Faith Ringgold and Kerry James Marshall are being honored by CAA.

 

TWO AFRICAN AMERICAN ARTISTS are receiving the College Art Association’s top Awards of Distinction. CAA announced Kerry James Marshall is being honored with the 2017 CAA Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work. The 2017 CAA Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement will be bestowed upon Faith Ringgold.

The awards “honor the outstanding achievements and accomplishments of individual artists, art historians, authors, conservators, curators, and critics whose efforts transcend their individual disciplines and contribute to the profession as a whole and to the world at large,” and will be presented Feb. 15 at CAA’s annual conference in New York City.

Chicago-based Marshall, 61, is recognized for his large-scale history paintings depicting the African American experience. “Mastry,” the largest museum retrospective of his work, is closing today at The Met Breuer and traveling to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Known for her story quilts, 86-year-old Ringgold lives and works in Englewood, N.J. An artist and activist, her bold 1960s paintings were inspired by the civil rights and feminist movements.

CAA announced several other awards. Art historian and curator Ruth Fine is receiving the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for editing the exhibition catalog “Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis.”

Among the finalists for the Barr award, Chief Curator at MOCA LA Helen Molesworth received honorable mention for the exhibition catalog “Kerry James Marshall: Mastry.” CT

 

See full list of 2017 Awards of Distinction

READ MORE about Ruth Fine’s vision for Norman Lewis catalog on Culture Type

 

BOOKSHELF
“Kerry James Marshall: Mastry,” a comprehensive, cloth-covered catalog accompanies the exhibition and includes essays by the curators and writings by Marshall on a range of topics, from his Rythm Mastr comic series to artists Mickalene Thomas and Horace Pippin. “American People, Black Light: Faith Ringgold’s Paintings of the 1960s” accompanied the first comprehensive survey of the artist’s early paintings exploring race, class and gender issues. Ringgold is the author of a number of children’s books, including the recently published “We Came to America” and “Harlem Renaissance Party.”

 

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