Forward Together: African American Prints from the Jean and Robert Steele Collection

On view January 18, 2024 – September 15, 2024

LOCATED IN Gallery 13

Forward Together celebrates HoMA’s transformative acquisition of 55 prints from the Jean and Robert Steele Collection in Honolulu. The exhibition examines some of the myriad ways in which African American artists and Black-owned and operated workshops shaped the development of printmaking in America to influence the larger trajectory of 20th century American art and visual culture.

“Forward Together” by Jacob Lawrence

A retired academic and dean of behavioral sciences at the University of Maryland, Dr. Robert Steele is also the former director of UMD’s David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora. Now residing in Hawaiʻi, Dr. Steele and his wife Jean have been collecting prints and works on paper by African American artists since the 1960s. Over the decades, they befriended many of the artists and printmakers on display.

“Wynton’s Tune” by Faith Ringgold