TRAVELING TO TORONTO? Stop by Art Gallery Ontario (AGO) in Toronto, Canada, where a pair of solo exhibitions featuring British artist Hurvin Anderson and Chicago artist Theaster Gates are on view this summer. Both are also exhibiting in Europe. There is a Gates exhibition in Milan, Italy, and “Hurvin Anderson: Dub Versions” is at the...
A MUST-READ PROFILE of Sam Gilliam published last week in The Washington Post, begins with a quote from the artist about him being “outlandishly famous.” The comment is meant to be facetious, but is actually not too far off base when one considers the recent trajectory of his recognition weighed against periods of his...
Peter and David Adjaye on the Sonic Collaboration. | Video by The Spaces PAIRING A GLOBAL PORTFOLIO of major cultural centers and public institutions with projects that span furniture and textile design, architect David Adjaye‘s latest pursuit is a musical collaboration with his brother. A DJ, musician and sound designer with degrees in mathematics...
This summer, artists including (clockwise from left) Nari Ward, Simone Leigh, Fred Wilson, Chakaia Booker, and John Akomfrah, are presenting solo exhibitions. THIS SUMMER 2016, incredible exhibitions featuring artists of African descent are on view across the United States. From Los Angeles, to Chicago, Atlanta, and New York, museums and galleries and public spaces...
Video by CBS This Morning OVER THE WEEKEND, Kadir Nelson appeared on CBS This Morning. The Sunday television program profiled the illustrator whose work is familiar to many, while he remains relatively unknown. The latest edition of The New Yorker features Nelson’s take on “A Day at the Beach,” a powerful, very American image...
PACE GALLERY IS PRESENTING a few of Adrienne Edwards’s “favorite things.” It’s how the curator describes works by black contemporary artists about whom she writes and has a social and intellectual connection, and modern standouts with whom she has been “obsessed” over the course of her academic and professional career. A veteran curator at Performa...
RETROSPECTIVE is a digest of the latest news and happenings related to art by and about people of African descent. In the latter half of June 2016, the highlights include auction news and acquisitions, and numerous appointments and awards. Johnson Publishing sold its flagship magazines. The Smithsonian’s forthcoming African American museum reached its fundraising...
Martin Puryear: “Big Bling” | Video by Art21 RISING AMONG THE TREES in Madison Square Park, “Big Bling” is a monument to Martin Puryear‘s practice. Standing 40-feet high, it is the largest temporary outdoor sculpture the artist has created. Part animal, part abstract form, from afar the voluminous sculpture looks heavy, but upon closer...
MUSEUMS HAVE TAKEN AN INTEREST in Njideka Akunyili Crosby. At Art Basel, Victoria Miro Gallery of London sold “Super Blue Omo” (above), a new, large-scale figurative work by the Los Angeles-based painter to a museum. According to BLOUIN ARTINFO, the painting went to “an unidentified American museum for an otherwise indeterminate five-figure price.” UPDATE:...
LARRY WALKER, “Other Voices – Other Spaces: Urban Spirits, Wall Series,” 2007 (acrylic and mixed media on canvas). | Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins NEW YORK, N.Y. — There’s a framed box on the wall outside Sikkema Jenkins that announces the gallery’s exhibitions. Currently, it says “Larry Walker.” The Georgia-born artist is in the sunset of his...
EBONY AND JET, the historic magazines that reported on 20th century African American artists and inspired the work of a new generation of contemporary artists, have been sold to Clear View, a black-owned private equity firm. The Austin, Texas-based company purchased the titles from Johnson Publishing Company (JPC) in May for an undisclosed amount. The...
CAUGHT IN A QUIET MOMENT, donning a robe while penning a letter. Indulging a young boy in the chance to spar with a champion. Perched on a massage table, wide-eyed with a playful, mock expression of shock. Pictures tell incredible stories. In life and death, much has been said and written about Muhammad Ali;...
AT THE START OF HER CAREER, Kara Walker was first recognized for her mural-sized narrative silhouettes—cut paper depictions of the imagined indignities and violence experienced by blacks in the antebellum South. The Montclair Art Museum announced it has acquired one of these early works. The delicate precision of “Virginia’s Lynch Mob” belies its challenging subject...
In the Studio with Stanley Whitney, May 2016 | Video by Lisson Gallery WROUGHT WITH IMPROVISATION and experimentation, when it comes to color, Stanley Whitney‘s bold canvases are defined by an ordered approach to composition. Following a spate of 2015 exhibitions, including “Dance the Orange,” a critically recognized solo show at the Studio Museum...
A NEW EXHIBITION at the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) presents “Luanda-Kinshasa,” a 2013 film installation (above) by Canadian artist Stan Douglas. Set in the renowned CBS 30th Street Studio, the six-hour experimentally sequenced film explores “the emergence of a globally minded black consciousness in the 1970s,” and its influence on the New York...
SIX BLACK ARTISTS made news recently when their work set sales records at Swann Auction Galleries. Paintings by Frank Bowling, Allan Freelon, Palmer Hayden, Felrath Hines, Wadsworth Jerrell, and Robert Neal, sold for record prices at Swann’s April 7 sale of African American fine art. The artists, both modern and contemporary, have had notable and...
Artists Edgar Arceneaux, Nick Cave, Stan Douglas, and Theaster Gates are featured in Season 8 of ART21. THE NEW SEASON OF “ART21: Art in the 21st Century” debuts Sept. 16, 2016. For the first time, the PBS series is focusing on the connection to place and the ways an artist’s practice is influenced and...
FROM LOS ANGELES TO BOSTON, it’s graduation season. Joining two of this year’s most popular commencement speakers—President Obama (Howard University, Rutgers University, Air Force Academy) and “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda (University of Pennsylvania)—Nick Cave, Melvin Edwards, Rick Lowe, Hank Willis Thomas, Carrie Mae Weems, and several other African American artists, are participating in graduation ceremonies....
ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, Carrie Mae Weems took the stage at Radio City Music Hall delivering more of a performance than a speech. Her address at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) 41st commencement for undergraduate and graduate students was engaging, relevant, thought-provoking and memorable. She asked the audience, “How do you measure life?” And...
NEWS THAT LUHRING AUGUSTINE GALLERY is now representing Simone Leigh follows a succession of recent exhibitions, honors and engagements recognizing the currency and innovation of the multidisciplinary artist’s practice. Brooklyn-based Leigh, whose work spans sculpture, video, installation and performance, is a 2016 John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, 2016 Fellow of A Blade of Grass for...
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