December's Curator's Pick by Connie H. Choi, Curator, explores "Stinney," a 2019 work by Deborah Roberts (@rdeborah191) in the #StudioMuseumCollection, on view in "True Believers: Benny Andrews & Deborah Roberts" at the McNay Art Museum (@mcnayart) through February 5, 2023.⠀ ⠀ Roberts's work critically examines how society has stigmatized Black children and presents complex, nuanced understandings of Black childhood. Here, Roberts depicts George Stinney Jr, who, in 1944 at the age of fourteen, was wrongfully sentenced to death by electric chair for the murder of two young white girls. His conviction was finally vacated in 2014, seventy years after he was executed. In the painting, the figure's head is taken from Stinney's mug shot and is overlaid with collaged images, including the nose and open mouth of a young person, suggesting, perhaps, Stinney's lack of agency and inability to be heard—or a primal scream expressing raw emotion at his unjust fate. In this and other works, Roberts pays tribute to Stinney and the many other young Black lives lost to the violence of racism in the United States.⠀ ⠀ In the exhibition at the McNay, "Stinney," and other works by Roberts, are in dialogue with paintings by Benny Andrews (1930–2006) (@benny_andrews_estate), another artist in the #StudioMuseumCollection committed to the use of collage and to raising crucial issues around Black life.⠀ ⠀ —⠀ ⠀ Image: Deborah Roberts (b. 1962), "Stinney," 2019. Mixed media collage on linen, 65 x 45 in. Courtesy The Studio Museum in Harlem