Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside the Benton. I am Hannah Avalos, your host, and in this episode we will be discussing Sadie Barnette: Legacy & Legend, an exhibition currently on view at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College. This exhibition is centered on a 500-page surveillance dossier created by the FBI on Rodney Barnette, the artist’s father and the founder of the Compton chapter of the Black Panther party in 1968. The dossier chronicles the tactics of harassment and intimidation experienced by Barnette’s father and in the exhibition, Sadie Barnette uses her own visual language to assert resilience in the face of a history characterized by oppression.

In this episode, I interview both Sadie Barnette and the Benton’s senior curator, Rebecca McGrew, and we discuss the origins and content of the exhibition as well as the steps they took to make it happen. Transcript