Brooklyn Museum Displays Work of Artist Killed in 9/11 on 25th Anniversary
Michael Richards’s 1997 sculpture “Free F’All” commemorates the historic African American military pilots, the Tuskegee Airmen, and the discrimination they experienced during service.
Emerging Caribbean-American artist Michael Richards was in his studio on the 92nd floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower when the first plane crashed into the building 25 years ago, leaving no survivors above the 91st floor. The 38-year-old artist's remains were never recovered from Ground Zero, but his voice reverberates through time with the survival of his prescient, incisive sculptures that link aviation to Black freedom.
In acknowledgment of the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the Brooklyn Museum has installed “Free F'All” (1997), the only work by Richards in its collection, in the lobby for public display.
“Richards's career was cut so short, so it's wonderful that the museum has this sculpture and that his legacy is really living on through his work,” Kimberli Gant, the museum's curator of modern and contemporary art, who organized the sculpture's reemergence, said in a phone call with Hyperallergic.
Made of fiberglass and resin and coated in rust oxide, “Free F'All” depicts a Black military pilot with closed eyes, arms pinned to his sides, and a slight bend in his right knee as he dons a parachute pack and an aviator's cap. Dozens of nails pierce his body from the collarbone to the mid-thigh, down the length of his arms, and through his hands and feet like that of a crucifixion.
Like much of Richards's practice, the sculpture directly references the Tuskegee Airmen — the first African American aviators to serve in the United States armed forces. The nails embody the racial discrimination and violence that these Black pilots endured while putting their lives on the line as segregation was still enforced in the US military during World War II.
