene. Uncle Tom sits calmly among the blooms, admiring them alongside a flock of black birds dappled overhead.
Easter Egg Hunt
A joyful depiction of children combing the grounds of Melrose for colorful eggs, this painting radiates familial warmth and seasonal delight.
Title: Easter Egg Hunt, Courtesy of African American Museum
Reframing Black Spaces in Art
One of Hunter’s most powerful contributions is her insistence on placing Black people at the center of narratives from which they were often erased. The exhibit includes:
- A black judge and black jurors in a courtroom scene
- Intimate glimpses of church services, gatherings, and community rituals
Title: The Baptism Down by the River, Courtesy of African American Museum
These paintings not only document a world as Hunter saw it, they reclaim it.
Legacy Rooted in Memory, Resilience, and Faith
Hunter’s works in this exhibition span from the 1920s through the 1950s, though her artistic imagination stretches far beyond. As viewers walk the gallery, guided by curators and archivists, they’re reminded that Hunter did not seek fame; recognition came later. She painted to document, to express, and to ensure her life, and the lives of those around her, would not be forgotten.
Her pieces hold rhythm and resilience, faithfully preserving a rural South often absent from art history.
“The important thing,” Golden notes, “is what’s behind her memory. She wanted you to celebrate life with her.”
Celebration of Storytelling and Spirit
Sunday Call to Church is an invitation into Clementine Hunter’s world. Her paintings, textured with memory and illuminated by faith, chronicle the everyday lives of Black Southerners with dignity, joy, and candor.
In sharing her memories, Hunter leaves Dallas with a reminder: art rooted in truth can outlive its moment, becoming its own kind of ancestor.
Location: African American Museum, Fair Park, Dallas, Texas
Dates: December 5, 2025 – March 6, 2026
Featuring: Works from private collections and the museum’s renowned folk art holdings
Experience: A rare, intimate portrait of rural Black life through the eyes of a woman who lived it