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BMA curator Oliver Shell, who worked directly on the current exhibition, says, "Richard Yarde is a national figure who got stuck in a regional context." CULTURE AND STORY The use of photographs as source material is evident in many of Yarde's portraits, but the photos served as a starting point rather than an end goal to be mimicked. The acclaimed Black artist Richard Yarde (1939-2011) defied that convention in his installation of life-size dance-hall figures, The Savoy (above), presented as a traveling exhibition organized by the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum in 1982. [Extracted from the article]