A Tribute to Black Soho Inside a New York Art Fair
Historic archives are displayed alongside works by Emma Amos, David Hammons, Vivian Browne, and more in a presentation at Independent 20th Century.
“Camille — Here are 10 new slides for the ARCHIVES.” In the winter of 1988, Emma Amos scribbled a note to her friend and fellow artist, Camille Billops, along with a gift: an addition to her quickly multiplying library at 491 Broadway in Manhattan. Billops and her husband, James Hatch, bought the loft in 1973, where they lived and stewarded a compendium of Black artistic history throughout their life together. It came to house periodicals, scripts, photographs, audiotaped interviews, and more. The number of artists immortalized surpassed one thousand.
An assortment of ephemera from the Billops-Hatch Collection now accompanies Black Soho, an exciting booth at the Independent 20th Century fair co-produced by RYAN LEE and Salon 94 galleries and on view through Sunday, September 27. The archival materials are displayed alongside artworks by Amos and Billops, as well as by Vivian Browne, David Hammons, Ed Clark, Norman Lewis, Frederick J. Brown, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, all of whom lived in or spent considerable time shaping the eponymous neighborhood, south of Houston Street.
In conceiving the collaborative exhibition, gallerist Jeff Lee told Hyperallergic, they took inspiration from Billops and Hatch’s community-minded endeavors. “We wanted to emulate the energy of that loft. It was an incredible gathering space for so many major artists of her generation, but also younger generations,” said Lee.
