Oscar award winning African American costume designer, Ruth E Carter, has had her work showcased by a Virginia museum, the Taubman Museum of Art. Ms Carter is the first African American to win an Oscar for Best Costume Design in 2019.
Marvel's Black Panther – Eddie Murphy's Coming 2 America – Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing – experience the costumes from these Hollywood movies and more now on view in the exhibition, "Ruth E. Carter: Afrofuturism in Costume Design." pic.twitter.com/Ls4LRnXoq0
— Taubman Museum Art (@Taubman_Museum) January 19, 2022
The exhibition which is entitled “Afrofuturism in Costume Design” spans nearly four decades of collaborations with directors such as Spike Lee and Steven Spielberg., amongst others. Ruth E. Carter is currently working on the set of “Black Panther 2”
Ruth E Carter
”It’s a very sensitive story to tell this in the sequel since we lost our dear Chadwick Boseman. And so we all approached it very carefully from the rewriting of the script between Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole, to how we deal with our own grief”, Ruth E. Carter says of the Black panther production.
The costume designer also feels that her Oscar is a step towards more inclusiveness in the movie industry.
“I see that there is a bigger influence that I can bring to people based on the fact that I did win an Oscar and I, you know, I’m the hometown girl make good. So if that is inspiring to young people who were like me and sat in their room, drawing and sewing, I want to be that, I want to be more of that for people, I want to be that light for them” admitted the Oscar winner.
She further admits that the fight is not over as there are still many challenges ahead to make Hollywood more inclusive.
“To say that, you know, ‘Oscars not so white anymore,’ when it was built on a foundation of exclusion… and we didn’t see ourselves in front of the camera, or people of color in front of the camera, winning awards, for many years; that this is not something that can be erased overnight. That’s what that exhibition communicates, that you can dream, you can be an artist and you can eventually win an Oscar”, concluded Ruth E. Carter.
The costumes will be on display at the Taubman Museum of Art until the 3rd of April.