Mugshot Portraits: Women of The Montgomery Bus Boycott

Mugshot Portraits: Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, takes a contemporary look back at a powerful, yet under-acknowledged legacy of black women’s activism through a series of portraits based on mugshots of women who were arrested during the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56, the pivotal event that launched Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s leadership of the Civil Rights Movement. While mugshots aim to dehumanize and criminalize, the life-size, highly detailed portraits offer a counter-narrative, illuminating the leadership and sustained labor of women to the boycott’s success.

Mugshot Portraits was shown at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in 2022 as part of a solo exhibition titled Lava Thomas: Homecoming, curated by Bridget R. Cooks Ph.D., professor of African American Studies and Art History at UC Irvine. Dr. Cooks and her team identified and contacted several of the descendant families, and created audio programming that featured scholars and family members reading the women’s biographical information.

Exhibitions:
Lava Thomas: Homecoming (Traveling Exhibition) | Exhibition Catalog | Curator: Bridget R. Cooks Ph.D.
Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, AL
The Black Index (Traveling Exhibition) | Exhibition Catalog | Virtual tour | Curator: Bridget R. Cooks Ph.D.
UC Irvine University Art Gallery, Irvine, CA
Palo Alto Arts Center, Palo Alto, CA
Art Galleries at Black Studies — University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX
Hunter College Art Galleries, New York, NY
New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), Berkeley, CA
The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today, (Traveling Exhibition) | Curator: Dorothy Moss
Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO
Springfield Museum, Springfield, MA
Justice, Marin Museum of Modern Art, Novato, CA | Curator: Karen Jenkins Johnson
Plumb Line: Charles White and the Contemporary, California African American Museum (CAAM), Los Angeles, CA | Curators: Essence Harden, independent curator; Leigh Raiford Ph.D., Associate Professor, African American Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Mugshot Portraits: Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, CA | Exhibition Catalog