Wilhelmina Godfrey was an artist of exceptional skill and vision, working in media that included painting, printmaking, and textiles. Over the course of her more than fifty-year career, her work continuously evolved. Her lifelong contributions as an artist, writer, and educator earned the admiration and respect of many, cementing her legacy within the local arts and African American communities.

Wilhelmina Godfrey: I am what I am is a retrospective look at the artist’s massive portfolio, particularly her extraordinary use of color and theme, as well as the evolution of her work from representative figuration to abstraction. Like many of her contemporaries, Godfrey’s development over her career pushed the bounds of form, color, harmony, and abstraction. This experimentation, paired with her incorporation of African motifs, her experiences, and her observations as a Black woman artist living on the East Side of Buffalo, add important nuance to the canon and the ways in which Black artists have fused their lived realities with their own artistic interests.