Rising Oklahoma artist premieres first major museum show in Wichita before national tour

With every brush stroke, Robert Peterson is making a statement and leaving a legacy, creating bold, realistic and intimate portraits of African Americans in everyday life surroundings to provide a narrative for current and future generations.

The portraits often pay homage to the people close to him — friends and family like his “cool” older sister, a barber who embraces his role as a father, a neighborhood kid, his wife’s best friend and other women in the friend’s family representing different generations and sitting on a couch in his wife’s salon, and his influential grandmother, depicted as a young woman folded into a chair, because in later life she often sat “to rest her bones.”

While the people are often just ordinary folks, Peterson makes observations and statements with his paintings.

Created during the George Floyd protests, the painting of the kid from across the street pulling back on a slingshot is called “Slaying Giants,” a commentary on social injustice. His masterful shadings of Black skin tones celebrate beauty and musculature. Purposeful poses depict strengths, as well as the burdens often felt by Black men in America.

When Tera Hedrick, the Wichita Art Museum’s curator, first saw the Lawton, Okla.-based artist’s work in a Harlem gallery a few years ago, she says she was “gobsmacked.”

“I see a lot of art and when I walked in, I knew he was something special. And then we learned he was from Lawton, Okla.,” Hedrick said.

Hedrick’s chance discovery — she had gone to the gallery because of WAM’s interest in acquiring another artist’s work — led to WAM buying Peterson’s “Sunday Kind of Love” painting that was on display.

Even more importantly, it led to Peterson and WAM collaborating to produce his first major museum exhibition that will eventually go on a national tour.

The exhibition “Robert Peterson: Somewhere in America,” on display now at WAM through Jan. 5, showcases 48 portraits depicting 58 people. More than 20 works are new, created this year; some works belong to collectors, including now-retired NBA player Derrick Rose, the No. 1 draft pick in 2008.

“To be able to have a show this big with so many Black people (represented) is important to me. You just don’t see that,” Peterson said while he was in Wichita for the exhibition’s opening.

By “you don’t just see that,” Peterson was referring both to the fact that his first major museum show is in middle America and not in some gallery in a major urban center, as well as the fact that often Black audiences just don’t see people who look like them in major exhibitions.

The latter was evident when WAM unveiled its “Sunday Kind of Love” acquisition last year.

“So many people took a photo in front of it and were just amazed by it because I’m sure they hadn’t ever seen anything like this,” said Naama Marcos, WAM’s marketing director.

“It feels good to walk in and see someone who looks like you,” Peterson said.

From self-taught to solo shows

Peterson picked up a paintbrush for the first time in July 2012 to distract and challenge himself as he waited for and recovered from hip replacement surgery.

Before that, he had been a forklift driver at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. in Lawton, a job he got after he had to leave Parsons School of Design in New York City’s Greenwich Village in 2008 because his college funding fell through during the Great Recession.

He had hoped to be a fashion designer back then; now he incorporates fashion labels in his work.

And he recently established a collaboration with Paper Planes, celebrity Jay-Z’s fashion label, which has created a limited supply of durags with a black and white flag motif and collector’s T-shirts with the image of Peterson’s “American Dreamin’” painting, which is in the exhibition. The clothing items are available on the Paper Plane website and in the WAM store.

Peterson started painting in his garage, which allowed him to create large-scale pieces and just as importantly, stay close and available for his family. Just last year he moved into a dedicated studio.

Just months after starting to paint, Peterson sold the first two of his larger paintings. Within less than a year, he had his show in a New York City Gallery.

He’s become a major up-and-coming contemporary artist ever since, with works in the permanent collections of museums such as the Brooklyn Museum and the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa.

In 2016, he became the first Black artist to be named Artist of the Year for Southwestern Oklahoma by the Oklahoma Arts Council. In 2017, he was named Spectrum Spotlight Artist of the Year at Art Basel Miami, a premier international art fair.

His commissions include a painting for the Oklahoma City Thunder to honor basketball player Russell Westbrook unveiled in 2018 and a painting of novelist Ernest Gaines, the author of “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” that was used for the 46th stamp in the U.S. Postal Service’s annual Black Heritage Series in 2023.

Besides Derrick Rose, other notable people who have collected his works include professional athletes Kevin Durant and Floyd Mayweather, singer Miley Cyrus and Pulitzer Prize-winner Nikole Hannah Jones.

One of the last works Peterson created for the WAM exhibition is a portrait of Jones, who spearheaded the 1619 Project series that focuses on the impact of slavery in U.S. history. Peterson delivered the piece, which shows Jones in a Gucci dress wearing hoop earrings that incorporate 1619 in the design, about 10 days before the exhibition opened on Sept. 28.

While Peterson has had smaller solo shows in galleries and has been featured in events at other museums, the WAM exhibition is his first major exhibition for a museum.

More events

Several events are planned in conjunction with the exhibition, including a three-part portraiture workshop for teens, several WAM Nights programming on select Friday nights and a poetry event.

The teen workshop, which costs $75, will meet 1-3:30 p.m. Sundays, Oct. 27. Nov. 3 and 11.

One of the WAM Nights programs will feature curator, writer and cultural historian TK Smith, the curator of arts of Africa and the African Diaspora at Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum. Smith, the editor of the forthcoming Peterson exhibition catalogue, will give a free talk at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 1. Tickets for a VIP happy hour starting at 5:30 p.m. are $30, $20 for members.

“Ponder. This. — Poetry Unchained,” scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 2, will include performances by the local poets group Ponder.This., and singer Kimberly Paige, along with a talk by Hedrick. Cost is $15, $5 for WAM members, and includes admission to the exhibition.

During the WAM Nights program from 6 to 8 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 27, coloring sheets inspired by Peterson’s exhibit will be available.

Admission for “Robert Peterson: Somewhere in America” is $12; it’s free to WAM members, college students with an ID and youth under 18. The exhibition will be free for everyone on Saturday, Dec. 7, as part of the museum’s holiday open house and Family ArtVenture event.

‘Robert Peterson: Somewhere in America’ WAM exhibition

What: the first major museum exhibition of contemporary artist Robert Peterson, whose 46 portraits portray African Americans in everyday settings

Where: Wichita Art Museum, 1400 Museum Blvd.

When: through Sunday, Jan. 5. WAM hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesdays-Sundays, with extended hours until 9 p.m. Fridays.

Admission: $12; free to WAM members, college students with an ID and youth under 18. The exhibit will be free for everyone Saturday, Dec. 7, as part of WAM’s holiday open house and Family ArtVenture events.

More info: 316-268-4921 or wam.org