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Posts tagged as “Art Institute of Chicago”

Scholar, Author and Educator Dr. Kymberly Pinder to Become Dean at Yale School of Art

Scholar, Author and Educator Dr. Kymberly Pinder to Become Dean at Yale School of Art

By goodblacknews on June 29, 2021

[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.

To quote from jbhe.com:

“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.

ART: New Exhibit in Chicago Gives Charles White’s Work and Activism the Attention They Deserve

By goodblacknews on May 27, 2018

“Love Letter III” by Charles White (via smithsonianmag.com)

by Amy Crawford via smithsonianmag.com
Born in Chicago in 1918, the artist Charles White always received inspiration from the struggles and triumphs of black people—major historical figures like Frederick Douglass as well as ordinary people like his own mother, who worked as a maid her whole life.
“Our Land” 1951 by Charles White

It was White’s mother who bought him his first box of paints, when he was 7 years old. He would go on to earn a scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago, where a major retrospective of his work opens this month.
Among the pieces on display is the 1977 lithograph Love Letter III, which pairs a Madonna-like figure with a motif White often used to represent feminine life-giving and creativity: a conch shell.
A book on his work, Charles White: A Retrospective by Sarah Kelly Oehler and Esther Adler, will be available on June 19, 2018.
Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/new-exhibit-gives-charles-whites-art-activism-attention-they-deserve-180969007/#63kFiDTHT4RgRBZj.99

Chicago Teens Will Now Have Free Admission to Art Institute Of Chicago | WBEZ

By goodblacknews on January 2, 2017

Whitney Young Magnet High School senior Rosario Barrera and Kenwood Academy High School Junior Walela Greenlee, both members of the museum’s Teen Council, in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Modern Wing (photo via wbez.org)

article by Lakeidra Chavis via wbez.org
A University of Chicago alumnus and his wife have made it possible for some Chicago teens to visit the Art Institute of Chicago for free for at least the next 25 years. Glenn and Claire Swogger are a philanthropic couple from Kansas who gave the undisclosed gift to the museum.“We try to find programs that will help people have educational and cultural experiences that will be useful to them and good for society,” Glenn said.
Currently, children under 14 years old get free admission into the museum. But starting this week, the Swogger’s foundation will expand that to any Chicagoan under 18 years old. “There’s still the problem of (the teenagers) getting there, they might not have enough money jiggling in their pockets for them to come routinely to the Art Institute,” Glenn Swogger said.  He added the museum offers more than just art, including a variety of programs open to youths.“We just wanted to make it a little easier for young people to take advantage of that,” he said.
Art Institute spokeswoman Amanda Hicks said the donation was in the works for about a year, and the museum hopes it will help boost attendance from Chicago’s youth. Illinois art seekers who are over 18 years old can still visit the museum for free every Thursday from 5 to 8 p.m.
Source: Chicago Teens Will Now Have Free Access To The Art Institute Of Chicago | WBEZ

"Harlem Is Nowhere," an Artistic Collaboration Between Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison, on Display at Art Institute of Chicago Until August 28

By goodblacknews on June 5, 2016

“Untitled” (Harlem, New York), 1952 (THE GORDON PARKS FOUNDATION)

article by Tamara Best via nytimes.com

Masters of their fields, the photographer Gordon Parks and the writer Ralph Ellison bonded over a shared vision of using their creative talents to address racial injustice. That commitment led to the powerful, enduring 1952 photo essay “A Man Becomes Invisible.”

But that Life magazine project was not their only collaboration. A new exhibition, “Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem,” for the first time shows images from a lesser-known 1948 project of theirs, “Harlem Is Nowhere.” On view through Aug. 28 at the Art Institute of Chicago, the exhibition offers the two men’s counternarrative (the reality, that is) of the living conditions of black Americans during that time. Among the show’s more than 50 objects — the known surviving material belonging to both “A Man Becomes Invisible” and “Harlem Is Nowhere” — are newly discovered images, photographs that have never been exhibited and items that had not been definitely identified as belonging to either project.

The black-and-white photographs are vignettes of life in Harlem: street scenes of adults and children; political advocacy in real time; and imagined scenes from “Invisible Man,” Ellison’s watershed 1952 novel. The photographs are placed next to the passages that correspond with them, giving a sense of the tight collaborative process. Among the other highlights are drafts of captions for “Harlem Is Nowhere,” and images include a man in an alleyway; Harlem in literal ruin with a clinic building acting as a bright light; and a patient waiting to be seen, sitting in solitude, head in his hands.

Ellison and Parks “lived parallel lives, and they intersect in a creative splendor,” Adam Bradley, an associate professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who has written about Ellison’s work, said in a telephone interview. “They both understood the capacity of dark and light, light and shadow, black and white.”

These artists were compelled to focus on Harlem, their adopted home, which despite being the center of a cultural revival during the Harlem Renaissance, suffered a great economic toll tied to the Depression. They also witnessed the mounting postwar frustrations among their neighbors, black men who had been enlisted to fight but whose freedoms remained limited upon their return home.

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.”