Artwork Details
- Title
- Cracked Justice
- Artist
- Date
- 2020
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- 66 x 78 in.
- Copyright
- © 4/2020, Carolyn Crump
- Credit Line
- Gift of Fleur S. Bresler
- Mediums Description
- cotton fabric and batt, and acrylic paint
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Occupation — other — reformer
- Occupation — service — policeman
- African American
- Figure group
- Object Number
- 2023.40.6
Artwork Description
Carolyn Crump
born 1960, Detroit, MI
resides Houston, TX
Cracked Justice
2020
cotton fabric and batting, and acrylic paint
Carolyn Crump made this quilt in response to the murder of George Floyd in 2020. She explains, “My quilt only shows the faces and names associated with those faces but it does not show the hurt and pain of broken families and the hearts that they represent. I am hurt and still in disbelief of the events of this past decade of the loss of these brilliant minds and bright futures that were taken away from us much too soon.”
In the foreground, police pepper-spray a group of Black Lives Matter protesters. An artist spray-paints a memorial to George Floyd at upper left. Crump also memorializes others killed in and before 2020: Breonna Taylor of Louisville, Kentucky; Ahmaud Arbery of Fancy Bluff, Georgia; Atatiana Jefferson of Fort Worth, Texas; and Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri. She renders the phrase “Cracked Justice” on the sidewalk as a call to reform a “cracked” justice system.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Fleur S. Bresler, 2023.40.6
We Gather at the Edge: Contemporary Quilts of Black Women Artists, 2025