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Posts tagged as “Jacob Lawrence”

The New Yorker’s Tribute to the Schomburg Center for Research In Black Culture Is Everything

By goodblacknews on February 15, 2016

Newyorker
article via clutchmagonline.com
The New Yorker recently unveiled its latest illustrated cover, and it’s gorgeous.
Featuring Kadir Nelson’s stunning “Harlem On My Mind” painting, the Feb. 16 issue pays homage to the Schomburg Center for Research In Black Culture.
Nelson said he wanted his painting to be “a stylistic montage” that honors “the great Harlem Renaissance painters: Aaron Douglas, William H. Johnson, Norman Lewis, Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, Archibald Motley, and Palmer Hayden.”
Also included in the beautiful illustration are Black cultural giants Zora Neale Hurston, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, and the Nicholas Brothers.

West Virginia University Receives Donation of Artwork Depicting Racial Injustice

By goodblacknews on April 23, 2015

Jacob_Lawrence_Confrontation_at_the_Bridge
Harvey and Jennifer Peyton are donating a series of paintings to the Art Museum of West Virginia University that deal with racial injustice in the 1930s to the 1960s.
Among the works donated is “Confrontation at the Bridge,” a painting by Jacob Lawrence of marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on Bloody Sunday in March 1965. Other works include “Waiting Room, South” by Rosalee Berkowitz, ” Lynching (Self-Portrait With Rope)” by Louis Lozowick, and “Bessie Smith, Queen of the Blues” by Margaret Burroughs.
Harvey Peyton holds bachelor’s and law degrees from West Virginia University. He stated that “Jen and I have dedicated our collecting to the idea that visual art and the concept of social justice should go hand in hand. We hope these works, and other we have given and intend to give to the Art Museum of WVU, will enrich the idea of both art and community at the university long after we are gone.”
article via jbhe.com

Philadelphia Museum of Art to Open “Represent: 200 Years of African American Art” Exhibit in January 2015

By goodblacknews on December 16, 2014

The Annunciation, (1898), Henry Ossawa Tanner. (Courtesy the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Purchased with the W. P. Wilstach Fund, 1899)
The Annunciation, (1898), Henry Ossawa Tanner. (Courtesy the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Purchased with the W. P. Wilstach Fund, 1899)

In January, the Philadelphia Museum will open “Represent: 200 Years of African American Art,” a sprawling survey of its holdings of works by black artists. Featuring 75 artworks by over 50 artists, the show’s earliest pieces include silhouettes by Moses Williams that date to 1802, pre-Civil War decorative arts by free and enslaved artists, and potter David Drake’s bible-inscribed storage jar sculpture.
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Birds in Flight (1927) by Aaron Douglas (Courtesy the Philadelphia Museum of Art, © Heirs of Aaron Douglas/Licensed by VAGA, New York)

“Presenting these works together now, we are mindful of the many anniversaries of the civil rights movement that have recently passed or are soon to come, and are thinking equally about the way race remains a key topic of conversation in the United States today—in politics, society, popular culture, and, of course, the arts,” said Philadelphia Museum of Art director Timothy Rub said in a statement. “This is an important moment in which to explore the historic development and continuing growth of the Museum’s collections of African American art.”
A centerpiece of the exhibition is undoubtedly Henry Ossawa Tanner’s 1898 painting titled The Annunciation, reports the Wall Street Journal. Acquired by the museum in 1899, it was the first piece by an African American artist added to its collection. The show traces black artists through many of the major movements in American art history, from Cubism with Aaron Douglas’s Birds in Flight (1927) to Modernism with works by William Henry Johnson and Elizabeth Catlett. A combination of both can be seen in the figurative painting of Harlem Renaissance artist Jacob Lawrence.
Other, more contemporary, highlights include Barbara Chase-Riboud’s large-scale bronze and fiber sculpture Malcolm X #3, as well as pieces by Carrie Mae Weems, Glenn Ligon, Lorna Simpson, and Kara Walker.
“Represent: 200 Years of African American Art” will be on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art January 10, 2015 though April 5, 2015. (Preview a selection of artworks from the exhibition below.)

Bill Cosby to Loan African-American Art Collection to Smithsonian Institution

By goodblacknews on September 16, 2014

Bill Cosby
‘To me, it’s a way for people to see what exists and to give voice to many of these artists who were silenced for so long,’ Cosby said. (Photograph: Rick Cinclair/AP)

After amassing a private collection of African-American art over four decades, Bill Cosby and his wife Camille plan to showcase their holdings for the first time in an exhibition planned at the Smithsonian Institution.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art announced Monday that the entire Cosby collection will go on view in November in a unique exhibit juxtaposing African-American art with African art.
The collection, which will be loaned to the museum, includes works by such leading African-American artists as Beauford Delaney, Faith Ringgold, Jacob Lawrence, Augusta Savage and Henry Ossawa Tanner. The Cosby collection of more than 300 African American paintings, prints, sculptures and drawings has never been loaned or seen publicly, except for one work of art.
“It’s so important to show art by African-American artists in this exhibition,” Cosby said in a written statement. “To me, it’s a way for people to see what exists and to give voice to many of these artists who were silenced for so long, some of whom will speak no more.”
The exhibit, “Conversations: African and African American Artworks in Dialogue”, will open November 9th and will be on view through early 2016 in Washington. It will be organized by themes, placing pieces from African artists in the Smithsonian collection near similar works from African-American artists in Cosby’s collection. Curators said it will explore ideas about history, creativity, power, identity and artistry.
Some highlights include rare 18th and early 19th-century portraits by Baltimore-based artist Joshua Johnston, explorations of black spirituality in the 1894 piece “The Thankful Poor” by Henry Ossawa Tanner and Cosby family quilts.
“The exhibition will encourage all of us to draw from the creativity that is Africa, to recognize the shared history that inextricably links Africa and the African diaspora and to seek the common threads that weave our stories together,” said museum director Johnnetta Betsch Cole, in announcing the exhibit.
The exhibition of Cosby’s collection is part of the African art museum’s 50th anniversary.
article via theguardian.com

Artists Of The Civil Rights Movement Exhibit Comes to Brooklyn Museum of Art in March

By goodblacknews on February 17, 2014

witness
Benny Andrews (American, 1930–2006). Witness (detail), 1968. Oil on canvas with painted fabric collage, 48 x 48 in. (121.9 x 121.9 cm). © Estate of Benny Andrews/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Photo: Matthew Newton, courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

Throughout the 1960s, a decade marked by an ardent civil rights fight that swept the American nation, many artists found themselves on the side of a burgeoning protest movement. From assemblage artists to Minimalist masters to Pop Art figures, those working in a wide breadth of media turned to art as an act of political defiance. They painted, sculpted, and photographed to comment on the social turmoil that surrounded them, creating visual symbols of resistance, liberation and empowerment.
An upcoming exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art pays tribute to this period in U.S. history with “Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties.” The 103-piece show presents 66 artists of various races and ethnicities who created works informed by their own opinions of injustice and conflict 50 years ago.
The exhibition is organized according to themes like “American Nightmare,” “Black Is Beautiful,” “Sisterhood” and “Politicizing Pop.” Staged in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the artworks on display range from Jack Whitten’s “Birmingham 1964,” an assembled homage to the violence that rocked the Alabama town, to Norman Rockwell’s “New Kids in the Neighborhood,” a fictional portrait of two black children confronting their new white neighbors in the suburbs.
Many familiar images appear in the canvases and three-dimensional installations set to fill the halls of the Brooklyn art haven this March. Philip Guston’s pink-tinted painting of three members of the Klu Klux Klan will hang near Robert Indiana’s text-heavy indictment of the confederacy, featuring a loaded image of the American South. While these artworks conjure historical memories, other pieces — like Jeff Donaldson’s “Wives of Shango” and Emma Amos’ “Three Figures” — reference self-identity and blackness, many times using the striking image of the female form, reappropriating the reclining nude or the goddess stance as a visual for change.
Check out a preview of “Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties” below:
amos
Emma Amos (American, born 1938). Three Figures, 1966. Oil on canvas, 60 x 50 in. (152.4 x 127 cm). Collection of the artist. © Emma Amos / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Photo: Becket Logan

indiana
Robert Indiana (American, born 1928). The Confederacy: Alabama, 1965. Oil on canvas, 70 x 60 in. (177.8 x 152.4 cm). Miami University Art Museum, Oxford, Ohio, Gift of Walter and Dawn Clark Netsch. © 2013 Morgan Art Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

lawrence
Jacob Lawrence (American, 1917–2000). Soldiers and Students, 1962. Opaque watercolor over graphite on wove paper, 22 7/16 x 30 7/16 in (57 x 77.3 cm). Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, bequest of Jay R. Wolf, Class of 1951. © 2013 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

guston
Philip Guston (American, born Canada, 1913–1980). City Limits, 1969. Oil on canvas, 77 x 103 1/4 in. (195.6 x 262.2 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Musa Guston, 1991. © The Estate of Philip Guston

"Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe" Exhibit Opens at Brooklyn Museum

By goodblacknews on September 29, 2012
Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe Portraits by this artist in this Brooklyn Museum show. (Librado Romero/The New York Times)

Mickalene Thomas’s brash, exuberant paintings don’t care what you think of them; they are much too busy simply — or not so simply — being themselves. Their sense of independence is driven home by this artist’s invigorating exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, along with the realization that the museum’s populist program sometimes hits the nail on the head.
Organized by the Santa Monica Museum of Art in California, and substantially expanded in Brooklyn, “Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe” is a show of broad appeal, free of dumbing down. It has examples of the large, color photo-portraits and clusters of the small, truculent collages that function as studies for Ms. Thomas’s paintings while being works of art themselves.

“Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe” Exhibit Opens at Brooklyn Museum

By goodblacknews on September 29, 2012
Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe Portraits by this artist in this Brooklyn Museum show. (Librado Romero/The New York Times)

Mickalene Thomas’s brash, exuberant paintings don’t care what you think of them; they are much too busy simply — or not so simply — being themselves. Their sense of independence is driven home by this artist’s invigorating exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, along with the realization that the museum’s populist program sometimes hits the nail on the head.

Organized by the Santa Monica Museum of Art in California, and substantially expanded in Brooklyn, “Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe” is a show of broad appeal, free of dumbing down. It has examples of the large, color photo-portraits and clusters of the small, truculent collages that function as studies for Ms. Thomas’s paintings while being works of art themselves.