Guests gathered on March 4, 1989, for the Members' Preview of The Appropriate Object, which ran through April 23. This exhibition, organized by Guest Curator Beryl Wright, featured the work of seven contemporary black artists, including sculptors Maren Hassinger, Richard Hunt and John Scott, and painters/mixed media artists Betye Saar, Raymond Saunders, Oliver Jackson, and Alvin Loving. 

These artists mainly worked in direct construction techniques, collage and assemblage, and figurative abstraction, and employed a wide range of artistic sources, from the modernist traditions of European-based abstraction to the rich aesthetic heritage of non-Western cultures.