How St. Louis Art Museum went beyond the beats to map the expanse of hip-hop culture

An artwork made of do-rags. A photo of dozens of St. Louisans who are active in the hip-hop scene. Chance the Rapper’s hat.

Hip-hop manifests itself in U.S. popular culture in innumerable ways. An exhibition now open at St. Louis Art Museum takes an expansive view of that influence, with visual art, video installations, high-fashion wearables and a custom soundtrack.

“The Culture: Hip Hop & Contemporary Art in the 21st Century” is a collaboration with Baltimore Museum of Art, which displayed the show earlier this year. It’ll be on view on Art Hill through Jan. 1.

About a third of the pieces in the show are by artists from St. Louis or Baltimore, but the exhibition has a global view.

It’s not the first major museum exhibition on hip-hop culture, but it stands to be influential in Baltimore, St. Louis and beyond — it later travels to Cincinnati, Ottawa and Frankfurt. And it makes St. Louis a destination to learn about hip-hop on its 50th birthday.

“This is so much bigger than us. It's bigger than a curatorial team. It's bigger than St. Louis Art Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art. This is a moment in time. This is a moment in history,” said Andréa Purnell, one of two SLAM curators who worked with a pair of curators from Baltimore to put the show together. She is one of two African-American women among the foursome.