Memento #5

Memento #5, the final painting in Chicago-based artist Kerry James Marshall's Souvenir series, is an elegy to the Civil Rights movement. The monochromatic painting depicts a black angel standing at the center of a living room. Solemnly, the figure draws closed a glittery, silver curtain, symbolically concluding a decade of peaceful civil disobedience, courageous marches, visionary speeches, righteous legislation, explosive riots and tragic deaths. Behind the angel, at left and right, are the faces of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Each year of the decade appears between the glitter strands, and fragments of the word "Remember" are also visible. At the bottom, Marshall has written, "What a Time. What a Time."