Brazilian Artist Sonia Gomes Joins Blum & Poe and Pace Galleries: ‘My Work is Black, It is Feminine, and It is Marginal’
Sonia Gomes in her São Paulo studio, 2020. BLUM & POE and Pace Galleries have added Brazilian artist Sonia Gomes to their rosters. Gomes works with found and gifted fabrics, exploring the embedded meaning, histories, and social significance of the textiles. Issues of memory and identity are at the center of her practice. New...
American and European Museums Plan 48-Hour Stream of Arthur Jafa’s Moving Video Installation ‘Love is the Message’
Still from Arthur Jafa’s “Love is the Message, The Message is Death” (2016) A MEDLEY OF HISTORIC and contemporary footage, Arthur Jafa‘s “Love is the Message, The Message is Death” (2016) is an ode to the Black experience. The video installation is a rapid-pace montage of poignant images, both celebratory and heart-wrenching. Kanye West’s...
Culture Talk: Frank Stewart on His Jazz Photographs, Approach to Image Making, and Forthcoming Museum Retrospective
THE ARRAY OF IMAGES Frank Stewart has made over the course of his career is dizzying. He’s photographed African American culture in its many forms—art, food, dance, and music, jazz in particular. He’s made portraits of artists, shot barbecue in the South and Midwest, and captured the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He photographed a...
Richmond Barthé Sculpture was Top Lot at Swann African-American Art Auction, ‘Feral Benga’ Sold for Record-Setting $629K
THE LATEST AFRICAN-AMERICAN FINE ART SALE at Swann Auction Galleries was five-and-a-half hours. There were 187 lots and the high point came early on when Lot 10, a cast bronze sculpture by Richmond Barthé (1901-1989) sold for more than half a million dollars. “Feral Benga” garnered sustained interest and was bid up to about...
New Drawings by Toyin Ojih Odutola Pair Powerful Portraits with Invented Stories
“As He Watched Him Walk Away” (2020) by Toyin Ojih Odutola A NEW SERIES OF WORKS ON PAPER by Toyin Ojih Odutola explores her fascination with marrying images and text. The artist’s pursuit satiates the viewer’s natural inclination to spin narratives around her powerful and alluring portraits. This desire to imagine the lives and...
Kadir Nelson’s New Yorker Cover is a Monument to George Floyd and Reminder of Long History of Violence Against Black People in America
THE BANNER FLAG HANGING outside a window at the NAACP’s Fifth Avenue headquarters in New York City declaring “A Man Was Lynched Yesterday.” Emmett Till’s big bright eyes and round smiling face before he was lynched and found dead in a river in Money, Miss., at age 14. The textured scars on the back...
CBS News Marks Flag Day with Report on Black National Anthem, Coverage Follows Earlier Features on Black Art and Artists
CBS Sunday Morning reports on “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” TODAY IS FLAG DAY. CBS News marked the occasion with a report about “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” The James Weldon Johnson poem was set to music in 1899 by Johnson’s younger brother, the composer John Rosamond Johnson. Known as the Black National Anthem,...
Floaters: Series of Leisurely Pool Images by Derrick Adams is About Black Radical Joy
CENTERED ON JOY AND LEISURE, “Derrick Adams: Buoyant” may seem out of step with the moment. Two months of quarantine and social distancing borne of a global pandemic dovetailed with a new wave of Black people murdered by police. Then a multiracial, intergenerational protest movement sprouted in response, calling for racial justice, police...
Ronald Ollie, 69, a Major Collector of African American Abstract Art Who Gifted 81 Works to Saint Louis Art Museum, Has Died
Collector Ronald Ollie (1951-2020) AN AVID COLLECTOR of African American art and generous museum patron, Ronald Ollie (1951-2020) has died. He passed away at his home in Newark, N.J., on June 1. He was 69. His wife Monique McRipley Ollie confirmed his death to Culture Type. She told me via email, “I think his...
On View: ‘Renaissance: Noir’ Curated by Myrtis Bedolla at UTA Artist Space
While museums and galleries are temporarily closed due to the COVID-19 virus, On View will continue to showcase images from noteworthy exhibitions UTA ARTIST SPACE in Los Angeles is presenting a virtual exhibition curated by Myrtis Bedolla, founder of Galerie Myrtis, a black-owned art gallery in Baltimore. A selection of largely figurative works...
Books on Race and Racism are Dominating Bestseller Lists and ‘How to Be an Antiracist’ by Ibram X. Kendi is Near the Top
A MUST READ FOR THE MOMENT, historian Ibram X. Kendi published “How to Be an Antiracist” last summer. Jeffrey C. Stewart, a museum veteran and biographer of Alain Locke, reviewed the volume for The New York Times. Stewart called it a “stunner of a book” and a “manual of racial ethics.” “How to Be...
Powerful Perspective: These Black Female Photographers are Documenting the Protests Against Police Killings and Racial Injustice
FOR MORE THAN A DOZEN DAYS NOW, people have been marching—flooding the streets, declaring “Black Lives Matter” and “I Can’t Breathe” on signs and t-shirts, and raising their voices demanding change. In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky., and countless others, protestors are...
Painter Titus Kaphar Focuses on a Black Mother’s Loss for Time Magazine Cover About Police Killings and American Uprising
REPRESENTING THE SORROW of generations, Titus Kaphar painted a Black mother for the cover of Time magazine. Her eyes are closed in anguish. She holds her young son, but he is not there. The artist has cut the child from the canvas. All that remains is an empty silhouette. “In her expression, I see...
For Her First Solo Exhibition, Sydney Vernon Brings New Life and Meaning to Moments Captured in Treasured Family Photographs
PATTERNED BLUE WALLPAPER defines the room. Standing in profile in front of a mirrored vanity table, an expectant mother turns her head toward the viewer. She smiles and proudly rests her hand on her growing belly. Documenting the moment, the mirror reflects her image. Other works depict a little girl standing mischievously in a...
Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch: ‘Protest is the Highest Form of Patriotism, You Are Trying to Make a Country Better’
THIS IS NOT NEW, unfortunately. America has been killing black people in one form or another since the nation’s founding. From lynching to murder by police, the history is well-documented and contextualized in the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), most poignantly with the display of Emmett Till’s casket. Till was...
AfriCOBRA Artists Honored at School of the Art Institute of Chicago 2020 Virtual Commencement, Offer Advice to Graduates
AfriCOBRA artists Jae Jarrell and Wadsworth Jarrell After years of hard work and dedication to their crafts and curriculums, 2020 graduates are unable to experience the joy and satisfaction of gathering for ceremonies celebrating their accomplishments, due to widespread social distancing mandates in the wake of COVID-19. In-person commencements have been replaced with virtual...
Feature Film About Florida Highwaymen Painters is Coming Soon
THE DRAMATIC TRUE STORY of the Highwaymen, the Florida artists who made a living selling paintings from the trunks of their cars during segregation, is being made into a feature film. “The Highwaymen” is about a group of 26 African American artists, most of them self-taught, who turned out countless paintings of Florida’s lush,...
Pérez Art Museum Miami Exhibition Celebrates African American Art Acquisitions, Presents Rich Array of Artistic Voices
“Untitled (Parade)” (2016) by Kevin Beasley HISTORICALLY, FEW MAINSTREAM American museums have collected art by African American artists in a meaningful or representational manner. To address generational deficits and fill gaps, many museums have established special funds and committees dedicated to acquiring African American art. A collection exhibition currently on view at Pérez...
When He is Not in His Painting Studio, Tadesse Mesfin is Training the Next Generation of Ethiopian Artists
Tadesse Mesfin in his Addis Ababa studo A PROMINENT FIGURE in Ethiopian Modernism, Tadesse Mesfin thrives on two creative fronts: making paintings and training the next generation of artists. Women are the protagonists in Mesfin’s ongoing series “Pillars of Life.” The paintings pay homage to the many women who work as smallholder vendors in...
Emma Amos, 83, a Dynamic Painter, Masterful Colorist, and Member of Spiral Collective, Has Died
A PIONEERING ARTIST who made captivating, poignant, and culturally insightful works, Emma Amos (1937-2020) has died. She was 83. Amos passed away on May 20 in Bedford, N.H., of natural causes after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer’s disease. Ryan Lee Gallery in New York, where Amos has been represented since 2016, shared news of her...
