I spent hours at Woodmere’s Jerry Pinkney exhibit, and I heard the pictures sing
The Germantown-born illustrator taught Black history to all children, drew stamps for the USPS, and was arguably one of the world's best watercolor artists.
On a recent Friday afternoon, I was standing in the center of Woodmere Art Museum’s Charles Knox Smith Hall, at the “Soul, Sound, and Voice: The Art of Jerry Pinkney” exhibit, unsure which of the Germantown-born illustrator’s work I wanted to hone in on first.
I gazed up and there it was: a black and white watercolor of Stevie Wonder.
Pinkney painted Wonder for Black Enterprise magazine in 1975, a year before the singer released the amazing, Grammy-award winning Songs in the Key of Life. The artist draws Wonder as a young man with a baby Afro, sideburns shaped like pork chops, and a cool soul patch under his chin.
A tambourine hovers over Wonder’s head like a halo, as if Pinkney’s paintbrush knew Wonder was on the brink of greatness.
Pinkney started his children’s book career in 1964 with his illustrations for Joyce Cooper Arkhurst’s The Adventures of Spider: West African Folktales. During his 40+ yearslong career, he wrote and illustrated more than 100 books teaching all children Black history, love, and family values from Black households, and most importantly, he taught them how to dream.
He won numerous awards including the 2010 Caldecott Medal for The Lion & the Mouse, making him the first Black person to take home the prestigious book award as a solo artist. He died in 2021.
In 1970, Pinkney moved from Germantown to Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., but remained a friend of the Woodmere, where a third of his illustrations live, including Mary, a life-size watercolor portrait of a Black woman buried in an African Burial Ground in New York City, discovered in 1991.
Images from Pinkney’s children’s book, Minty: A Story of Young Harriet Tubman are in Woodmere’s permanent collection in Frances M. Maguire Hall, which opened to the public on Nov. 1.
When Pinkney proposed “Soul, Sound, and Voice” to William R. Valerio, CEO and executive director of Woodmere, months before his 2021 death, Valerio agreed almost on the spot.
“He explained how music was the key to understanding his work,” Valerio said. “[He talked about how] an exhibition about the overlapping spheres of art and music in his art, would inevitably bring out his notable techniques, significant historical interests, and, most importantly, his spiritual voice.”
“Soul, Sound, and Voice” fills Charles Knox Smith Hall’s Catherine M. Kuch Gallery and Dorothy J. del Bueno Balcony Gallery. The images in Kuch Gallery are organized in picture books; there are four illustrations in each grouping. I could tell that as Pinkney worked on each illustration, a soundtrack played in the background.
I didn’t have to hear the music because I know the music. Those sounds are ingrained in my soul. By the time I was done perusing the two floors, a medley of tunes was rattling around in my head.
When I saw the illustrations for the 1983 book Apples on a Stick, I could almost hear the double Dutch ropes hit the pavement. I remembered the singsongy Southern dialect of my ancestors as I glimpsed Brer Rabbit in Uncle Remus’ Tales.
Then I saw Black women wearing stylish French Rolls play horns in Sweethearts of Rhythm: The Story of the Greatest All-Girl Swing Band in the World, and swayed to swanky 1940s jazz tunes.
But the tracks that started the real party in my head were in the section dedicated to Pinkney’s commercial illustrative arts.
His Porgy and Bess album covers set off a litany of gospel and blues tunes. I felt the classical music crescendos when I got to his Arturo Toscanini U.S. Postal Service stamp. In 1977, the Postal Service commissioned Pinkney to do a series of nine African American heritage stamps including images of Harriet Tubman, Benjamin Banneker, and Mary McLeod Bethune.
There is such variety in Pinkney’s work because he rarely turned down a gig, his son, Brian Pinkney, explains in the catalog for “Soul, Sound, and Voice.” “He was always thinking, ‘I got four kids and a wife.’ I don’t think he ever said no,” he wrote.
Pinkney, like a lot of Philadelphia artists in the mid-20th century, picked up commercial art commissions to make ends meet, Valerio said, as he showed me Pinkney’s images from a 1970s-era Seagram Jazz Calendar.
Jelly Roll Morton, Ma Rainey, and Roy Eldridge’s musical notes nearly jumped off the page.
The rhythm in Pinkney’s work is best evident in the portraits he drew of the people who created the sounds of the 1970s, when the look of the Motown Sound was at its peak — including and especially an image of his wife and muse Gloria Jean Pinkney, whose look exemplified that era. In an untitled illustration, included in the exhibit, that also ran in Black Enterprise, Gloria Jean Pinkney has a Jackson 5-style Afro and her body is a guitar. “[Jerry] felt I was built like a guitar, like an hourglass,” she is quoted in the catalog saying.
Then there is the resplendent image of Diana Ross as Billie Holiday as she appears in the 1972 movie Lady Sings the Blues.
The music in this show is endless. And so are the colors.
“Pinkney is a part of the canon of the world’s best watercolorists,” Valerio said. “Whether it’s Winslow Homer or John Singer Sargent, you can put a piece of Jerry’s up against them and it will hold its own.”
The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Mass. — where another significant part of Pinkney’s collection is housed — is cosponsoring the exhibit.
“Soul, Sound, and Voice: The Art of Jerry Pinkney” through Feb. 15 at Woodmere Art Museum’s Charles Knox Smith Hall, 9201 Germantown Ave., Phila. Wednesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. $15. Free on Sundays.