Initially intended to be a career retrospective, the
exhibition narrowed in focus upon our
discovery of several storage boxes that held a wealth of previously unseen photographs dating from the artist's graduate school
days at the Institute of Design.
Robert G. O'Meally, the Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and curator of the
exhibition, suggests a still broader context to Bearden's series, which assures us that the search for home, family and a sense of belonging is central to self -
discovery for all modern -
day Americans regardless of race.