Wilhelmina Godfrey: I am what I am
Archival Restorations
DK Winebrenner, Wilhelmina Godfrey with her work Composition I, c. 1969. Photograph on paper, 9 ¼ × 5 inches. Courtesy of the Burchfield Penney Art Center Archives.
A bare urban landscape orbits around two wrestling boys. One boy, illuminated by the sun, lunges on top of the other, pushing him to the ground. While the bodies intertwine in the foreground of the image, another pair of boys watch the spectacle. One boy leans against a low wall with an air of amusement, and the other bends his head forward, perhaps egging on the fight, looking to intervene, or acting as a referee. Towering geometric buildings surround the children. The sparse facades present angular planes of color, emphasizing variations in the evening light. The mint, maize, and ecru shapes brighten the scene and suggest a time of day, perhaps the last breaths of light before supper. These large cheery shapes contrast with the shadowy regions between buildings, alleyways that double as shared extensions of living space for the families that live around them. The painting, critically or wittily titled, City Playground (1949–50), created with wax emulsion and oil on board, is a major work in the oeuvre of Wilhelmina Godfrey. In it, Godfrey combines her tendencies toward geometric abstraction and figurative painting. Created in the aftermath of World War II, the painting proposes a stark landscape, as its subjects contend with boredom and quotidian childhood disputes in a rapidly shifting world.
Wilhelmina Godfrey (1914–1994) was a painter, printmaker, and fiber artist who grew up and practiced in Buffalo, New York. In her lifetime, Godfrey received notable accolades, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine.
DK Winebrenner, Five of the Six: James Pappas, Allie Anderson, Clarence Scott, Hal Franklin, Wilhelmina Godfrey. Missing is Donald Watkins, 1968. Photograph on paper, 8 ⅛ × 8 inches. Courtesy of the Burchfield Penney Art Center Archives.
Alongside her artistic practice, Godfrey maintained a strong presence in community organizing and activism. She began as a painting and drawing instructor at Buffalo’s Michigan Avenue YMCA in 1951. Around 1968, she co-founded the Langston Hughes Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, where she taught weaving classes.1 As an instructor, she believed her community deserved the best, and her pursuit of premier supplies for students led her to import materials from as far away as Sweden.2 The Langston Hughes Center for the Visual and Performing Arts represented a critical segment of the Black Arts movement of the 1960s and 70s, which encouraged Black agency and autonomy through artistic production. Inspired by artistic communities in other cities and catalyzed by the worldwide struggles for Black liberation, the founders of the Langston Hughes Center pooled resources to create a communal hub for networks of local Black artists.3 The organization focused on youth outreach through art classes, programming, and social services. Godfrey also lent her talents as volunteer and devoted parishioner at St. Philip's Episcopal Church, where she painted a triptych altarpiece.4 From her parish to radical art spaces, Godfrey influenced the visual landscape of Buffalo through her socially minded labor and arts activism.
While Godfrey’s communal influence looms large, significant parts of her artistic oeuvre were lost for decades. Like many other Black female artists, Godfrey saw her work exhibited and documented less vigorously than that of her white male counterparts. This under-documentation, compounded with the lack of digitized records, makes accessing information about her artistic practice difficult. Further exacerbating these issues is the fact that, after Godfrey's death in 1994, the artist’s estate was inadequately managed, and a clear plan for the administration and storage of her works was never established. As family members moved and passed away, a significant portion of Godfrey’s work disappeared for decades.
Wilhelmina Godfrey, City Playground, 1949-50. Wax emulsion and oil on board, 44 × 38 inches. Courtesy of Burchfield Penney Art Center.
Curator Tiffany Gaines first encountered City Playground while writing artist biographies for a publication accompanying the 2019 Burchfield Penney Art Center exhibition In the Fullness of Time, Painting in Buffalo, 1832–1972. Gaines was struck by Godfrey’s use of geometric abstraction in her depiction of the East Side of Buffalo, and she immediately recognized the significance of the artist’s work and community contributions. At the time, Gaines was a part-time content creator for the Burchfield Penney. The previous year, it had received a landmark donation of 350 color slides documenting Godfrey’s work as well as her manuscript “From These Hands: Contemporary African-American Craftspeople of the 60s and 70s.” The manuscript explores the techniques and traditions of craft in various African countries, and it connects these practices to contemporary African American artists; Godfrey copyrighted the manuscript in 1980, but it was never published. The donations provided Gaines with a more holistic view of Godfrey’s scholarship and the opportunity to finally lay eyes on works like Man Searching for Identity (1968). While writing her master’s thesis, Gaines conceptualized Godfrey’s art as foreshadowing later works of Afrofuturism, exploring ideas of blackness in space and across time. Now, as Associate Curator at the Burchfield Penney, Gaines is revisiting this keystone artist with a comprehensive retrospective, Wilhelmina Godfrey: I am what I am.
So far, Gaines has devoted her curatorial career to uplifting Western New York artists and sharing Buffalo’s vibrant arts ecosystem with national audiences. As she has proposed, exploring personal motivations for her curatorial practice, “How can narratives historically excluded from the canon be elevated and recognized for their enduring influence?”5 She used the national platform of Hyperallergic’s Emily Hall Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curators to call attention to the multigenerational legacies of Black arts in Buffalo and the contributions of the Langston Hughes Center for the Visual and Performing Arts. Wilhemina Godfrey: I am what I am similarly showcases Gaines’s rigorous research on the work and histories of underrepresented artists. As national and international art news outlets, like Artforum, vow to provide more regional coverage, perhaps this survey is opening at an ideal moment.6
Organizing the exhibition was not an easy feat. The survey came together through cobbled references, some luck, and a lot of Gaines’s persistence. The 2021 exhibition at the Burchfield Penney, Founders, featured works by Godfrey and the other founding artists of the Langston Hughes Center, and it outlined the organization's significance in the Buffalo community and the national Black Arts movement. When living members of the Langston Hughes Center visited the Burchfield Penney as part of the exhibition, Gaines began inquiring about Godfrey’s past. Through conversations with the artist’s friends, Gaines was able to learn more about her community activism and gain access to more of her work.
Wilhelmina Godfrey, Face Fetish, c. 1970. Wool, glass, wood and plastic beads, polyester stuffing, metal rod, 42 ½ × 14 ¼ × 1 ¼ inches.
Gaines also placed an open call on the Burchfield Penney’s website, inquiring for more information on Godfrey’s work. She saw this exhibition as an opportunity not only to show the paintings and archival materials collected by the museum so far but also to fill in the many remaining research gaps in Godfrey’s career. People living as far away as Texas called Gaines about their artwork by Godfrey. Through these leads, Gaines slowly cobbled together a neglected artistic practice. However, a watershed moment occurred when she was contacted by a local gallerist, who explained that someone purchased a storage unit at auction filled with Godfrey’s work and abandoned for twenty years. Packed with significant works that Gaines had previously only viewed on color slides, this repository allowed Gaines to undertake a great critical and historical reexamination of the artist’s practice.
Restoring a neglected artistic practice requires scrupulous research and supportive community networks. Research-driven and community-based exhibitions allow regional art museums, like the Burchfield Penney, to exhibit their curatorial strengths. Regional institutions are well positioned to interrogate the inequities in historical production, circulation, and reception. By utilizing geographic specificity, the most successful exhibitions can offer their visitors an alternative view of the local. Wilhelmina Godfrey: I am what I am, and Gaines’s work more broadly, serve as a model for curatorial restoration projects.
Wilhelmina Godfrey, Woman #3 [slide documentation], 1976. Stitchery, wool beads, 22 × [unknown] inches.
Emulating Godfrey’s social practice, the upcoming retrospective incorporates community engagement. The Burchfield Penney will foster an educational partnership with the Buffalo Center for Arts and Technology (BCAT) throughout this exhibition. This summer, BCAT students will make a documentary about Godfrey. Then, in the fall and winter, they will learn about the mediums in which Godfrey often practiced: painting, printmaking, and weaving. Working with local artists to explore these mediums, the students will produce original work. The program will culminate in a student art show at BCAT.
Wilhelmina Godfrey: I am what I am features more than fifty works, many not exhibited in decades. Spanning nearly five decades of Godfrey’s career, this show will provide audiences with a comprehensive survey of Godfrey’s artistic practice. This exhibition runs from November 8, 2024, to March 31, 2025, at the Burchfield Penney Art Center.
Wilhelmina Godfrey, Sint Maarten, 1989. Acrylic on canvas, 24 × 36 inches. Courtesy of The M&T Bank Collection at the Burchfield Penney Art Center.
“Wilhelmina Godfrey,” Burchfield Penney Art Center, https://burchfieldpenney.org/art-and-artists/people/profile:wilhelmina-godfrey/#wilhelmina-godfrey.
Heather Gring, interview with Jim Pappas, September 14, 2013, on The Living Legacy Project, podcast, MP3 audio, https://burchfieldpenney.org/public/audio/LLP_JimPappas_09142013.mp3.
Tiffany Gaines, “The Synergetic Spirit of Buffalo’s Black Arts Community,” Hyperallergic, March 10, 2024, https://hyperallergic. com/876439/the-synergetic-spirit-of-buffalo-black-arts-community/.
“Wilhelmina McAlpin Godfrey,” Uncrowned Community Builders, https://www.uncrownedcommunitybuilders.com/person/wilhelmina.
Tiffany Gaines, “The Synergetic Spirit of Buffalo’s Black Arts Community,” Hyperallergic, March 10, 2024, https://hyperallergic.com/876439/the-synergetic-spirit-of-buffalo-black-arts-community/.
In an editor’s letter describing the future of the Artforum, former Buffalo AKG Art Museum curator and current Editor-in-Chief of Artforum Tina Rivers Ryan writes: “I want Artforum to expand its coverage both globally . . . and regionally (as in the case of our reviews from Buffalo and Susch).” Tina Rivers Ryan, “Horizon Lines,” Artforum 62, no. 10 (Summer 2024), https://www.artforum.com/columns/tina-rivers-ryan-editors-letter-554670/.
by Ava Danieu
Ava Danieu is a writer and arts worker from Western New York. She studied English and Art History at Wesleyan University.
