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

10:52 PM | 0 comments | Read More

POSE: Black Americans (Pictorial) / CODE Magazine BV / Spring-Summer 2011

André Singleton, Artist

Hank Willis Thomas, Artist

Mickalene Thomas, Artist

Amani Olu, Curator

Ouigi Theodore, Fashion Designer

F. Stokes, Rapper

Latoya Ruby Frazier, Photographer/Filmmaker

Sean Qualls, Artist

Naomi Beckwith, Curator

CODE Magazine

Tribble & Mancenido

10:30 PM | 0 comments | Read More

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).

Source link:

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

Listen to:
New curator Naomi Beckwith brings unique touch to MCA

MORE:
Naomi Beckwith on BlackArtistNews

2:05 PM | 0 comments | Read More

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/

MORE Naomi Beckwith on BlackArtistNews

6:06 AM | 0 comments | Read More