The Collection

McArthur Binion is a painter whose deeply personal abstractions merge the language of Minimalism with autobiography, history, and memory. Using elemental materials such as oil stick, ink, and graphite, Binion creates dense interlaced grids layered over photocopied personal documents—his birth certificate marked “colored,” photographs of his childhood home in Mississippi, pages from his address book in 1970s New York, and self-portraits. From afar, the works read as rigorous geometric abstractions; up close, they reveal fragments of intimate detail. This tension between order and improvisation reflects Binion’s lifelong dialogue with poetry and bebop jazz, as well as his navigation of race and identity within the history of American abstraction.

Binion received his BFA from Wayne State University (1971) and MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art (1973), becoming the first African American graduate of its program. He was active in New York’s downtown art scene of the 1970s alongside peers such as Brice Marden, Dan Flavin, and David Hammons before settling in Chicago, where he taught at Columbia College from 1993 to 2015. His work was prominently featured in the 57th Venice Biennale (Viva Arte Viva, 2017) and has been exhibited at Museo Novecento (Florence), Cranbrook Art Museum, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and Library Street Collective (Detroit), among many others.

Binion’s paintings are represented in numerous collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture; the Detroit Institute of Arts; the New Orleans Museum of Art; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.