Thin Black Line(s)

Thin Black Line(s) was an exhibition curated by Paul Goodwin and Lubaina Himid at Tate Britain, January - August 2012. Goodwin's ambition was to devise a project that would show the range and diversity of approaches to art making by black artists in Britain by focusing on a category of artists that had never been fully represented in Tate displays before: Black and Asian women. He therefore proposed a display based on a critical re-examination of three key exhibitions curated by Lubaina Himid in the 1980s – ‘Five Black Women’ at the Africa Centre (1983), ‘Black Woman Time Now’ at Battersea Arts Centre (1983-4) and particularly ‘The Thin Black Line’ at the Institute for Contemporary Arts (1985) which raised many issues about the collection and curation of works by Black and Asian women artists at that time and since. Several artists in the show have had their work collected by Tate as a result of the display; and the Tate in-focus displays are now to include at least one display that highlights the contribution of women artists and/or ethnic diversity.