Johnson: As he runs through the varying pieces of the Now Dig This shoe, Johnson tangentially sets out to dismiss any possible inference that Black artists invented artistic assemblage and that our gratitude is better attributed to “White artists like…”

Raiford: While in pursuit of protection and liberation for African-Americans in the 1960s, the Black Panther Party struggled to maintain control of their image which became a site of contestation from its inception to contemporary times.

Jones: Kellie Jones offers us a panoramic snapshot of the revolutionary African American artists and their artworks as they increasingly gained visibility in the U.S art scene of the 1960s.

I was completely disturbed after reading Johnson’s NY Times article. It read as an irrelevant piece of commentary on the Kellie Jones’ Now Dig This collection. Johnson   begins this piece by identifying the intention of the show to illustrate the inability of the high-end art world to acknowledge and celebrate the art of Black artists. However he finishes the piece in a hurry to discredit not just the works of many pioneering Black artists but the artists themselves. This is the same triple negation that Adrien Piper has faced as a colored women artist. The insecurities of Johnson throughout this piece are manifold, however it seems that the biggest fear is the recognition that the production of “high-end” art is not exclusive to the the higher tiers of society.