Category: Museums
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Artist a Day Challenge (24): Mark Bradford’s Homage to the Roxy
I have this mythologized view of New York that I have created entirely from the city’s nightclub scene between 1973 and 1987. The Loft, the Gallery, the Paradise Garage and the Roxy sit at the center of this utopia, with the music in these venues acting as the heartbeat of the city. Notice I didn’t mention Studio 54, because in my…
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Artist a Day Challenge (20): Dr. Lowery Stokes Sims
1999 was steeped in Y2K mania. Prince’s 1999 and R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World” made notable musical comebacks and served as the soundtrack for our collective psyche dealing with the pending certainty that the world was hurtling toward a computer programmed apocalypse. The turn of the century came and went without much as much of a blip but that didn’t…
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Artist a Day Challenge (17): Mindfulness and Modernism with Jennie C. Jones
Many years ago I took up the practice of Yoga during three important periods of my life. When I first moved away from home for college, when I moved to Los Angeles 2001 and when I moved out of west L.A. in 2006. The benefits of yoga and meditation were important keys to me adjusting…
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Artist a Day Challenge (6): The Disrupters
Change is not always an organic process, sometimes it needs a little nudge. When it came to diverse cultural representation within Los Angeles museums in the 1960s, LACMA in particular needed a few nudges… and a good push toward progress. One late December evening on Wilshire Boulevard in 1968, a curious crowd formed around the Ahmanson’ building…
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Artist a Day Challenge (5) Beulah Ecton Woodard
In Los Angeles in the 1960’s many black artists including Charles White, Ruth Waddy and Samella Lewis fought for representation in local museums including LACMA. Little did I know that at least one artist had been given a solo show there decades prior. Beulah Ecton Woodard was an artist/sculptor born in Ohio in 1895 who grew up in Los Angeles.…
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Artist a Day Challenge (4) Charles White
Black artists that came of age in the 1940’s formed a tight network of trailblazers, visionaries, influencers and connectors. When I think of the legendary Charles White I see a connector. Nearly every black artist that created art between the 1940’s and 1980’s were influenced in some way by Charles White. His guidance and advocacy ignited the careers of many artists.…
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Artist a Day Challenge (3) Elizabeth Catlett
I hear Shakespeare’s “what’s past is prologue” on a regular basis these days. When we study history with the unique privledge of time and ideological distance, it’s too easy to criticize what we once considered unfathomable. The atrocities of the past would not dare repeat themselves in the present, because the scars and the pain remain fresh–they never…
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Artist a Day Challenge (2) Samella Lewis
In 1920’s New Orleans a young Samella Lewis first picked up a paint brush and through it she found her voice in an environment that didn’t encourage speaking one’s mind. “It might get me in trouble”, Lewis explains in a 2006 interview, “and so I had to find a way to express my feelings.” What originally began as a private expression, Samella…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2017
Back again! Today marks the 3rd edition of my Artist a Day challenge! During Black History Month I share daily posts featuring African-American artists and artists of African descent throughout the diaspora. In 2017 I will focus on artists who have committed to promoting and amplifying the artistic voices of others. They may be mentors, organizers, writers, scholars, curators,…
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Artist a Day Challenge (1): Ruth Waddy
In the fall of 1962 a group of black artists gathered in the back of Safety Savings and Loan’s community room. Brought together by a 53-year-old woman with no formal knowledge of art and limited resources, Ruth Waddy’s pitch to the group was a simple one: Her goal was to create a juried art show at a…
Colony Little, Culture Shock Art 