A GROUNDBREAKING REPORT published in November 2018 declared the restitution of Africa’s cultural heritage was “impossible no more.” Commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron, the document is authored by French art historian Bénédicte Savoy and Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr and examines the history, inventory, and display of ill-gotten artifacts and art objects of questionable...
THE STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM presented the 2019 Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize to Torkwase Dyson at its annual gala this evening in New York City. The $50,000 prize is awarded annually to an African American artist recognizing exceptional “innovation, promise, and creativity.” Dyson’s interdisciplinary practice is centered around black spatial politics. She considers...
Gus Casely-Hayford is the inaugural director of V&A East in London The following review presents a snapshot of recent news in African American art and related black culture: NEWS APPOINTMENT | Gus Casely-Hayford is joining the Victoria & Albert Museum in London as inaugural director of V&A East. He is heading up two...
THIS IS A BIG WEEK IN ART. Wednesday evening, the Studio Museum in Harlem is announcing the winner of the annual Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize at its 2019 gala. Last year, Los Angeles-based textile artist Diedrick Brackens received the $50,000 prize. Simone Leigh won in 2017. The latest Power 100 List is also...
FOR SIX YEARS, Dread Scott has been planning a slave rebellion. The artist wants to bring attention to a fight for freedom waged more than two centuries ago by hundreds of African, American, and Haitian-born people in the Mississippi River parishes outside New Orleans. Scott is reimagining the German Coast Uprising of 1811. It...
NYC Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl made a “surprise exit.” The following review presents a snapshot of recent news in African American art and related black culture: NEWS Big news in arts leadership. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is losing the chair of its education department. Sandra Jackson-Dumont has been named director...
THE LUCAS MUSEUM of Narrative Art in Los Angeles has tapped Sandra Jackson-Dumont as its new director and CEO. Envisioned by billionaire philanthropist and legendary filmmaker George Lucas, the focus of the Lucas Museum is visual storytelling through filmmaking and a variety of other artistic mediums, including painting and photography. The museum is currently...
Untitled 1996 quilt by Rosie Lee Tompkins OVER THE COURSE of three decades, Eli Leon assembled a collection of nearly 3,000 quilts by both well-known and little-known African American artists. Leon died last year and through a posthumous bequest, the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) has acquired the unparalled collection....
On View presents images from noteworthy exhibitions GIVEN THE PERILS of the contemporary world, how do artists envision the future? “Utopian Imagination” at the Ford Foundation Gallery brings together 13 international artists whose works—spanning sculpture, photography, and film—suggest how we all might exist and persist on a planet under threat from natural and man-made forces....
THE BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART is expanding its contemporary art department, hiring Jessica Bell Brown and Leila Grothe as associate curators. They are joining a growing team of female curators at BMA led by chief curator Asma Naeem and fortified by senior research and programming curator Katy Siegel. A New York-based writer, curator, and...
IN ANTICIPATION OF ITS REOPENING, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York asked writer Roxane Gay to select a work of art from its collection and discuss what she sees in it. She chose “Christ’s Entry Into Journalism” (2017) by Kara Walker. “She has managed in a series of figures to depict...
Installation view of Betye Saar at Museum of Modern Art FALL IN NEW YORK CITY is always a time of renewal and fresh new perspectives when it comes what’s next and relevant in art. This season there are an exceptional number of opportunities to experience the work of African American artists in museums, galleries,...
Artist Ed Clark (1926-2019) A SINGULAR FIGURE in post-war Abstraction, Ed Clark (1926-2019) died Oct. 18 in Detroit. He was 93. Clark is recognized for his innovation, experimentation, and seductive use of color. Over seven decades, he built a practice influenced by his education in Chicago and Paris, exposure to European modernists, and a...
Last Supper by Akili Ron Anderson. | Photo by Evy Mages, Courtesy the photographer The following review presents a snapshot of recent news in African American art and related black culture: NEWS A construction crew made a monumental discovery earlier this month. A black Last Supper frieze was found behind drywall at a...
Kerry James Marshall Painting Goes For Nearly $18.5 Million at Sotheby’s, Second Highest Price at Auction for a Work by a Living African American Artist
Nov 16, 2019
11 Black Artists, Curators, Scholars and a Collector Made Art Review’s 2019 List of the Most Powerful People in the Art World
Nov 14, 2019
Torkwase Dyson, Whose Work Grapples with Black Spacial Politics, Wins Studio Museum’s 2019 Wein Artist Prize
Nov 13, 2019
Latest News in African American Art: Gus Casely-Hayford Headed to V&A Museum, Betye Saar and Indira Allegra Win Major Artist Awards & More
Nov 13, 2019
The Week Ahead: Art World Power, Major Artist Awards, and Million Dollar Auctions
Nov 12, 2019
