The Phillips Collects: Shikeith

The Phillips Collection is proud to share recent acquisitions that demonstrate the museum’s efforts to enhance and diversify the collection. The Phillips has acquired its first work by Shikeith, Visiting Hours (2022), which was on view in the exhibition Essex Hemphill: Take care of your blessings.

Shikeith (b. 1989, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; lives and works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), whose practice explores the psychological landscape of Black masculinity, captured this photograph on expired film from the 1950s causing the spectral glow, reminiscent of a portal, that stretches down the center of the image. The intimacy of the composition communicates a sense of longing for spiritual, physical, and emotional connection. 

When conceptualizing the work, the artist drew from memories of his grandmother, who described a time of night when spirits would commune and visit the living as “visiting hours.” “Visiting Hours” is also the title of a poem by prominent DC writer and activist Essex Hemphill (1957-1995) that speaks to his experience as a museum guard at the National Gallery of Art. In the work, Hemphill writes himself as a ghost, part of the often invisible workforce responsible for the protection of cultural artifacts. Blending familial and artistic inspirations, Shikeith’s work functions as both a conjuring and a revival of memory.