Installation view of “Some American History,” with Frank Bowling’s Middle Passage (1970) pictured at right, 1971
Courtesy of Menil Archives, The Menil Collection, Houston.
Alongside Bowling, two other “5+1” artists, William T. Williams and Daniel LaRue Johnson, had work included in “Some American History.” Williams’s work, George Washington Carver Crossing the Dupont River, May 17, 1954 (1970), pictured here at far left, uses for its base a linoleum panel the artist originally made for “5+1.” Rivers commissioned the new work specifically for “Some American History,” and it currently resides in the Menil Collection.