This photograph documents a joyful handshake between artists Frank Bowling and Jack Whitten at the opening celebration for “5+1.” Mary Whitten stands to the left of Bowling, and Al Loving stands to Whitten’s right alongside one unidentified attendee. Two large panels of patterned linoleum by William T. Williams hang on the classroom-turned-gallery wall behind them. “These artists were set against what was expected of them,” Bowling later remarked of Williams’s contribution. Strewn across the floor, a work by Melvin Edwards—a slack length of industrial link chain—encircles the group, drawing them closer together.