For many years, the BECC and its members directed and sponsored counter-exhibitions, arts education programs, and artists-led demonstrations, including the Harlem on My Mind protest.
[1][2][3][4][5] Benny Andrews and others[6] organized the BECC to protest the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s documentary exhibition, “Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–68,”[7] that did not include one painting or sculpture by a Harlem-based artist.
[4] In addition, the Whitney Museum mounted “The 1930’s: Painting and Sculpture in America” exhibition in 1968, and did not include any black artists in the show.
[23][2][24] The following year, the BECC, in collaboration with Artists and Writers Protest Against the War in Vietnam,[25] published the, “Attica Book,” that included black-and-white reproductions of works by forty-eight artists, including Benny Andrews, Faith Ringgold, Irving Petlin, Jacob Lawrence, Jack Sonenberg,[26] Mary Frank, Melvin Edwards, and Vivian Browne.
[4] In 1980, the BECC, in partnership with the PPS-Galerie and S. Fischer Verlag, sponsored the 1980 “Xango” exhibit at the Countee Cullen Branch Library in Harlem.