Dance Inspires Soul! Artist

Exhibition at Ohio Historical Center Features Works by New Yorker

Dance movement is a major source of inspiration for Brooklyn, N.Y., artist Richard Barclift.  With a minimalist stroke of brush and ink, he captures the essence of dance movements wherever he sees them, whether in a club, on a basketball court, city-street, or concert hall. 

“Dance is all around us, and Barclift does his best to document and celebrate this ancient form of cultural expression,” said Floyd Thomas, curator at the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce, Ohio.  “He is particularly fascinated with movements derived from African traditions and African American culture.”

About Love by Richard Barcliff, 1981	Fallen Angel by Louis Delsarte, 2001

Barclift began to develop his ability to translate movement into drawing while he studied at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and New York’s Pratt Institute.  A resident instructor at The Muse in New York, Barclift has created dance illustrations for Essence Magazine, The Black Theater Alliance, and “Dance Africa” for the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  Barclift has produced illustrations for major dance companies, including the National Dance Theater of Jamaica, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and the Dance Theater of Harlem.  His art is found in many collections, including the The Schomburg Center for Research in New York City’s Harlem.

Several of Richard Barclift’s drawings from the collection of the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center are currently on display in the Soul! exhibition at the Ohio History Center in Columbus.  In “Senegalese Drummers,” Barclift celebrates the centrality of the drum in many African cultures.  African dancers traditionally move to the beat of the drum, an instrument that was prohibited for enslaved Africans in America.  But the percussive sound of the drum, like dance, would never be eradicated from African American cultural memory and life.  With just a few brush strokes, the artist’s “Capoeira Series #1” captures classic movements in a form of martial arts at times disguised as a dance by enslaved Africans prohibited from performing military exercises in Brazil.  Barclift’s “About Love” honors his friend, the brilliant Shirley Rushing, who was performing at that time with the Rod Ross Dance Company. 

Thomas pointed out, “In these and many other drawings and paintings, Richard Barclift celebrates an African American contribution to American culture manifest in movements that form the foundation for popular dances from the colonial period to the present.”

From generation to generation and from the street to the concert stage, the dance Richard Barclift documents is a tribute to the legacy and resilience of African traditions that have profoundly shaped the way Americans move.     

Barclift’s paintings, along with works by African-American artists are featured in Soul!, will be on display at the Ohio Historical Center through Feb. 28, 2010.

The Ohio Historical Center is located at I-71 & 17th Ave. in Columbus. Admission to the Ohio Historical Center is $8/adults (ages 13-59), $7/seniors (60+), $4/youth (ages 6-12) and free for Ohio Historical Society members and children 5 years of age and under. Museum hours are: Thursdays, 9 a.m.–9 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.; and Sundays, noon–5 p.m.

For information, call the Ohio Historical Society at 800.686.6124 or visit www.ohiohistory.org/soul.