The curator, Cheryl Finley, has chosen the theme of memory and how it can guide artistic expression through personal experience, social activism, and cultural identity. Historical knowledge, the ability to unmask folklore and mythology, and exposure to target messaging in mass media, all affect the perceptions and interpretations individuals apply to their personal experiences and collective thinking. One of the seminal events in the portrayal of Black identities was Harlem on My Mind: 1900–1968, an exhibition based on photography and the picture albums of families, civic organizations, and archives of New York City presented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1969. Its purpose was the depiction of the history of a major cultural environment through documentary newspaper stories and photographs interpreting the character of each decade. In his book, Colored Pictures (2003), art historian Michael Harris investigates the role of visual representation in the construction of Black identities. More recently, curator Okwui Enwezor’s exhibit, Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art (2008) ... explored the artist’s relationship to images or instruments of mass culture ... as part of a broad culture of sampling, sharing, and recombining of visual data. Thus, Renderings shares much with prior scholarship and thinking about curatorial concepts that reflect upon the inspirations of contemporary artists. This exhibition offers Brandywine the opportunity to provide a continuum of exploring identity in the art of the African Diaspora where artists identify using a variety of racial nationality factors. What is different today is that many young African diaspora artists attach a greater importance to narratives presented in archival and fashion photography, commercial media, and tourism advertising. Their artwork goes beyond politics of race to interpretations of queer culture and confronts issues of freedom and social justice. This exhibition seeks to make connections between the growing interest in history reinterpreted, exploring new processes and multi-disciplinary approaches to creative expressions in which the narratives address diverse experiences and new information. It offers multiple opportunities for learning art, culture, history, and assessing social images in mass media by exploring the narratives or through creative art-making, lectures, panel discussions, workshops and classroom assignments that may be geared to the exhibition.