The Bechtler Museum of Modern Art in Charlotte has acquired ‘Drum Call’ (2025), a watercolor on paper by Houston-based artist David McGee. The work, which is currently included in the museum’s exhibition ‘David McGee: The Griot and the Nightingale’, will enter the Bechtler’s permanent collection after the exhibition closes on August 23, 2026.
‘Drum Call’ belongs to McGee’s ‘Shadow Men’ series and depicts a Black Civil War soldier standing beside a tall drum. According to the museum, the drum functions in the image as a symbol of warning, communication and agency. Created to mark the 160th anniversary of Juneteenth, the work addresses emancipation and the continuing pursuit of freedom.
The acquisition was made with funds from the Bechtler’s 2026 Patron’s Circle Acquisition Program and was supported by individual donors. It is only the second artwork purchased by the museum since it opened in 2010. The institution’s first purchase was Clare Rojas’s ‘Untitled’ (2019), acquired in 2025 through funding provided by a group of local donors.
The purchase also follows the launch of the Bechtler’s Patron’s Circle, a donor group established to support acquisitions and contribute to the development of the museum’s collection. The museum has described the McGee acquisition as part of an effort to expand its holdings with work by living artists and to preserve contemporary artistic voices for future audiences.
McGee has worked for more than three decades across painting and works on paper, combining image, text, history, literature and lived experience. The Bechtler’s exhibition presents more than 100 paintings and drawings made from the early 1990s to the present, bringing together rarely exhibited early works and selections from recent series. It is described by the museum as the artist’s first major museum survey.
The exhibition examines McGee’s engagement with art history, language, race and class. Its title invokes the griots of West Africa, storytellers who preserve and transmit communal memory through word and song, alongside the nightingale as a figure associated with lyric expression and renewal. The presentation also includes three music-based listening experiences: a personal playlist selected by McGee, a companion playlist curated by Black Notes Project, and an original score by composer Chris Becker inspired by McGee’s ‘Urban Dreads’ and ‘Oracles’ series.
‘David McGee: The Griot and the Nightingale’ is on view in the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art’s fourth-floor gallery in Charlotte from March 14 through August 23, 2026. The closing-week programme includes a screening of ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’ followed by an artist talk with McGee on August 19. ‘Drum Call’ is credited as David McGee, ‘Drum Call’, 2025, watercolor on paper, Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, purchased with funds provided by the 2026 Patron’s Circle Acquisition Program, 2026.03.001.
