James Fuentes Online is pleased to present Nell Painter’s new visual series, American
Whiteness since Trump (2020). Over time, Painter has sought to create an intellectual history of
the US, consistently paying close attention to images and iconography, while approaching
history through text.

Conceived as an artist’s book, American Whiteness since Trump was created while Painter was
in residence at the Bogliasco Foundation, Italy in February–March 2020. The project follows on
from Painter’s The History of White People (2010), which was published within a conventional
book format and became a New York Times bestseller. The History of White People was completed
well before the presidency of Donald Trump—a period during which Painter mapped a history of
Whiteness somewhat separate to that of white supremacy becoming a dominating refrain in
mainstream US politics and rhetoric. Our current presidency has changed that, forcing millions in the
country to grapple with their identity in new ways. American Whiteness since Trump addresses these
changes, offering an update to Painter’s ongoing concerns through drawings, collage, and text. The
project also marks the first fruits of Painter’s approach to combining her work as a historian and as a
visual artist.

In a recent interview, Painter expounds upon her approach to these two practices:
“Historian/writer wants intelligibility, but artist wants emotion, feeling, intensity of meaning that
will not necessarily be viewed in the ways I was creating. Historian/writer always wants more
words; artist keeps taking words out, or if not taking words away, then overwriting and obscuring
them in the interest of intensity, of touching viewers first in the eye rather than in the mind. […]
For me as historian as well as artist, meanings change as the times change and as the
author/artist changes. My history writing now, as well as my art, insists first and last that things
change.”—Nell Painter in conversation with Lauren O’Neill-Butler, November Magazine, No. 5,
2020 novembermag.com/contents/5.

Nell Painter (b. 1942 in Houston, TX; lives and works in Newark, NJ) is a painter, also known as
the historian Nell Irvin Painter. Painter is the author of The History of White People (2010),
Creating Black Americans (2006), and Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol (1996); and the
Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, Princeton University. Painter’s artwork has
been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Brooklyn Historical Society, CGIS at Harvard
University, and the San Angelo Museum of Fine Art. She is represented in the collections of the
National Museum of African American History and Culture, the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at
Harvard University, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Newark Museum, among others.

For further inquiries, please contact Katrin or James at info@jamesfuentes.com.