Chase-Riboud is an acclaimed
sculptor, poet, and novelist. She has worked across a variety of media throughout her long career.
Visual arts At
Temple University's
Tyler School of Art, she studied with Boris Blai and was "instructed in sculpture, painting, graphic design, printmaking, color theory, and restoration." In 1955, her woodcut
Reba was displayed in the
Carnegie Hall Gallery as a part of the exhibit ''It's All Yours
(sponsored by Seventeen'' magazine). Chase-Riboud exhibited work at the
First World Festival of Black Arts in
Dakar, Senegal, in 1966, and she attended the Pan-African Festival in
Algiers in 1969. in 2023 Chase-Riboud and
Betye Saar were the first African-American women to exhibit in the
Whitney Museum of American Art, following protests organized by
Faith Ringgold to gain more recognition of Black women artists. Her piece
The Ultimate Ground was displayed in the exhibition
Contemporary American Sculpture. In 1996, Chase-Riboud was among artists commissioned for artwork at the
African Burial Ground National Monument in
Lower Manhattan. Her 18-foot bronze memorial,
Africa Rising, was installed in the
Ted Weiss Federal Building in 1998. Chase-Riboud also wrote a poem with the same name as the sculpture. Continuing to work as a sculptor throughout her life, Chase-Riboud creates drawings and sculptures that are exhibited and collected by museums such as the
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the
Newark Museum, New Jersey, the
Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran, and the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. During September 2013 to January 2014, she exhibited artwork spanning fifty years at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art's exhibition:
Barbara Chase-Riboud: The Malcolm X Steles. This traveled to the
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive from February 12 to April 28, 2014. Her work was featured in the 2015 exhibition
We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s–1970s at the
Woodmere Art Museum. From September 2024 to January 2025, the exhibition
Barbara Chase-Riboud: Everytime A Knot Is Undone, A God Is Released, showcasing the artist's sculpture, drawing and poetry from 1958 to the present was on view across eight separate institutions in Paris:
Musée d’Orsay,
Palais de la Porte Dorée,
Musée du Louvre,
Philharmonie de Paris,
Centre Pompidou,
Musée du Quai Branly,
Musée Guimet and
Palais de Tokyo. The scale of the show and number of museums involved in the exhibition was described by
The New York Times as a first for any living artist. Her work was included in the 2024 exhibition
Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection at the
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). Her work is in museum collections and museums including
Metropolitan Museum of Art and the
Museum of Modern Art, New York City; and
Lannan Foundation, Los Angeles. In 1996, she was knighted by the French Government and received the
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Chase-Riboud attained international recognition with the publication of her first novel,
Sally Hemings (1979). The novel has been described as the "first full blown imagining" of
Hemings and her life as a
slave, including her long-rumored concubine relationship with President
Thomas Jefferson. In addition to stimulating considerable controversy, as mainline historians of the time denied the relationship and the
mixed-race children she bore to Jefferson, the book earned Chase-Riboud the
Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for the best novel written by an American woman.
Sally Hemings sold more than one million copies in hardcover and it was a
Book-of-the-Month Club selection. It was reissued in 1994. In 2009, it was published in paperback, together with her novel, ''President's Daughter'' (1994), about
Harriet Hemings, daughter of Hemings and Jefferson, who
passed into white society. Chase-Riboud began her writing career as a poet, publishing her first work
Memphis & Peking (1974), edited by
Toni Morrison, and more recent collections.
Everytime a Knot Is Undone, a God Is Released: Collected and New Poems 1974–2011 is Chase-Riboud's latest, published in 2014. She has continued her literary exploration into the enslavement and exploitation of African people with her subsequent novels.
Valide: A Novel of the Harem (1986) examined slavery in the
Ottoman Empire. Based on
Fawn M. Brodie's biography of Jefferson, Chase-Riboud was among those who believed that Thomas Jefferson fathered six children with Hemings. The young slave was nearly thirty years younger than the president and little had been documented about her life. Chase-Riboud was the first writer to present a fully realized, fictional character of Sally Hemings, with a rich interior life. Finally, Sally Hemings had a voice. The public accepted her portrayal and could believe such a woman had a relationship with Jefferson. Sally Hemings was vivid as an American historical figure. Chase-Riboud's book became an international bestseller, selling more than one million hardcover books, and won the
Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize in fiction by an American woman. No adaptation was made at the time. However, more than twenty years later, CBS produced
Sally Hemings: An American Scandal (2000), a made-for-television mini-series that portrays Hemings's and Jefferson's relationship. This has been widely accepted since a 1998
DNA study showed a match between a Hemings descendant and the Jefferson male line. Although some reviewers argued about the characterization of Sally Hemings, "no major historian challenged the series' premise that Hemings and Jefferson had a 38-year relationship that produced children." This historic consensus has been reflected in academic writing about Jefferson and his times. The
Smithsonian Museum and
Monticello collaborated on a groundbreaking exhibition in 2012 in
Washington, DC: ''
Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello'', which explored Jefferson as a slaveholder and six of the major slave families. It said that Jefferson was likely the father of all Sally Hemings' children. The exhibit was seen by more than one million people. Chase-Riboud explored the intricate relationships between the Hemings's and Jefferson families. Because Sally Hemings was a much-younger half-sister of Jefferson's late wife (they had the same father,
John Wayles), she was an aunt to his two daughters. In place of civic myths that deny America's
mixed-race beginnings, Chase-Riboud turns to the Hemings family to unveil the historical presence of antebellum interracial relationships and the possibilities of a post-civil rights multiracial community. Artists, poets, and writers have been thoroughly exploring the Jefferson-Hemings relationship since then. In 1991, Chase-Riboud won an important copyright decision,
Granville Burgess vs. Chase-Riboud. She had filed suit against the playwright of
Dusky Sally in 1987, shortly before a production was to open at the
Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. She said his work infringed on her copyright for her novel
Sally Hemings because it borrowed her fictional ideas. Judge
Robert F. Kelly concluded that while laws were not enacted to inhibit creativity ... it is one thing to inhibit creativity and another to use the idea-versus-expression distinction as something akin to an absolute defense – to maintain that the protection of copyright law is negated by any small amount of tinkering with another writer's idea that results in a different expression." He also said, the similarity between the two works is so obvious and so unapologetic that an ordinary observer can only conclude that Burgess felt he was justified in copying 'Sally Hemings,' or at least that there was no legal impediment to doing so, assuming a few modifications were made." The resulting decision constituted a significant victory for artists and writers, reinforcing protection for creative ideas even when expressed in a slightly different form." The writer claimed that the
screenplay for
Steven Spielberg's film
Amistad (1997)
plagiarized her novel on the topic. It was finally established that
David Franzoni, the sole credited screenwriter on
Amistad, had spent three years, beginning in 1993, writing a script based on Chase-Riboud's book,
Echo of Lions. This was under an option held by
Dustin Hoffman's Punch Productions. Franzoni claimed he had never read Chase-Riboud's book, which she had sold to Hoffman's production company. Burt Fields, DreamWorks main lawyer, was at the same time, unbeknownst to Chase-Riboud's attorneys, a stockholder, lawyer and board member of Punch Productions. He did not recuse himself from the suit, but had Punch Productions dropped from the original complaint. Franzoni was never obliged to testify under oath. He may have carried over some of his thinking to his screenplay for
Amistad. When Chase-Riboud filed a second suit against DreamWorks in France, the dispute was quickly settled out of court for an undisclosed amount days before the 1998
Oscar nominations were announced.
Poetry Chase-Riboud's first work of poetry,
From Memphis & Peking (1974), was edited by
Toni Morrison and published to critical acclaim. She contributed the poem "Ode to My Grandfather at the Somme 1918" to the 2019 anthology
New Daughters of Africa, edited by
Margaret Busby. == Other activities ==