Category: black history
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Artist a Day: Tom Lloyd
Tom Lloyd’s light art holds a unique position in the history of the Studio Museum of Harlem. When the museum held its first exhibition in 1968, it chose Lloyd’s electronic sculptures in a show titled, Electronic Refractions. According to the museum the work defied expectations as a departure from figurative Black art showing even at its…
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Artist a Day: William T. Williams
I’ve been thinking about the traveling exhibition Soul of a Nation and the artists, particularly the abstract painters from this era and how they approached their work during the tumultuous societal and economic shifts that took place between the 1960s and 1970s in New York. One common thread among many of the artists in the Black Arts…
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Artist a Day: Barbara Jones-Hogu
Barbara Jones-Hogu was one of the 5 founding members of South Chicago’s AfriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists). The collective came together in 1968 to identify and cultivate a cohesive artistic voice around Black art that speaks to aesthetics, and more importantly to the viewer’s experience as Black Americans. Jones-Hogu’s contributions to AfriCOBRA…
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Artist a Day: Hale Woodruff
As a WPA muralist in the 1930s Hale Woodruff was commissioned to create a series of murals for Talladega College in Alabama. His rich, vivid paintings depict historical events from African Americans’ journey from slavery to freedom. It’s easy to see the affinity he shared with artists like Diego Rivera whom Woodruff spent time with…
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Artist a Day: Charles Alston
Charles Alston’s extensive artistic career revolved around painting, sculpture, and murals where he created work that beautifully went in unpredictable directions. That was deliberate, and it’s what makes his work and career so fascinating. In a 1968 interview, Alston critiques, quite presciently, the art world’s tendency to place artists in familiar, predictable boxes: “[O]ne of…
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Artist a Day: Romare Bearden
When learning about the work of Emma Amos, I read an interview where she recounted an interesting story about Romare Bearden and Spiral. They were planning their first group show, which was simply titled “works in black and white”, and during one of their weekly meetings Bearden threw a bunch of black and white clippings…
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Artist a Day: Emma Amos
In the summer of 1963 a group of Black artists in New York came together to form a collective to address the precarious state of creating art amidst societal upheaval caused by politics, racism, and social unrest. Led by Romare Bearden, Spiral was formed to tackle these philosophical issues, and its initial members included Hale Woodruff, Norman…
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Unsynthesized Intuitions: Confronting Discomfort with Adrian Piper
As I left Adrian Piper’s “Concepts and Intuitions” at the Hammer museum, I noticed a series of wooden structures resembling voting booths positioned outside of the exhibit’s entrance. I walked into one of the private booths steadying myself as I prepared to write in the binder that was resting on a shelf in front of…
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The Getty Acquires Betye Saar’s Artistic Archive and Dedicates $5M for Scholarly Research of African American Art
Last month the Getty Research Institute announced that they have pledged an initial $5M dollar investment to fund an ambitious program dedicated to curatorial research and scholarship of African-American art. The African American Art History Initiative will place the GRI at the center of scholarly research in Black art on the west coast and will…
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Family Ties: Fashion and Art Collide in the Work of Jack and Bill Whitten
I recently wrote a story about the work and writings of the late artist Jack Whitten for artnet, and in his book called “Notes From the Woodshed”, he shares an interesting recount of a fabric shopping experience with his brother Bill that had a profound impact on the artist. Jack Whitten dedicated one of his…
Colony Little, Culture Shock Art 