Polyphonic: Celebrating PAMM’s Fund for African American Art highlights a group of paintings, sculptures, and photographs that have since become quintessential for the museum—including works by Terry Adkins, Romare Bearden, Kevin Beasley, Ed Clark, Leslie Hewitt, Faith Ringgold, Tschabalala Self, Xaviera Simmons and Juana Valdes, among several others.

For the presentation of the museum’s permanent collection during our 35th anniversary year, this understanding of art was conflated conceptually with the celebration of donations of art that have been made to the museum during the last several decades. The artworks represented outstanding examples of the works that have been gifted to the museum since it first…