Best known for painting the official portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama that hangs in the National Gallery, artist Amy Sherald’s painting of Breonna Taylor officially goes on display Friday at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C.
Sherald’s posthumous painting of Taylor, now part of the museum’s new exhibition, “Reckoning: Protest. Defiance. Resilience,” was first seen en masse by the public when it graced the September 2020 cover of Vanity Fair.
Acclaimed for her photo-based, realistic, minimalist style and creative exploration of skin tone, Sherald’s vision of Taylor simultaneously honors the police violence victim’s beauty, humanity and the tragedy of her loss.
A painting of Taylor now hangs in a darkened gallery on the fourth floor of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. It is displayed behind glass, in the warm glow of soft light. It is the only artwork in the room, a commanding presence, and the heartbreaking apex opening Friday.
The painting was acquired by both NMHAAC and the Speed Art Museum in KY, where it was displayed in April of this year. It will hang at NMHAAC until May 2022.
New York’s worthless studios, a not-for-profit space for artists, organized The Plywood Protection Project last summer in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, with the intention of making public art that paid tribute to the racial justice movement.
Tanda Francis, one of the five artists who worked on the project with worthless, used repurposed plywood from boarded-up storefronts to create a sculpture now on display in Queens called “RockIt Black.”
“Rockit Black” sculpture in Queens by Tanda Francis (photo via tandafrancis.com)
“To transform this plywood that was on the streets during the Black Lives Matter actual uprising is… amazing,” Francis told Reuters. “In my work, I actually use the color black and actually try to elevate it, kind of contrast to how it’s been sort of stigmatized in our culture.”
Behin Ha Design Studio erected their contribution called “Be Heard” in Thomas Paine Park in Lower Manhattan.
“Be Heard” by Behin Ha Design Studio in Thomas Paine Park, Manhattan (photo via worthless studios.org)
“New York City was covered in this plywood during COVID shutdowns and, you know, the peak of the Black Lives Matter protests,” said Neil Hamamoto, founder of worthless studios. “To me, it felt important to recycle the material because of its power and rhetoric.”
KaNSiteCurators and Caroline Mardok created “In Honor of Black Lives Matter,” which currently stand in Poe Park in The Bronx.
[Dr. Kymberly Pinder, seen with a black and white drawing by Jami Porter Lara. Photo by Eve Caughey via news.yale.edu]
Starting July 1, Dr. Kymberly Pinder, renowned scholar of race, representation, and murals, will become Dean of the Yale School of Art.
Pinder, who earned her master’s degree and Ph.D. in art history at Yale, most recently was acting president of Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Prior to that, Pinder served as dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico.
Pinder also taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1996 to 2012, during which time she edited the book Race-ing Art History: Critical Readings in Race and Art History(2002). She also taught courses that led to the creation of murals in Chicago and Albuquerque.
“The Yale School of Art provides an unmatched platform for promoting excellence while effecting positive change,” said Dr. Pinder, who earned her Ph.D. in art history from Yale in 1995.
“I look forward to working with colleagues and students across the campus, the city, and the globe to extend the boundaries of arts practice and education. Objects and their making unlock and shape dialogues in some of the most transformative ways for both makers and viewers. It is an honor to return to Yale to help nurture its rich culture of rigorous inquiry. I am excited to bring my Yale education full circle.”
Pinder’s most recent book-length publication is 2016’s Painting the Gospel: Black Public Art and Religion in Chicago, where she explores how Black imagery in the public sphere empowered communities in that city. Pinder collaborated with local artists, from well-known muralists to anonymous graffiti writers and worked with different artists and local officials.
Despite comprehensive efforts over the years to record Los Angeles’ historic places, the city’s historic designation programs, by their own estimation, do not yet reflect the depth and breadth of African American history. Just over three percent of the city’s 1,200 designated local landmarks are linked to African American heritage.
Over the next three years, the project will work with local communities and cultural institutions to more fully recognize and understand African American experiences in Los Angeles. The work aims to identify and help preserve the places that best represent these stories and work with communities to develop creative approaches that meet their own aims for placemaking, identity, and empowerment.
As the African American population of such areas as West Adams and Jefferson Park began growing in the 1940s, new Black churches were founded. One of the most influential was Holman United Methodist, which commissioned architect Kenneth Nels Lind to design this sanctuary in 1958.
The project is led by the Getty Conservation Institute and the Office of Historic Resources (OHR) within Los Angeles’ Department of City Planning, which is responsible for the management of historic resources within the city. A community engagement program will create a space for meaningful input and local partnerships, drawing upon community-based knowledge of lesser-known histories.
“Historic preservation is about the acknowledgment and elevation of places and stories. The point of this work is to make sure that the stories and places of African Americans in Los Angeles are more present and complete than previously,” says Tim Whalen, John E. and Louise Bryson Director at the Getty Conservation Institute. “The work is also about making sure that preservation methods are examined for systemic bias. It’s ultimately about equity.”
Before embarking on this project, Getty and the city convened a virtual roundtable composed of a group of national and local thought leaders with experience in urban planning, historic preservation, African American history, and/or grassroots and community organizing.
Their discussions of diversity and inclusion in preservation policy helped shape the initiative and its goals. In particular, their input shed light on existing processes and practices that perpetuate biases in how places are recognized and protected, and helped expose current preservation policies that prevent the conservation of places of importance to Black communities.
“This project will illuminate overlooked narratives and historic places important to Los Angeles and our nation that deserve protection and recognition,” says Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund at the National Trust for Historic Preservation and a member of the project’s initial thought leader round table meeting.
“Through public and private partnership, the Getty and City of Los Angeles can model broader reform in the U.S. preservation field and can work proactively at the local government and city levels to grow pathways for equitable interpretation and community-driven preservation.”
This project will include research to rethink and potentially expand the heritage preservation toolkit. This involves examining how current historic preservation and planning processes and policies may be reinforcing systemic racism. It will also work to bring new and improved processes that address injustices and bring greater inclusion and diversity to historic preservation practices.
Barber shops, such as Magnificent Brothers—in operation in the Crenshaw district since 1970— could be found eligible for listing based on their social significance to the community.
The initial phase of this project will also provide a framework for identifying and evaluating properties relating to African American history in Los Angeles. In 2018 OHR completed a framework for identifying African American heritage in the city, drawing upon nine themes that included civil rights, deed restriction and segregation, religion and spirituality, social clubs and organizations, and visual arts. The project will include deeper citywide community engagement around this framework and allow for the report’s potential expansion.
“As the largest planning department in the United States, City Planning is uniquely positioned to chart a course for a more fair, equitable, and just Los Angeles for future generations, in part, through cultural heritage and education,” says Vince Bertoni, director of planning for the City of Los Angeles. “We are excited to highlight this broader range of values and history that better represents our diverse city.”
In addition to rethinking the preservation toolkit, the project will include official historic designation of a number of African American historic places by the city. The work of the project will also extend beyond traditional preservation tools to address the development of broader cultural preservation strategies with selected historically Black communities.
The project will also provide opportunities for emerging history, preservation and planning professionals through dedicated paid internships. Additionally, Getty and OHR will soon launch a search for a consultant project leader to further develop, manage, and implement the work of this project, under the guidance of a soon-to-be-established local advisory committee representing key stakeholders in the city’s African American communities.
“The history of Los Angeles is incomplete without recognition of the African American individuals and institutions that shaped the economic, cultural and civic narrative of the region,” says Susan D. Anderson, history curator and program manager at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles and a member of the project’s initial thought leader round table meeting. “This important project will expand how heritage is defined and will provide an opportunity to work with local communities and residents to unearth stories that are vital to our understanding of the place we call home.”
The City of Los Angeles and the Getty Conservation Institute have worked together for nearly two decades on local heritage projects. Their joint efforts include SurveyLA, a citywide survey of historic places that was conducted from 2010 through 2017. SurveyLA covered the entire City of Los Angeles—over 880,000 legal parcels in an area of almost 500 square miles—and identified resources dating from approximately 1865 to 1980. The data from SurveyLA was used to create HistoricPlacesLA, a website launched in 2015 that allows the public to explore these places.
Golden State Mutual Life Insurance building designed by Paul Williams
The announcement follows the Getty Research Institute and the USC School of Architecture’s recent joint acquisition of the archives of Paul R. Williams, one of the most significant African American architects of the 20th century. Several Williams buildings are already designated historic landmarks in Los Angeles, including the 28th Street YMCA and Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company.
The new initiative also builds upon the work of City Planning, in establishing the Office of Racial Justice, Equity, and Transformative Planning in 2020 in response to Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Executive Order No. 27 on Racial Equity in City Government. Through the office, City Planning is comprehensively confronting how land use policies and zoning practices have reinforced racial segregation, environmental injustice, and poor health outcomes.
Sonya Clark: Tatter, Bristle, and Mendwill be on view at the National Museum of Womeninthe Arts (NMWA) in Washington D.C. today, March 3 through May 31, 2021. Confronting themes of race, visibility and Blackness, it is the first museum survey of the acclaimed textile and social practice artist’s 25-year career, exploring the social and cultural impacts of the African diaspora.
The exhibition will feature nearly 100 works, including Clark’s sculptures made from pocket combs, human hair and thread as well as works from flags, currency, beads, sugar, cotton plants, pencils, books and more.
(Sonya Clark (b. 1967); Photo by Nicholas Calcott)
The artist changes these everyday objects with a vast range of techniques: she weaves, stitches, folds, braids, dyes, pulls, twists, presses, snips or ties within each work. By stitching black thread cornrows and Bantu knots onto fabrics, rolling human hair into necklaces and stringing a violin bow with a dreadlock, Clark manifests ancestral bonds and reasserts the Black presence in histories from which it has been pointedly omitted.
Throughout her 25-year career, Clark has become renowned for her application of fiber art techniques to human hair, combs, currency, hair salon chairs and other everyday materials to explore the social and cultural impacts of the African Diaspora.
The exhibition features nearly 100 works that reflect the breadth and depth of the artist’s practice. Illuminating the central themes of Clark’s art—including heritage, labor, language and visibility—the show aims to reveal Clark’s radical ability to combine an intensity of handwork and subject matter with an economy of form.
“This timely exhibition affirms Clark’s prowess as both maker and visionary,” said NMWA Deputy Director for Art, Programs and Public Engagement/Chief Curator Kathryn Wat. “She uses concept, process and participation rather than didactic imagery to reflect questions and truths back to us.”
Clark describes “mining” common objects, particularly those bound to identity and power, because “they have the mysterious ability to reflect or absorb us.” The artist transmutes these objects through the application of a vast range of fiber-based processes: weaving, folding, braiding, trimming, pulling, rubbing, twisting, pressing, snipping, dyeing, tying or stacking her diverse source materials.
By stitching black thread cornrows and Bantu knots onto flags, rolling human hair into necklaces, or stringing a violin bow with a dreadlock, she reasserts the Black presence in histories from which it has been pointedly omitted.
For example, Clark’s Afro Abe II (2010)—a five-dollar bill embellished with black threads that form an Afro for President Abraham Lincoln—is witty, poignant and provocative. The stitched intervention induces a sharp, penetrating moment of recognition and connection and infuses the currency with new, layered meaning.
Clark’s use of currency-as-canvas evokes personal, cultural and historical associations with money, including freedom, self-determination and property ownership. As Clark observes, “It’s crowning the emancipator with the hair most associated with Black liberation and black power,” simultaneously embodying the historical absence of Black political agency as well as the promise of it. That liminality—the creation of objects that simultaneously denote humankind’s capacity to suppress as well as persevere—is the formidable essence of Clark’s practice.
About Sonya Clark
Born in 1967 in Washington, D.C., Sonya Clark is professor of art and the history of art at Amherst College, and formerly a Distinguished Research Fellow in the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. She earned an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She also holds a BA from Amherst College, from which she received an honorary doctorate in 2015. She is the recipient of the Rappaport Prize, James Renwick Alliance Distinguished Educator Award, United States Artists Fellowship, Anonymous Was a Woman Award, ArtPrize Juried Grand Prize, Pollock Krasner Foundation award and The 1858 Prize, among others. Clark is one of 16 international artists selected to participate in the inaugural Black Rock Senegal residency program (2020) in Dakar, a project launched by artist Kehinde Wiley. Clark’s art has been presented in more than 350 museums and galleries around the world and reviewed in publications including Artforum, The Art Newspaper, The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.
[Image: Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola: Magic City installation (detail) at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 2021.]
A Cadillac Escalade that morphs into a pulsating sound sculpture. Murray’s Pomade cans as minimalist totems. Durags that replace oil paint as a medium for creating monumentally-scaled action paintings.
Nigerian-American artist Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola examines Black culture through his beautifully innovative, thought-provokingMagic City exhibit. And we are here for it!
[Image: Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola: Magic City installation (detail) at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 2021.]Conceived as a modern-day sanctuary, the site-specific installation explores the commodification of Black culture and the relationship between Africa and Black America. Magic City marks the 29-year-old artist’s first major solo museum exhibition.
The evocative nature of objects is at the core of Magic City. In Akinbola’s mystical space, mass-produced and readymade materials—specifically those with cultural currency in the Black community—are transformed into animistic power objects that communicate the complexities of identity.
The SolidARiTy movement includes over 20 artists who are creating thought-provoking pieces as a fundraiser and art auction that will benefit Claris Health and the Social Justice Learning Institute, both Los Angeles-based 501c3 nonprofits serving the most vulnerable and at-risk people in the area.
The pieces will be available for viewing all that week at Resin Gallery in Hermosa Beach via scheduled appointment for safe social distance measures. Contact Resin Gallery at 831.601.8137 or email info@southbayartistcollective.org.
SolidARiTy was organized by South Bay residents Janne Kouri and Chad Drew, with support from South Bay Artist Collective member Wendy Stillman and founder Rafael McMaster.
There are more than 25 unique pieces being created and auctioned, from artists including world renowned photographers Bo Bridges and Brent Broza, encaustic artist Sabrina Armitage, and popular contemporary artists including, Drica Lobo, Wendy Stillman, Daniel Maltzman, JaniceSchultz, Candyce Fabre, Vienna Pitts, Rafael McMaste, Isis Dua, Ms. Yellow, MCHS Student CharlieKwon, and more.
A 1000-square-foot art installation depicting civil rights, anti-lynching and women’s rights advocate Ida B. Wells will go on display in Washington D.C.’s Union Station on Aug. 24, According to wamu.org.
Artist Helen Marshall created the portrait of Wells out of almost 5,000 black-and-white photographs from the suffrage movement early in the 20th century.
“We need to see her portrait, and African American women need to be a lot more visible,” Marshall says. “She was fighting for the same causes that women are now.”
The project — which will be up through August 28 — was created by the British Marshall after she created a massive portrait of a British suffragist and installed it in a train station in Birmingham in the U.K.
Her American piece was commissioned by the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission, created by Congress to commemorate the 19th Amendment’s 100th anniversary.
After two public hearings, the Boston Art Commission voted to remove the Emancipation Group, a statue installed in 1879 in Boston’s Park Square, according to a statement announcing the removal.
The statue is a replica of one in Washington DC, and has been controversial since its installation for the depiction of the freed slave.
The statue features Archer Alexander, a Black man who “assisted the Union Army, escaped slavery, and was recaptured under the Fugitive Slave Act,” the statement says.
The vote follows a nationwide movement calling for the removal of monuments that celebrate the Confederacy or viewed as racist.
“For generations, Bostonians have called for its removal due to its racist depiction of a Black person. Many also feel it implies that one person ended slavery and misrepresents the complexity of United States history,” the statement said.
The statue has always been criticized, but a petition started in early June renewed interest in its removal.
Tory Bullock, a Boston area actor and activist, launched the petition with the intention of getting 1,000 signatures, but quickly surpassed that goal. Currently, the petition has over 12,000 signatures.
Bullock was inspired by the social and cultural moment that Black Lives Matter protests created and felt this was a good time to reintroduce the issue.
Chelsea Phaire, a 10-year-old from Danbury, Connecticut, has sent more than 1,500 children in homeless shelters and foster care homes art kits to give them something to play and create with during these extra-stressful times brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
According to CNN.com, the kits — which offer markers, crayons, paper, coloring books, colored pencils, and gel pens — are sent to schools and shelters across the country as part of Chelsea’s Charity, an organization founded by Chelsea and her parents.
“Since she was seven, she was begging me and her dad to start a charity,” Candace Phaire, Chelsea’s mom, told CNN. “She was so persistent, every couple of months she would ask, ‘Are we starting Chelsea’s Charity yet?’ When she was turning 10, she asked us again, and we decided it was time to go for it.”
After her birthday party, Chelsea used the donations to send out her first 40 art kits to a homeless shelter in New York. The family then set up an Amazon wishlist full of art supplies. Every time they get enough donations, they pack up the kits and deliver them to kids in person.
In just the first five months, Chelsea and her mom sent out nearly 1,000 kits to children in homeless shelters, foster care homes, women’s shelters, and schools impacted by gun violence.
(photo via Instagram)
Before the pandemic, Chelsea was able to travel with her mom across the country to meet the kids in-person, and even teaches them some of her favorite drawing tips.
Now, schools are closed, and social distancing precautions will not allow Chelsea to physically interact with the kids as much. Instead, she and her mom are mailing the kits.
Since March, when schools began to close, the family has sent over 1,500 kits to schools, shelters, and foster homes in 12 states across the US.
“I feel good inside knowing how happy they are when they get their art kits,” Chelsea told CNN. “I have definitely grown as a person because of this. Now my dream is to meet every kid in the entire world and give them art. Who knows, maybe if we do that and then our kids do that, we’ll have world peace!”
Acclaimed for her photo-based, realistic, minimalist style and creative exploration of skin tone, Sherald’s vision of Taylor simultaneously honors the police violence victim’s beauty, humanity and the tragedy of her loss.
