Suzanne Jackson: What Is Love

Crossing Ebenezer has no canvas. It hangs in the air, nearly eight feet of dried acrylic held in firewood-bag netting with peanut shells set into it, and it flashes blood red. Artforum's Suzanne Hudson read it as a memorial to freed African Americans drowned in Ebenezer Creek during the Civil War.

It is a late work in the first retrospective of Jackson's whole career: more than 60 paintings and drawings, starting in late-1960s Los Angeles, where she was a central figure in the Black art scene. Early canvases layer thin washes over images from her dreams, and a heart-shaped face keeps coming back. Studies of leaves, trees and mountains come from her California years. The recent work leaves the wall, so you walk around the paintings instead of past them.

Hudson called the show's first stop, at SFMOMA, "epic". The MFA is its only East Coast venue. It's on Level 2 of the Linde Family Wing, included in $30 admission, and open until 10 pm on Thursdays and Fridays.