"Romare Bearden: A Life in Collage" is a cinematic excavation of one of the most influential yet underacknowledged American artists of the 20th century. Through his mastery of collage, Bearden authored a visual canon of Black life in America—confronting cultural erasure, reclaiming narrative space, and redefining the value of Black art within systems built to deny it. The film constructs a layered

narrative—like his work itself—assembled from fragments of biography, resistance, artistry, and imagination to examine how cultural power is built, contested, and transformed.

The story unfolds across Bearden’s transformative life: from his early years in Harlem under the guidance of his mother and activist Bessye Bearden, to his formative experiences in Pittsburgh, Paris, and the Jim Crow South, to his public battles with the art establishment. In 1969, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Harlem on My Mind exhibition celebrated Black culture while excluding Black artists, Bearden organized protests through the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, forcing a national reckoning over artistic exclusion and representation. His life is a continuum of agency and resistance: choosing not to pass for white in Major League Baseball, co-founding the Studio Museum in Harlem, and creating work that reimagined Black life with complexity, dignity, and visibility.

Public Contact

Jarobi Moorhead

Jarobimrhd2@gmail.com