Surveying decades of his writing and criticism, Occasional Views contributes to a greater understanding of Delany’s unimpeachable stature.
Race
Posted inArt
The Uneasy History of Swimming and Race, as Relayed Through Art
Swimming has been racialized for 3,000 years, but for most of that time it was Africans who were good swimmers, and Europeans who tried to keep up.
Posted inArt
Artists Who Resist the Gaze of Collectors
Images by Kameelah Janan Rasheed and an exhibition curated by Sol Camacho avoided trendy visuals or themes at EXPO Chicago.
Posted inIn Brief
Patrons Wore Blackface and Colonial-Era Costumes to Party at AfricaMuseum
Images emerging on social media showed partygoers dressed in pith helmets and blackface at the museum. The colonial-era museum apologized for the event, admitting a “lapse in judgment.”
Posted inFilm
A Tender Friendship Between Black Men Escapes the Limits of Toxic Masculinity
The Last Black Man in San Francisco is refreshingly profound in its exploration of the physical and emotional closeness of its lead characters.
Posted inArt
The Lasting Influence of the Waxen Venus on Studies of Anatomy
Modern constructions of beauty and biological race were heavily influenced by the study, replication, and measurement of classical sculpture in eighteenth century Europe.
Posted inArt
Artists Consider Race in Response to the American Revolution
The curatorial scheme of the Race and Revolution exhibition at Nolan Park on Governors Island is bold and seditious.
Posted inArt
W. E. B. Du Bois’s Modernist Data Visualizations of Black Life
For the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, African American activist and sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois led the creation of over 60 charts, graphs, and maps that visualized data on the state of black life.
Posted inArt
Dismantling White Supremacy Among US Poets
Within certain chambers of poetry in the past year, a series of incidents, specifically involving white poets presenting work that has been called out for its callous racism, has led to a great deal of debate on the internet and elsewhere.
Posted inArt
William Pope.L on “Acting a Fool” and Alternative Futures
Chicago-based artist William Pope.L works in a variety of mediums, including painting, spoken word, installation, and performance, to challenge ideas of race and social stereotypes.
Posted inArt
A Public Art Reflection on #BlackLivesMatter in Baltimore
Inhabitants of Baltimore this week are being confronted by the faces of 42 black artists and activists staring out at them from the city’s walls.
Posted inArt
Voodoo, Abstraction, and a Haitian Artist in Paris
PARIS — The art in Hervé Télémaque’s Centre Pompidou retrospective floats between Port-au-Prince, New York, and Paris.