Washington Square I—Launching Resonance: Art and Sound in Conversation

Untitled (Washington Square)
(1952) Oil on canvas
Greenville County Museum of Art
Greenville, SC
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY

One of the aspirations of The Beauford Delaney Project is to preserve and deepen our understanding of Beauford’s extraordinary artistic legacy.

Another is to explore how that legacy continues to inspire new acts of creativity.

Today, we are delighted to share an important milestone toward that goal.

This week, we published “Washington Square I,” an original composition and video by George Henry. It is the first musical contribution to Resonance: Art and Sound in Conversation, an ongoing series of The Beauford Delaney Project that explores contemporary creative responses to Beauford's work.

The “Art and Sound” component of the Resonance series was markedly influenced by Wadada Leo Smith, whose reflections on composing music inspired by one of Beauford's paintings helped shape our thinking about how artists might enter into sustained dialogue with his work. Through Resonance, The Beauford Delaney Project provides an ongoing framework for that kind of engagement, inviting musicians to contribute both original compositions and reflections on their creative process to a growing digital archive.

Henry, a recent graduate of Amherst College with degrees in Black Studies and Computer Science, is the first musician to contribute to this initiative. After spending time with Beauford's paintings, they chose one of Beauford’s Washington Square works as the inspiration for their composition. (Like many subjects that captivated Beauford throughout his career, he painted Washington Square multiple times.)

Instead of seeking to translate the painting into music, “Washington Square I” is an artistic response to it—a conversation across disciplines in which music and painting retain their own voices while enriching one another.

Documenting Creative Practice

An important aspect of Resonance is that it documents not only the finished work but also the creative journey that led to it.

Alongside “Washington Square I,” Henry recorded a companion Studio Notes video and wrote a narrative in which they reflect on their process, discuss their encounter with Beauford's painting, and offer viewers a glimpse into the development of the composition.

By preserving these reflections alongside the music, The Beauford Delaney Project is creating an archive of creative practice as well as creative work. We anticipate that these conversations will become valuable resources for future artists, scholars, educators, and anyone interested in understanding how Beauford continues to inspire new generations.

This commitment to documenting process reflects a broader vision for the project. Whether through music, creative writing, or other modes of inventive collaboration, Resonance seeks to illuminate not only what artists create, but also how they think, observe, question, and respond.

A Growing Archive

The publication of “Washington Square I” follows closely on the release of original writings by students from Teens of Color Abroad, created during our July 2026 workshop at the Leo Marchutz School of Painting and Drawing in Aix-en-Provence. These works are the inaugural contributions to our Resonance: Art and Writing in Conversation series.

Together, these contributions mark the beginning of a living archive of contemporary creative responses to Beauford's work—an archive that will continue to grow as musicians, writers, scholars, and artists from diverse disciplines add their own voices to the conversation.

Henry is already at work on a second composition inspired by another of Beauford Delaney's Washington Square paintings, continuing an exploration of a subject that fascinated Beauford himself.

We are deeply grateful to Henry for helping inaugurate this new chapter of Resonance: Art and Sound in Conversation. Their generosity, curiosity, and artistic imagination have helped establish a model for the kinds of interdisciplinary conversations we will nurture in the years ahead.

Read Henry’s narrative about their creative process HERE.

And stay tuned as The Beauford Delaney Project continues to build a living archive of contemporary works created through thoughtful reflection and dialogue with Beauford's art.