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Posts tagged as “African-American Art”

The Art of Being Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem

By goodblacknews on June 2, 2013
Thelma Golden. (Photo: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders)
Thelma Golden. (Photo: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders)
If Thelma Golden didn’t exist, you would want to invent her. As director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, Golden brings her unique passion, commitment, style and laser-focus to every project she touches.

Being so good at what one does almost always stems from true love, and Golden has always been smitten with art. “When I was about 10 years old, a family friend gave my brother and I the board game Masterpiece, which involved figuring out who had stolen a great work of art,” the Queens-born Golden told theGrio. “The game included cards that represented the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, and those deeply engaged me in the idea of a museum.”
However, it was her elementary teacher, Lucille Buck, who really brought her into the study of art history. “Mrs. Buck was an art aficionado and felt strongly that we should not only visit museums, but also learn about the art, artists and artworks we were going to see before our visits. She began my lifelong love of learning about art.”
Golden takes the art world by storm
Armed with a B.A. in Art History and African-American Studies from Smith College, Golden actually started her career at the Studio Museum in 1987, prior to joining the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1988. She spent ten years at the Whitney. Her first big exhibition as curator was the 1993 Whitney Biennial (always a provocative seasonal show), but she really made her mark in 1994 when she organized the controversial exhibition Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art.
The show ruffled the feathers of black and white viewers — and critics — alike, but opened up new dialogues. Golden says that in many ways, it was her dream show. “By having been fortunate enough to do that so early on in my career, it has really freed me to be truly curatorially curious. I had the great advantage to make an exhibition so wholly influential to my thinking and the ideas that I was engaged with that it has let me, in the intervening twenty years, follow my mind and my heart around the art and artists that I love.”

Former Lover Reveals Wealth of Unseen Works by Basquiat

By goodblacknews on April 9, 2013
Jean-Michel Basquiat's 'Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown)'
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s ‘Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown)’ painting estimated at 7-9 million GBP is displayed at Christie’s in February in London, England. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? More to the point, is a sound only a sound if someone hears it? Without delving too deeply into the metaphysics, this riddle offers an imperfect analogy for the philosophical conundrum more relevant here, namely – is art only art if someone sees it?  TheGrio interviewed Alexis Adler, a New York University embryologist and former romantic companion of iconic Haitian-American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, these and other tacit questions about how we evaluate, share and make meaning of art played mysteriously in the background.

Adler, who lived with Basquiat before he was famous, recently revealed plans to share a previously unseen, thirty-year-old collection of art works and ephemera from the early career of the tragic and prolific creator. Produced during their relationship in an East Village apartment — some pieces on the apartment — these pieces have never been seen by the art world or the public.
“This is allowing the people who knew Jean to tell the world more about him, who he was, how I knew him, his warmth and interest as a person,” Adler told theGrio about her plans. “There is a range of work from that time, and it offers a pretty intense snapshot of his beginnings as an artist.”

Artist Kehinde Wiley Gains Attention for Exhibit at Phoenix Art Museum

By goodblacknews on April 3, 2013
New York-based painter Kehinde Wiley‘s current exhibit Kehinde Wiley: Memling at the Phoenix Art Museum is attracting national attention, most recently via a mention in Time Magazine’s ‘Pop Chart’ in the March 18 issue. Wiley’s eight portraits take their poses and contexts from the works by the legendary 15th century Flemish master Hans Memling but Wiley has substituted contemporary sitters for the historical figures. 

HBCU Elizabeth City State University Opens a New Art Gallery

By goodblacknews on March 23, 2013

guitaplayerjones
“Guitar Player” by Leonard Jones

Elizabeth City State University, the historically Black educational institution in North Carolina, recently opened its new Kermit E. White Graduate and Continuing Education Center. The center houses the university’s art gallery.
One section of the gallery will display pieces from the university’s permanent collection of African and African American art. The other part of the gallery will exhibit a rotating selection or a visiting collection.
Professor Alexis Joyner, chair of the art department at the university, loaned eight pieces from his personal collection for the opening exhibit. In addition, works by Leonard Jones, a former professor at Virginia State University and Charles Joyner of North Carolina State University are in the opening exhibit.
The accompanying illustration shows one of the pieces in the exhibit, “Guitar Player” by Leonard Jones.
article via jbhe.com

Black History Collection Makes Its Disney Debut

By goodblacknews on March 17, 2013

Bernard & Shirley Kinsey

Bernard and Shirley Kinsey have entrusted their collection of African-American treasures to Walt Disney World Resort for the “Rediscovering America: Family Treasures from the Kinsey Collection” exhibit at Epcot. Take a look at a few of the pieces that have truly made their mark in Black history. (Photo: David Roark)
via The Kinsey Collection at Epcot | Black History Collection Makes Its Disney Debut | News | BET.

Murals of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

By goodblacknews on January 21, 2013
One of Camilo José Vergara’s photographs on view at the New-York Historical Society.

 

Since the 1970s Camilo José Vergara has been photographing murals of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. painted on walls in cities across the United States. Through them, he has documented social and political changes in the country itself. On a wall in the Callowhill section of Philadelphia, above, Dr. King is the potent orator of the Washington marches; on Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem he’s a solitary, anxious visionary. In Los Angeles his figure is all but buried under fresh graffiti; in the South Bronx, the site of turf wars between blacks and Latinos in the 1970s, his face is scratched out.

Most of the murals were based on published images of Dr. King, edited to context. With trends in immigration, he takes on Latino and Asian features. Over time he is joined by a shifting pantheon of timely heroes: Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Michael Jackson and President Obama. As one person explained to Mr. Vergara: “Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run. Obama ran so we all can fly.” On the evidence of the 30 pictures in “The Dream Continues: Photographs of Martin Luther King Murals by Vergara” at the New-York Historical Society through May 5, the popularity of other heroes brightens and fades while Dr. King’s mystique lives on.

article by Holland Cotter via nytimes.com

Contemporary African, African-American Artwork Presented in NYC

By goodblacknews on December 1, 2012
Philip Kwame Apagya, Come on Board, 2000/2003<br />Courtesy of The Walther Collection
Philip Kwame Apagya, Come on Board, 2000/2003
Courtesy of The Walther Collection
Arthur Walther,64, is a German-American art collector who began collecting artwork and photography in China in the early 1990′s. Following his retirement as a general partner at Goldman Sachs and the founding partner of the firm’s German operations, Walther focused on his collection.  The wave of modernization and economic reform flooding through China resulted in artists recording and analyzing the changes that were occurring. As China competed more in the global market, Walther found himself shying away from their artists and collecting more work from contemporary African artists.

“A number of these [artworks] overlapped continuously,” Walther said at the exhibition of his latest exhibition, Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive, which is being shown at the Chelsea Arts Building in New York. “I collected Chinese art very slowly. In the nineties and early 2000, [Chinese art was] a real examination and investigation by the artist of society and of the transformations and of their histories. Which before didn’t happen to that degree [because art] was all propaganda and political.”

Collector Russell L. Goings Prepares To Disperse Rarely-Seen Romare Bearden Trove

By goodblacknews on October 23, 2012

At first glance the modest living room with parquet floor and track lighting resembles any space with an indifferent housekeeper: papers abound, stacks of paintings lean against walls, an indistinct jumble of items swallows a small table. But then Russell L. Goings starts pulling out what he calls his “stuff,” and his home improbably transforms into a personal art gallery, one brimming with his extensive collection of work by Romare Bearden, the 20th-century artist best known for his soulful collages of African-American life. Bearden also happened to be Mr. Goings’s longtime close friend.