DINDGA MCANNON
Ode to the Bronx, 2026
Ultraviolet printed vinyl, paint, silicone, found objects, car
On View: March 19 – 22, 2026
Outsider Art Fair
At Metropolitan Pavilion
Curator: Eileen Jeng Lynch, Director of Curatorial Programs
Organizer: The Bronx Museum
Sponsor: WayPoint Driving School
ABOUT 'ODE TO THE BRONX'
As a cultural partner of Outsider Art Fair (OAF) 2026, The Bronx Museum is pleased to collaborate with OAF on a special project by artist Dindga McCannon. Ode to the Bronx! is a celebration of The Bronx, where McCannon lives and works (between NYC and Philadelphia), and where she has family history, including living in the borough during her childhood. McCannon drew inspiration for the art car design from fifty Bronx neighborhoods—using imagery of fabric to represent the history and cultural diversity of the borough. McCannon’s multidisciplinary practice features mixed-media quilts, textiles, paintings, and sculptures, and for this project, she has adapted her process and methodology. The imagery in the printed vinyl includes Lenape patterns, Ghanaian kente cloth patterns, the artist’s portraits of Black suffragettes, crazy quilt patchwork patterns, exteriors of tenement buildings, bandanas, musical notes, and vinyl records, to name a few. Impressed into each of the silicone shapes throughout the surface of the car are buttons, filigree metal patterns, and other found objects.
ABOUT DINDGA MCCANNON
A pioneer of mixed-media quilting, Dindga McCannon’s vibrantly colored work, Ode to the Bronx, tells and uplifts the stories of the borough, embracing its energy and resiliency. This stems from McCannon’s work as an activist—McCannon was the cofounder of “Where We Art,” Black Women Artists with Faith Ringgold and Kay Brown in New York City in 1971. Confronting racism, sexism, and the lack of support and exhibition opportunities for Black women artists, the group fostered community and advocated for each other—providing a platform for visibility and inclusion and challenging patriarchal structures.
McCannon has been featured in traveling museum exhibitions, including Afro-Atlantic Histories at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Pablo-Matic and We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-1985 at the Brooklyn Museum, NY; and Black Power at the National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, TN. Her work is in the collections of The National Gallery of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Hirshhorn Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, The Phillips Collection, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, among others. McCannon is represented by Fridman Gallery in New York.
