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An essential resource focused on visual art from a Black perspective, Culture Type explores the intersection of art, history, and culture

New York Museums are Showcasing African American Art, Exhibitions Feature Lorna Simpson, Rashid Johnson, Beauford Delaney, Amy Sherald, Black Dandyism & More

New York Museums are Showcasing African American Art, Exhibitions Feature Lorna Simpson, Rashid Johnson, Beauford Delaney, Amy Sherald, Black Dandyism & More

TOP NEW YORK MUSEUMS are presenting exhibitions of major African American artists this spring and summer with most on view through fall 2025. Solo exhibitions include the largest-ever surveys of Rashid Johnson at the Guggenheim Museum, Amy Sherald at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Jack Whitten at the...
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For Your Summer Agenda, 49 U.S. Exhibitions Featuring Works by Black Artists

For Your Summer Agenda, 49 U.S. Exhibitions Featuring Works by Black Artists

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...
For The New Yorker, Kadir Nelson Captures Summer at the Beach

For The New Yorker, Kadir Nelson Captures Summer at the Beach

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...
Culture Talk: Curator Adrienne Edwards on Her New Exhibition 'Blackness in Abstraction'

Culture Talk: Curator Adrienne Edwards on Her New Exhibition ‘Blackness in Abstraction’

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: For the Long Weekend, a Review of the Latest News in Black Art

Retrospective: For the Long Weekend, a Review of the Latest News in Black Art

  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 Appreciates the Dichotomy of 'Big Bling,' His Largest Sculpture to Date

Martin Puryear Appreciates the Dichotomy of ‘Big Bling,’ His Largest Sculpture to Date

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...
At Art Basel, Significant Sales of Works by African American Artists, including Njideka Akunyili Crosby

At Art Basel, Significant Sales of Works by African American Artists, including Njideka Akunyili Crosby

  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:...
All in the Family: Artist Larry Walker Debuts at His Daughter's Gallery

All in the Family: Artist Larry Walker Debuts at His Daughter’s Gallery

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...
Johnson Publishing Sells Ebony and Jet Magazines to Black-Owned Private Equity Firm

Johnson Publishing Sells Ebony and Jet Magazines to Black-Owned Private Equity Firm

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...
Muhammad Ali Has Died: The Charismatic Boxing Legend was a Photographer's Dream

Muhammad Ali Has Died: The Charismatic Boxing Legend was a Photographer’s Dream

  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;...
Montclair Art Museum Adds Kara Walker Silhouette to List of Contemporary Art Acquisitions by African American Artists

Montclair Art Museum Adds Kara Walker Silhouette to List of Contemporary Art Acquisitions by African American Artists

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...
Painter Stanley Whitney: 'I Don't Have a Theory About Color'

Painter Stanley Whitney: ‘I Don’t Have a Theory About Color’

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...
Perez Art Museum Miami Adds More Than 100 New Works to Collection

Perez Art Museum Miami Adds More Than 100 New Works to Collection

  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...
At Swann Auction, Records Set for 6 Black Artists Including Frank Bowling, Palmer Hayden, and Felrath Hines

At Swann Auction, Records Set for 6 Black Artists Including Frank Bowling, Palmer Hayden, and Felrath Hines

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...
New Season of ART21 Features African American Artists Edgar Arceneaux, Nick Cave, Stan Douglas, and Theaster Gates

New Season of ART21 Features African American Artists Edgar Arceneaux, Nick Cave, Stan Douglas, and Theaster Gates

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...
Artists Hank Willis Thomas, Nick Cave, and Rick Lowe are Among the African American Creatives Addressing 2016 Commencments

Artists Hank Willis Thomas, Nick Cave, and Rick Lowe are Among the African American Creatives Addressing 2016 Commencments

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....
Carrie Mae Weems Implores School of Visual Arts Graduates to Consider 'How Do You Measure a Life?'

Carrie Mae Weems Implores School of Visual Arts Graduates to Consider ‘How Do You Measure a Life?’

  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...
Artist Simone Leigh Has Joined Luhring Augustine Gallery

Artist Simone Leigh Has Joined Luhring Augustine Gallery

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...
The Smithsonian is Mounting a Bill Traylor Retrospective, the First Major Exhibition Devoted to an Artist Born Enslaved

The Smithsonian is Mounting a Bill Traylor Retrospective, the First Major Exhibition Devoted to an Artist Born Enslaved

  THE SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM (SAAM) says it is mounting the first-ever major exhibition devoted to the work of an artist born enslaved. “Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor,” the retrospective of self-taught African American artist Bill Traylor (1854- 1949) will open Sept. 28, 2018. The Washington, D.C., museum made the announcement in...
At Christie's Auction, Henry Taylor Painting of Historic Track Star Sets Record for Artist

At Christie’s Auction, Henry Taylor Painting of Historic Track Star Sets Record for Artist

  CAPTURING HISTORIC TRACK STAR Alice Coachman in midair, Henry Taylor‘s painting of the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal sold for $149,000 (including fees) yesterday at Christie’s in New York. The price was twice the high estimate and a record at auction for a work by the Los Angeles-based artist, according...
'Plunge' by Kerry James Marshall Sells for $2.1 Million at Christie's, a New Artist Record

‘Plunge’ by Kerry James Marshall Sells for $2.1 Million at Christie’s, a New Artist Record

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL, “Plunge,” 1992 (acrylic and paper collage on canvas).   THE RECORD PRICE for paintings by Kerry James Marshall doubled last night at Christie’s New York. “Plunge” (1992), a large-scale painting by the Chicago artist sold for more than $2.1 million (including fees), a new auction record for the artist, according to Christie’s...