BROOKYLN: The New York Group Show (Curated Exhibition)

The New York Group Show
December 28, 2011 - January 1, 2011

Kianga Ellis Projects is pleased to host a special exhibition for the holidays. 48 artists who answered the art call will present work in all media for THE NEW YORK GROUP SHOW:

"I am the judge. I am the jury."

Rebellion & Empowerment in Contemporary Art 

An opening reception for the artists will take place on Wednesday, December 28th from 6:00 - 8:00 pm at 41 Kosciusko Street in Brooklyn. 

Map & Directions: http://g.co/maps/52bwm

The show will be on view until 6:00 pm Sunday, Jan 1st by appointment.

RSVP Required.

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NEW YORK: Dirty Sensibilities (Curated Exhibition)

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, Standing From What Was, oil and paper on canvas, 2009.

Dirty Sensibilities: A 21st Century Exploration of the New American Black South
October 14 - December 16, 2011

THE CARIBBEAN CULTURAL CENTER AFRICAN DIASPORA INSTITUTE
408 West 58th Street
New York, NY 

This unprecedented, multi-media exhibition presents work by a group of intergenerational Southern artists of African descent that have examined contemporaneous realities of life in the South from a cultural, political, cosmological and sociological perspective.

America’s southern states are often viewed monolithically, through a narrow and stereotypical lens of a romanticized antebellum past, post Civil War unrest, and 20th Century Civil Rights politics. Dirty Sensibilities explores current issues such as race relations in the Age of Obama, the survival of Southern folk traditions, post-Civil Rights realities, the significance of relationships with elders and the creation of a new Southern aesthetic.

“Much of what is known about the Black experience in the South focuses on a historical period often directly related to the oppression of enslaved Africans, their struggle for liberation and their struggles for Civil Rights after the brief period of progress experienced during Reconstruction. However, the Southern narrative includes a history rich in culture, spirituality and Africanisms that have thrived over the past four hundred plus years,” states the exhibition’s curator Shantrelle P. Lewis. “This exhibition seeks to explore those idiosyncrasies that are unique to the region of the United States situated below the Mason Dixon Line.”

Dirty Sensibilities includes work by:

Christopher Batten

Endia Beal

Kimberly Becoat

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh

Ja’Tovia Gary

Tosha Grantham

Al Janae Hamilton

Nikita Hunter

Marcia Jones

Aaqil Ka

Nyeema Morgan

Jasmine Murrell

Marilyn Nance

frank d. robinson

Selah Says

Alexandria Smith

Dirty Sensibilities: A 21st Century Exploration of the New American Black South from MVMT on Vimeo.

Exhibit Link

Dirty Sensibilities Exhibit SNEAK PEEK

Shantrelle P. Lewis on the Michael Eric Dyson Show

Dirty Sensibilities: A New South

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CHICAGO: The Future's Past / Blanc Gallery / October 7, 2011

THE FUTURE’S PAST
October 7, 2011 

Blanc Gallery

4445 South King Drive

Chicago, IL

Presented by Blanc Gallery and the Black Metropolis Research Consortium (BMRC), The Future’s Past brings the history of Bronzeville to vibrant new life with a project that spans miles and media. The Future’s Past premieres October 7, 2011 from 6 pm – 9pm at Blanc Gallery, 4445 S. King Drive. 

The Future’s Past is orchestrating a dynamic dance between yesterday’s cultural giants and today’s contemporary artists—against the backdrop of historic Bronzeville. The Future’s Past challenges viewers to engage new modes of technology to unearth and interrogate the history of Martin Luther King Dr.—to see their streets with new eyes. Curator Tempestt Hazel ambitiously energizes one of Chicago’s most historic corridors by presenting two project components: a Public Art Installation and a Gallery Exhibition. 

Public Art: Tempestt will activate King Drive from 35th to 47th Streets and pay architectural homage to four landmark structures by mounting light and image installations of archival photographs in their windows:

• The Supreme Life Insurance Company @ 35th and King Drive @ 35th and King Drive
• The Lutrelle "Lu" & Jorja Palmer Mansion @ 37th and King Drive @ 37th and King Drive
• Metropolitan Funeral Systems Association and The Parkway Ballroom @ 45th and King Drive
• Former site of The Regal Theater and The Savoy Ballroom @ 47th and King Drive and The Parkway Ballroom @ 45th and King Drive

Gallery Exhibition: Four contemporary artists will present work that is in visual dialogue with the Public Installations. Each artist employs modern media to question the role technology can play in illustrating history. This exhibit will be mounted at Blanc Gallery, 4445 S. King Drive. 

The Future’s Past premieres during Chicago Artist Month, on October 7, 2011 from 6 pm – 9pm. Visitors will depart from Blanc Gallery and be transported back in time on a nostalgic trolley ride along South Parkway to see the Light Installations. They will return to the Gallery to see these landmarks re‐interpreted through a contemporary prism.

Tempestt Hazel is the curator of The Future’s Past project and a 2011 fellow of the BMRC. Her experience as a Bronzeville resident sparked the idea to bring history and contemporary culture together through archival work and modern technology. Tempestt has combed through the archives of institutional members of the BMRC and engaged Bronzeville legends in first person audio interviews; visit futurespastchicago.wordpress.com. Blanc Gallery, (blancchicago.com) seeks to engage African‐Americans and all Chicagoans through the arts and to ignite dialogue on issues of spiritual, political and social significance. Participating Chicago artists are Krista Franklin, Stephen Flemister, Emmanuel Pratt and Amanda Williams. 

The Light Installation is sponsored by Black Metropolis Research Consortium and East Lake. The Blanc Exhibit is sponsored by Illinois Service Federal Bank, Alderman William D. Burns, Ariel Investments, and Uptown Magazine.

Future's Past challenged 4 Chicago artists to collaboratively respond...each artist brought their unique voice to the conversation. The artists were selected because of their ongoing interest in combining and blurring the lines of digital and analog technologies in creating artwork.

Krista Franklin is a multi‐talented poet and visual artist. She creates breathtaking mixed media collages that chronicle universal truths.

Stephen Flemister combines his advanced knowledge of technology with his tremendous representational skill to explore themes of identity, surveillance, and culture.

Emmanuel Pratt is a nomadic Renaissance man, combining his passions for architecture, urban agriculture, community development and art.

Amanda Williams is an award winning artist who explores ways to combine art and architecture as catalysts for sustainable societies.

For more information contact:

Curator Tempestt Hazel

(tempestt.hazel@sixtyinchesfromcenter.org)

Source

Visit The Future's Past Web site

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LOS ANGELES: Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980 / Hammer Museum / October 2, 2011 - January 8, 2012

Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980

October 2, 2011 - January 8, 2012

Hammer Museum

10899 Wilshire Boulevard

Los Angeles, CA

Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980 chronicles the vital legacy of the city’s African American artists. The work of these practitioners was animated to an extent by the civil rights and Black Power movements, reflecting the changing sense of what constituted African American identity and American culture. The power of the black community strengthened nationwide as racial discrimination began to lessen as a result of new legislation and changing social norms. As there were plentiful opportunities for African Americans to make a livelihood in Southern California, Los Angeles soon had a substantial black population, and social, political, and economic changes drew transplants from around the country. Galvanized by these transformations, black artists worked to form a cultural community that became an important part of the city’s thriving arts scene.Now Dig This! examines a pioneering group of African American artists whose work, connections, and friendships with other artists of varied ethnic backgrounds influenced the creative community and artistic practices that developed in Los Angeles during this historic period. The exhibition presents 140 artworks by these artists and the friends who influenced and supported them during this period and explores and celebrates the significant contributions of African Americans to the canon of Los Angeles–based art.

“The artists that have been included in Now Dig This! represent a vibrant group whose work is critical to a more complete and dynamic understanding of twentieth century American art. Their influence goes beyond their immediate creative circles and their legacy is something we are only now beginning to fully understand,” says exhibition curator Kellie Jones.

During the 1960s and 1970s, artists in Southern California developed an aesthetic language that reflected their West Coast surroundings and explored various approaches to art making, including assemblage, “finish fetish,” California pop, installation, and performance. Several prominent black artists began their careers in the Los Angeles area, including Melvin Edwards, David Hammons, Maren Hassinger, Senga Nengudi, John Outterbridge, Noah Purifoy, and Betye Saar. They were part of a unique support system that involved a confluence of artists, curators, scholars, and gallerists in Southern California. Samella Lewis, Suzanne Jackson, and Dale Brockman Davis and Alonzo Davis opened galleries that became important outlets and gathering places for black artists. Lewis, a noted art historian, also wrote books and articles that established a benchmark for the documentation and analysis of the work of contemporary African American artists.

In the fall of 1966 UCLA’s Dickson Art Center inaugurated its new building with the exhibition The Negro in American Art. Although the exhibition was national in scope, a significant portion of the artists were from Los Angeles and were part of a group working with Noah Purifoy and the Watts Towers Arts Center to reclaim the remains of the Watts uprising, which had taken place just one year earlier, by using them to make art. Seven artists in the current exhibition—Melvin Edwards, Daniel LaRue Johnson, Noah Purifoy, Betye Saar, Raymond Saunders, Ruth G. Waddy, and Charles White—were among the more than forty who participated in the 1966 show. Moreover, three of the works presented in the earlier exhibition—Edwards’s The Lifted X and August the Squared Fire, along with Johnson’s Big Red, all from 1965—are on view here. Now Dig This! expands on this legacy and considers the activities of African American artists in Los Angeles during these pivotal years through a broader lens. —Kellie Jones, Guest CuratorNow Dig This! is presented as part of Pacific Standard Time, a collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California, coming together for six months beginning in October 2011 to tell the story of the birth of the Los Angeles art scene and how it became a new force in the art world. Organized by the Hammer and curated by Columbia University professor Kellie Jones, Now Dig This! will chronicle and celebrate this nuanced and multicultural history of Los Angeles. 

“Pacific Standard Time is a very significant event for the city of Los Angeles. The deep and remarkable history it explores serves as a foundation for the thriving creative community of artists living and working here today,” remarks Hammer director Ann Philbin. “Now Dig This! reveals a specific moment when a group of African American artists, gallerists, writers, and collectors generated a nexus of creativity and influence that is largely unknown to the general public.” 

NOW DIG THIS! FEATURED ARTISTS
John Altoon
Sister Karen Boccalero/Self Help Graphics
Marie Johnson Calloway
George Clack
Dan Concholar
Houston Conwill
Alonzo Davis
Dale Brockman Davis
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville
Mark di Suvero
Melvin Edwards
Fred Eversley
Charles Gaines
David Hammons
Maren Hassinger
Suzanne Jackson
Virginia Jaramillo
Ulysses Jenkins
Daniel LaRue Johnson
Elizabeth Leigh-Taylor
Samella Lewis
Ron Miyashiro
Senga Nengudi
John Outterbridge
Joe Overstreet
William Pajaud
Noah Purifoy
John T. Riddle Jr.
Betye Saar
Raymond Saunders
Ruth G. Waddy
Gordon Wagner
Charles White
Tyrus Wong
Andrew Zermeño/Mechicano Art Center

Hammer Museum Video: Curator Kellie Jones discusses Now Dig This!

About the Curator

Now Dig This! is curated by Kellie Jones, associate professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. Jones’s writings have appeared in numerous exhibition catalogues and publications includingNKA, Artforum, Flash Art, Atlantica, and Third Text. Most recently, she curated Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction, 1964–1980 (The Studio Museum in Harlem, 2006). Current book projects include, Eye-Minded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art (Duke University Press 2011) and Taming the Freeway and Other Acts of Urban HIP-notism: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s (forthcoming from The MIT Press).

About Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945 – 1980

Pacific Standard Time is a collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California, coming together for six months beginning in October 2011 to tell the story of the birth of the Los Angeles art scene and how it became a major new force in the art world. Each institution will make its own contribution to this grand-scale story of artistic innovation and social change, told through a multitude of simultaneous exhibitions and programs. Exploring and celebrating the significance of the crucial post-World War II years through the tumultuous period of the 1960s and 70s, Pacific Standard Time encompasses developments from L.A. Pop to post-minimalism; from modernist architecture and design to multi-media installations; from the films of the African American L.A. Rebellion to the feminist activities of the Woman’s Building; from ceramics to Chicano performance art; and from Japanese American design to the pioneering work of artists’ collectives. Initiated through $10 million in grants from the Getty Foundation, Pacific Standard Time involves cultural institutions of every size and character across Southern California, from Greater Los Angeles to San Diego and Santa Barbara to Palm Springs.

Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980 has been made possible by major grants from the Getty Foundation. Generous support has been provided by the Henry Luce Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, which funded a Curatorial Research Fellowship; and The Broad Art Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the Eileen Harris Norton Foundation, The Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation, Ina Coleman and Alan Wilson, and V. Joy Simmons, M.D. In-kind support has been provided by InterfaceFLOR.

Source

Maren Hassinger and Senga Nengudi discuss being black artists in the 1970s

'If You Don't Know, Now You Know': Life, Art and Now Dig This!

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CLIP ART: Thelma Golden & Duro Olowu / Ebony magazine / September 2011

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOSHUA BRIGHT

Clipped from the September 2011 issue of Ebony magazine. Spousals Golden and Olowu list their favorite items of choice from fashion and accessories to food and travel destinations. The issue also features an article on Fisk University's Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Modern European and American Art which was donated to the historic university in 1949 by Georgia O'Keefe.

Read more in the September 2011 issue of Ebony magazine on newsstands now!

Ebony Online

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POST: Crown Heights Riot 20 Years Later: Crown Heights Gold / Prospect Heights, NY Patch / August 19, 2011

Dexter Wimberly, curator of Crown Heights Gold. Photo by Jonathan Mandell

By Jonathan Mandell for the Prospect Heights Patch

On one wall of Crown Heights Gold, an exhibition by 23  artists marking the 20^th anniversary of the Crown Heights riot, there are two photographs of happy families – one Hasidic in a park, another Afro-Caribbean on a stoop. Both are entitled “What If?”

What photographer Jamel Shabazz means by that question is: What if on August 19, 1991, seven-year-old Gavin Cato had not been killed in a car accident and 29-year-old doctoral student Yankel Rosenbaum had not been killed in the ensuing riot? What if both had lived?

Gavin Cato would be 27 years old; the bottom photograph is what he and his family might have looked like. Yankel Rosenbaum would be 50; the top photograph is what he and his family might have looked like.

“Put aside all the politics and what remains is that two people lost their lives,” said Dexter Wimberly, curator of “Crown Heights Gold,” which is being held at the Skylight Gallery of the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation through the end of October.  It is one of two neighborhood exhibitions marking the tragic events; the other, at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, runs just through this weekend.

In a way, all three dozen works in the exhibition at the Skylight Gallery – photography, painting, collage, video, sculpture – ask the same basic question: How do you turn death into art?

Commissioned to create work for the exhibition, some of the artists, almost all of whom live in Brooklyn, addressed the riots directly. Valerie Caesar, in a piece she entitled, “One of the Cars That Got Burned,” creates a collage out of some two dozen newspaper clippings and the alarming headlines of those three days in August 1991: “RACIAL TENSION FLARES IN B’KLYN: Hasidim & blacks hit streets,” “Little Gavin is laid to rest,” “Dozens injured; cops hit; 16 arrests.”

A number of the works focus on the police. Kiran Chandra’s painting, “1991,” shows a line of helmeted riot police amid a banner-carrying crowd. Monique Schubert’s “Black and Gold” is  a large paper cut-out sculpture of barbed wire and cops with billy clubs grabbing a civilian. Kambui Olujimi’s jewelry from “The Blackout Collection” features little handcuffs.

Delphine Fawandu, herself a long-time resident of Crown Heights, chose to focus on a peacemaker. There are three photographs of Richard Green, the founder of the Crown Heights Youth Collective, one of the many organizations founded in the aftermath of the riot that have worked to ease tensions in the community that the riot revealed to the world.

That members of the diverse community have been working together in the 20 years since the riot is at least symbolized by a site-specific installation in the exhibition entitled “Sole Tree” – gold-painted shoes, with candles placed in them, that have been attached to a column of the gallery like so many leaves and branches on a tree. The shoes, which everybody wears, represent how much more we have in common than we realize.  The sculpture is also a symbol in that its first-time collaborators, Fiona Gardner and Kenya Robinson, are themselves from diverse backgrounds, an African-American and a Jewish artist.

“Sole Tree” is just one of the many pieces in the exhibition whose connection to the Crown Heights riots is not immediately evident. Oasa DuVerney has created a gold-colored bicycle made entirely out of paper, containing no metal at all. An accompanying video shows a boy trying to ride the bike (unsuccessfully, of course) on a Brooklyn sidewalk.  To see a connection, it helps to know that Gavin Cato was fixing his bicycle on the sidewalk in front of his home on President St. in Crown Heights, when the driver of a car in the motorcade of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson  lost control of his vehicle and plowed into him. But there is also a comment in this art piece about the fact that things, no matter how solid they may appear, can fail.

Shortly after the Crown Heights riot, Anna Deavere Smith interviewed more than 50 people involved in one way or another and put together her solo show, “Fires in the Mirror.” It portrayed 26 people – religious leaders, relatives of the victims, and regular Crown Heights residents through using their words, and even their gestures, verbatim. “When things are upside down,” she explained at the time, “there is an opening for a person like me” – by which she meant for an artist. 

Twenty years later, as Crown Heights Gold makes clear, there still is.

“Crown Heights Gold” will be shown through October 31, 2011 at the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation Center for Arts and Culture Skylight Gallery, located at 1368 Fulton Street, 3rd floor. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Friday, 11:00am to 6:00pm and Saturdays, 1:00pm to 6:00pm. All the artwork is for sale.

YouTube: Crown Heights Gold: Crown Heights Riot 20 Years Later

Curator Dexter Wimberly tours three of the three dozen art works on display at Crown Heights Gold, an art exhibition marking the 20th anniversary of the Crown Heights riot.



YouTube: Anna Deavere Smith's play "Fire in the Mirror"

This is the first 14 minutes of "Fires in the Mirror" by Anna Deavere Smith, about the Crown Heights riot, as it appeared on American Playhouse.

Source

Exhibit Link

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CLIP ART: Naomi Beckwith / Ebony Magazine / August 2011

Clipped from the August 2011 issue of Ebony magazine. 

ARTICLE BY ADRIENNE SAMUELS GIBBS | PHOTOGRAPH BY DONTE TATUM

INTERVIEW EXCERPT:

One bracelet. No earrings. Hair pulled back. Virtually no makeup. Refined jacket. Flat shoes. Clear desk. One large green leaf in a vase. A treetop view. No blinds.

Cultural “It” girl Naomi Beckwith, the newest curator at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), is a study in minimalism. She seems to reserve all the flash and chutzpah for her heady installations, the most recent of which were stationed at the Studio Museum in Harlem. In a profession full of grand egos and lofty concepts, Beckwith’s self-assured-yet-grounded analysis of who’s got next in the world of art is refreshing. She’s from Chicago, moved to London, worked in New York City and finally has returned home. She’s got a lot to share. Listen up.

EBONY: Your installations seem to be about exposing the world to artists who happen to be Black, versus exposing the world to Black artists.

BECKWITH: Yes and no.  There’s no difference between a Black artist and an artist who happens to be Black. I think there is a difference between Black art and art that’s made by a Black person. When you start to make all sorts of presumptions about what the artwork is, based on the fact that the person is Black, I think that’s where you start running into trouble. There’s plenty of art being made about one’s cultural background, whether that be Black or not. But there’s also plenty of art that should be seen, I think, through all sorts of other prisms outside of that sense of biography and culture.

EBONY: Why is it important, then, to collect a variety of art?

BECKWITH: We all leave this world at some point. Civilizations even go. The structures of the worlds go, but the only things that we really look at in the end are those archeological records—the cultural artifacts. A couple millennia from now, people are going to be interested in the jewelry that people had, and [asking] how we decorated our houses.

EBONY: Will collecting this stuff, then, make us rich?

BECKWITH: It’s not just about building up literal income,  it’s also about acquiring cultural capital, which I think is one of the most important things to have in the world—not that I’m going to disparage money in any sort of way. But the question is, what do you do with that money?

Ebony online

MORE Naomi Beckwith on BlackArtistNews

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NEW YORK: New Prints 2011 Selected by Trenton Doyle Hancock / International Print Center New York / June 9 - July 29, 2011

Blade Wynne, Tunnel, 2010, Silkscreen monoprint, 14 x 17. Printed and published by the artist.

 New Prints 2011/Summer

Selected by Trenton Doyle Hancock

On View: June 9 - July 29, 2011

 

International Print Center New York presents New Prints 2011/Summer - Selected by Trenton Doyle Hancock, on view from June 9 – July 29, 2011 in its gallery at 508 West 26th Street, Room 5A.  The show consists of eighty-three prints by seventy-six emerging to established artists, selected from a pool of over 1,900 submissions. 

Trenton Doyle Hancock was the sole juror for this exhibition, continuing IPCNY's tradition of inviting an individual artist to select the Spring or Summer New Prints show. Past jurors include Kiki Smith, Richard Tuttle, James Sienna, Jane Hammond, Polly Apfelbaum and Philip Pearlstein. New Prints 2011/Summer - Selected by Trenton Doyle Hancock is the thirty-ninth presentation of IPCNY's New Prints Program, a series of juried exhibitions organized by IPCNY several times each year, featuring prints made within the past twelve months by artists at all stages of their careers. An illustrated brochure will accompany the exhibition.

The complete artists' list is as follows: Golnar Adili, Matt Arrigo, Martin Azevedo, John Baldessari, Nikki Black, David Bligh, Benjamin Brockman, Tanya Brodsky, Bert Brouwer, Nadine Butterfield, Simond Chew, Lauren Cifranic, Douglas Collins, Rob Corradetti, Jean-Marc Couffin, Brandon Cox, Billy Criswell, Kip Deeds, Thorsten Dennerline, Jessica Dunne, Julia Elsas, Odette England, Sandra C. Fernández, Aidan Flanagan, Andy Freeberg, Jeffrey Gipe, Maripelly Praveen Goud, Joanne Greenbaum, Amir R. Hariri, Nicholas Hay, Yuji Hiratsuka, Judy Bergman Hochberg, Taida Jasarevic, Diane Kaiser, Marianne Keating, William Kentridge, Hedya Klein, Valpuri Kylmänen, Michelle Levy, Chrissy Lloyd, Michael Loderstedt, Kerry James Marshall, Gregory Martens, Ezra Masch, Eilish McCann, Steve McClure, Michael Miller, Jennifer Nagle Myers, Heidi Neilson, Rachel Ostrow, Mark Pease, Romaine Perin, Eva Petric, Adam Pitt, Liliana Porter, David Price, Ross Racine, Kimberly Reinhardt, Troy Richards, Clinton Ricketts, Duke Riley, Lindsay M. Robbins, Jungyeon Roh, John-Mark Schlink, Jennifer Schmidt, Will Sclater, Jason Scuilla, Sarah Sears, Richard Serra, Jeffrey Simmons, Pat Spainhour, Rob Swainston, Ivanco Talevski, Tomas Vu, Mary Walker, Blade Wynne, and Cao Yi.

In addition to the many independent artists included in this show, the presses, publishers and printshops represented are: Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions (Rutgers, State University of New Jersey), Center Street Studio (Milton Village, MA), Corridor Press (Otego, NY), Element Editions (Brooklyn, NY), FARMOSIS, Inc. (West Hollywood and Malibu, CA), Fine Arts Work Center (Provincetown, MA), Flatbed Press (Austin, TX), Fresh Paint Art, Inc. (Culver City, CA), Gemini G.E.L. (New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA), Groveland Editions (Cleveland, Ohio), Harlan & Weaver, Inc. (New York, NY), Harwood King Fine Arts Ltd. (Sussex, UK), Hip Joint Press (Wauwatosa, WI), The Kala Art Institute (Berkeley, CA), King Snake Press (Greenville, SC), LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies (Columbia University, NY), New West Editions (Seattle, WA), Paulson Bott Press (Berkeley, CA), Post Expose, Inc. (Queens, NY), Prints of Darkness (Brooklyn, NY), Print Space Inc. (New York, NY), The Royal Academy of Arts (London, UK), Skink Ink (Brooklyn, NY), Wild Carrot Press (Hadley, MA) and Women’s Studio Workshop (Rosendale, NY). 

Highlights of New Prints 2011/Summer include Rob Swainston’s massive multi-block jig-saw woodcut, PLEXUS/Machines, spanning fifteen feet and covering an entire gallery wall; Heidi Neilson’s extraterrestrial-themed artist’s book, Orbital Debris Simulator, viewed with 3D glasses; Michael Miller’s linoleum cut diptych, Egg Heads, in which a pair of combative faces are plotted on grids against a dark void; two lithograph/screenprints from John Baldessari’s Nose/Silhouette series; an installation of printed wallpaper with a repeated text arrangement by Marianne Keating, entitled “The Future is Unwritten” Joe Strummer; and Kerry James Marshall’s Untitled (Bride of Frankenstein), a hardground aquatint etching depicting a monumental female figure.  Many more unique forms and expressions of contemporary printmaking are included in the show.

Trenton Doyle Hancock is a Texas-based artist working in multiple mediums on paper and canvas.  His work was selected for the Whitney Biennial in 2000 and 2002, and is included in the collections of numerous major art museums across the country.  Hancock’s work has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Seattle Art Museum, among other venues.

The New Prints Program is funded in part with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts—a state agency, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. A grant from The Robert Lehman Foundation supports IPCNY’s exhibitions programming.

Sponsors of IPCNY’s 10th Anniversary Season are The Edward John Noble Foundation, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Deborah Loeb Brice Foundation, The Felicia Fund, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Hess Foundation, Charles S. Mott Foundation, Reed Foundation, Arthur Ross Foundation, and numerous individual donors.

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ATLANTA: "Home" Curated by Fahamu Pecou / City Gallery Chastain / June 10 - July 23, 2011

Location: 

Chastain Arts Center

135 West Wieuca Road, NW

Atlanta, GA

Kombo Chapfika, All You Can Eat Buffet (2010), Mixed media on canvas, 16"x20". 
Courtesy of City Gallery Chastain.

Atlanta artist Fahamu Pecou puts on his curatorial hat with the exhibition “Home” featuring work by emerging Georgia talent. This exhibition seeks to give a glimpse into the future of the cultural landscape of a region through the work of creative young minds. Featured artists include Kombo Chapfika, Ashley Reid, Terra Coles, Stephen Hayes, and Cosmo Whyte; five promising visual artists whose works are gaining attention in the world of contemporary art within the state. This exhibition will be on view from June 10 until July 23, 2011.  The opening reception will be Friday, June 10 from 6:00 – 9:00 PM - - the Artists Talk will be Saturday, July 9 from 1:00 – 3:00 PM.  This exhibition and program is co-presented by the National Black Arts Festival.  

“As international, national and local politics become more and more the subject of pop culture discourse, I wanted to create an exhibit that presents a new awareness of how politics, education and culture are coming to redefine life in our home state of Georgia” says exhibition organizer Fahamu Pecou. The work in this show will feature new names, new ideas, new approaches and a new sense of the notion of what it means to call Georgia "home". 

Cosmo Whyte, Well Travelled African. Courtesy of City Gallery Chastain.

“Home” is co-presented by the National Black Arts Festival (NBAF). NBAF produces year-round educational programming, as well as events presented in collaboration with national and local partners, in addition to the annual summer festival for which the organization is named. This partnership is important to the Chastain Arts Center because we want to expand awareness of our center and what better way to increase visibility than to work with an organization like the NBAF.

About Chastain Arts Center

Chastain Arts Center is one of the oldest community arts center in Atlanta. Its mission has always been to provide a nurturing place where artists of all ages and skill levels are encouraged to create, learn and enjoy. Visit http://www.ocaatlanta.com/ for more information.

NBAF Event Details

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CLIP ART: Valerie Cassel Oliver / Senior Curator / Contemporary Arts Museum Houston

Clipped from "Artworld" column in May 2011 issue of Art in America magazine.

 

Read more here

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MEDIA NEWS: Naomi Beckwith Named Curator at MCA Chicago

WBEZ radio interview link added to this post on 06/20/11.

Image Credit: Photo by Paul Mpagi Sepuya.

Naomi Beckwith has been appointed the new Curator at the  Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago. Beckwith is currently the Associate Curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem, where she has focused on themes of identity and conceptual practices in contemporary art, artists of African descent, and managing the Artists-in-Residence program. She will assume her new responsibilities at the MCA on May 11, 2011.

                                                                         

“Naomi is an up-and-coming talent in our field who has wide-ranging interests and experiences,” says Michael Darling,  James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator of MCA. “Her work at the Studio Museum demonstrates a highly intelligent and complex approach to the art of our time. Her exhibition 30 Seconds off an Inch, in particular, was groundbreaking. As we expand our commitment to artist residencies, Naomi brings great expertise in this area and her scholarship on African-American art will strengthen the MCA's Collection. Naomi is outgoing, confident, and eloquent which makes her a great ambassador for the museum. We are excited to welcome her to Chicago and bring her voice to our programming.”

Beckwith said, "As a native Chicagoan, I am delighted to return to this great city and to practice my curatorial craft at this vibrant community and forward-thinking museum. The MCA was formative to my education in contemporary art: from the original galleries on Ontario Street, to the cultural and architectural beacon that it is in its current formation. I very much look forward to working with Madeleine, Michael, and the entire MCA team to shape its future trajectory of major international programming in the visual and performing arts."

At the Studio Museum, Beckwith's most recent projects include Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Any Number of Preoccupations (2010-11) and Zwelethu Mthethwa: Inner Views (2010), two acclaimed exhibitions of work by international artists, as well as 30 Seconds off an Inch (2009-10), a major group exhibition that explored ways in which artists playfully and irreverently engage with black culture, history, and identity in the wake of mid-twentieth-century neo-avant-garde movements.

Prior to her tenure at the Studio Museum, Beckwith was the 2005-07 Whitney Lauder Curatorial Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, where she worked on numerous cutting-edge exhibitions including Locally Localized Gravity (2007), an exhibition and program of events focused on over 100 artists whose practices are social, participatory, and communal. Beckwith has also been the BAMart project coordinator at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a Helena Rubenstein Critical Studies Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and a guest blogger for Art21. She has curated and co-curated exhibitions at New York alternative spaces Recess Activities, Cuchifritos, and Artists Space.

Beckwith received an MA with Distinction from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, completing her Master's thesis on Adrian Piper and Carrie Mae Weems, and a BA in history from Northwestern University in Illinois. She was a 2009 grantee of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and was named the 2011 Leader to Watch by ArtTable. She serves on the boards of the Laundromat Project (New York) and Res Artis (Amsterdam).

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http://www.mcachicago.org/media/

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POST: Unframed The LACMA Blog / A Conversation with Franklin Sirmans / May 14, 2010

Seeing Anew: A Conversation with Franklin Sirmans

Franklin Sirmans hasn’t wasted any time settling into his new post as head of contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He’s been visiting studios, galleries, and private collections around town, getting to know the works of art in our permanent collection, and planning upcoming exhibitions. Before coming to LACMA, Franklin served as curator of modern and contemporary art at the Menil Collection in Houston, and worked as an independent curator, critic, writer, and editor. Now that he’s been here for a few months, I checked in to see how he was adjusting to his new surroundings.

What brought you to LA?
It was the opportunity to work with the team assembled here—including director Michael Govan, and my colleagues throughout the museum—at a really exciting time. Also, right now, the art conversation in Los Angeles is so interesting. Art in Los Angeles is still so young. We’re looking back to the grand old past of, what? The 1950s and 60s. We are still in the midst of a conversation about the formation of the art scene in Los Angeles with the people who were here then and are still here now—Ed Ruscha, Joe Goode, Betye Saar, Samella Lewis, just to name a few. That fascinates me.

What are you finding out about Los Angeles?
I’m still checking out the neighborhoods, seeing new places. I went to see Judson Powell in Compton the other day to talk about his work at the Watts Towers in the past and his present work there, building an arts and cultural center.
I feel like I know the Culver City scene but I know that’s very little in the scope of things. That said, Lauri Firstenberg at Laxart, Suzanne Vielmetter Projects, and Roberts & Tilton are always interesting.
I‘ve done studio visits with Betye Saar, who has a wonderful piece in the collection, and Paul McCarthy, also in the collection. I recently did a visit with the curator Samella Lewis, whose work I grew up reading.
I knew a lot of artists before coming here. But I didn’t know the collectors and collections in Los Angeles, so I’m trying to get to know them now, as well as artists. I’m also really interested in what’s happening outside the confines of visual art—what people are doing in film, dance, and music, and the vernacular of the city.

What else, besides art?
I watch a lot of soccer.

What do you miss about Houston and the Menil Collection?
The atmosphere there is so serene. You have the Byzantine Fresco Chapel across the street from the Mark Rothko Chapel. Right there, you also have Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk and down the street you have the Menil Collection and behind that you have Cy Twombly’s gallery and behind that you have Dan Flavin’s gallery. It’s like a perfect art experience.
But in a lot of ways, that’s what’s happening here at LACMA, right now.

What’s it like getting to know the collection here?
I’m interested in exploring the synergy between the Broad collection and the LACMA collection, and we’re doing that already in some new installations this fall.
The modern collection here includes some really special pieces—the Giacomettis, for example. The Picassos, those Brancusi birds.
There are some wonderful works I would like to see installed—a Marlene Dumas painting that’s been out on loan for a while, a work by John Outterbridge that I really want to see, and Toba Khedoori, a young artist who interests me. We have a wonderful piece of hers in the collection. It’s huge—I’d really love to see that on view. Not easy to do.
I want to play on the strengths of the collection, those special objects that we have at hand, and also the relationship we have with artists here in Los Angeles, which is something that will play a prominent role in a future exhibition. More news on that shortly.
I want to look at contemporary art in the context of the encyclopedic museum. That was part of the hook, the reason I came here. How, as contemporary viewers, do we look at the art of the past? How can artists help us see the past anew?
Amy Heibel

http://lacma.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/seeing-anew-a-conversation-with-franklin-sirmans/

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POSE: Naomi Beckwith / Associate Curator / Studio Museum In Harlem / T Magazine / December 4, 2010

Naomi Beckwith, Associate Curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem recently showed off her art world swirl  for The New York Times T Magazine:

Photograph by Sebastian Kim. Fashion Editor: Andreas Kokkino. Hair by Andre Gunn at the Wall Group. Makeup by Stevie Huynh at the Wall Group. Fashion assistants: Adam Ballheim, Jean Hall and Guillaume Harrison.

The Times isn't the first to document Beckwith's self-described "Tomboy-Femme" chic on camera. In early 2010, she sported attire for a J. Crew catalog:

Read more about Naomi Beckwith at:
http://ybpguide.com/2010/10/13/naomi-beckwith-black-arts-newest-it-girl/

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