Isaac Julien

Presented in conjunction with Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971 is Isaac Julien’s Baltimore, a three-channel installation located in the Academy Museum’s Warner Brothers Gallery. Julien’s film is an homage to writer, director, producer, and actor Melvin Van Peebles (1932–2021), whose film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (USA, 1971) ushered in the “blaxploitation” era, a genre of low-budget films created for African American audiences during the 1970s. Artist Isaac Julien appropriates the look and feel of blaxploitation films, using Baltimore’s streets and museums as locations. Julian created this piece while filming Baadasssss Cinema (USA, 2002), a documentary on blaxploitation. Julien is a world-renowned British installation artist, filmmaker, and distinguished professor of the arts at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The gallery was curated by Vice President of Curatorial Affairs Doris Berger with Assistant Curator J. Raúl Guzmán.