“The Black Index” at UC Irvine pursues knottier narratives of self-representation.
Tag: black art
Posted inArt
How Swann Galleries Set the Stage for the Modern African American Art Market
For the past 13 years, Swann has been the only major auction house with a department dedicated to African American art, setting auction records for artists such as Sam Gilliam, Faith Ringgold, and Charles White.
Posted inArt
What Does It Mean to Exhibit “Black Excellence”?
Two shows in New York City take profoundly different approaches to the idea, but are worth comparing for how they represent being Black and talented or accomplished.
Posted inArt
Artists and Scholars Join to Discuss the Creation of Black Visual Archives
The free-to-attend Black Portraiture[s] conference will focus on the creation of visual archives in the context of landmark moments in Black history.
Posted inArt
Seven Artists and Curators Reveal a Cherished, Overlooked Black Artist
I asked respected art figures like Lowery Stokes Sims, Deborah Willis, and Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi to share a beloved artist with me.
Posted inArt
An Annual Compendium of Black Photography that Was a Revolutionary Act
In 1973, a small band of black artists published the Black Photographers Annual, Volume I, a book that changed the history of photography in America.
Posted inArt
Can Abstraction Help Us Understand the Value of Black Lives?
ST. LOUIS — Several months ago, I made the commitment to be away from New York City, my home and native land, for the duration of this summer.
Posted inArt
Three Museums Come Together to Tell a History of African American Art
MUSKEGON, Mich. — Common Ground, the Muskegon Museum of Art’s current exhibition of African American art, combines works from three regional Michigan collections: the Muskegon museum, the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, and the Flint Institute of Arts.
Posted inArt
Jean-Michel Basquiat and the Immortal Black Life
Often, I consider what people will make of my notebooks after I am dead.
Posted inArt
Funk, Medicine, and Questions of the Future
In performance, as in history, there’s a lot that gets lost: layers of meaning and nuance too complex to carry in a single story. Investigating Simone Leigh’s and Xenobia Bailey’s projects for funkgodjazz&medicine: Black Radical Brooklyn, produced by Creative Time and the Weeksville Heritage Center, I was struck by this loss as an informative process.
Posted inArt
Rediscovering the Roots of Black Radical Brooklyn
The energetic, jumbled print design of funkgodjazz&medicine: Black Radical Brooklyn, an exhibition by Creative Time and the Weeksville Heritage Center, strikes a bright, funkedelic chord in the mind’s eye. This is jazz; this is the casting off of the master’s linguistic tools; this is a celebration of black selfhood.
Posted inOpinion
MoMA Hires Consulting Curator for Black Art
The appointment raises questions about the way museums treat black artists and their work, which in turn expose the complications of turning a race into an artistic category.