This year, Carrie Mae Weems gets the distinctive honor of becoming the first African-American woman to have a retrospective at the Guggenheim — her first major exhibition at any New York museum, ever. It’s one of those honors that sits at an awkward intersection, both disappointing and profound.
Racism
Posted inOpinion
The Art World’s Casual Racism [UPDATED]
Yesterday (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in America), the Russian magazine Buro 24/7 published a story about heiress Dasha Zhukova. In a photo accompanying the article, Zhukova was sitting on a chair held up by a mannequin of a black woman lying on her back, her stiletto-booted feet up in the air.
Posted inArt
Dumb Racist Art Project: White Woman Sells Naked Oprah
Artist and fashion designer Peggy Noland’s four dresses of Oprah’s face Photoshopped onto variously sized black female bodies perpetuate American pop culture’s rampant racism. Modeled by a white woman, the dresses suggest that anyone can go ahead and “try on” a black woman’s body in sizes “petite, average, or obese,” all categories defined by white beauty standards.
