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Kehinde Wiley Preview | The Wind Up at The Jewish Museum
One amazing truth about Hip-Hop music is that it has the power to embed itself anywhere in the world and become part of a global urban culture. Drop a beat, enter your language here, and it becomes a vessel, a mirror of whatever you want it to be. Last night at The Jewish Museum, Hip-Hop reflected a beautiful mix of language, religion, art and culture in The Wind Up. Israel and Hip-Hop were all wrapped up in one beautiful package inspired by Kehinde Wiley’s newest exhibition, The World Stage: Israel, at The Jewish Museum.
Armory Show 2012
Artist Highlights
Beginning Thursday, March 8, Piers 92 and 94 will house the Armory Show, a leading international modern and contemporary art fair. Now in its fourteenth year, the Armory Show 2012 offers a more diverse and comprehensive representation of the global art world than ever before. Unique to this year, the fair will feature 2012 Commission Artist Theaster Gates, while the Amory Focus will highlight contemporary art from the Nordic countries. Gates is an artist and cultural planner whose practice ranges from sculpture to installation and performance to urban intervention. Through the re-purposing of historical objects and contemporary sites, Gates activates the memories and ephemera of our past to generate a provoking yet poetic understanding of cultural moments and spaces today.
Ancient to Future
A Conversation with Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts and Simone Leigh
“History must restore what slavery took away.” - A. Schomburg, The Negro Digs Up His Past
Arts & Minds
High Stylin'
It’s Tuesday at The Studio Museum in Harlem. A bustling and vibrant group meets in the Atrium Café, the usual meeting place, filling the air and the moment with smiles. Familiar faces mingle, discuss, and observe before the start of yet another exciting Arts & Minds program. Twice a month, this diverse group of people come together to join in on a conversation—an experience—around a selected piece of artwork in the Museum.
I should also mention that this diverse group is composed of adults suffering with memory disorders and their caregivers—add in a couple of volunteers, staff and a teaching artist and you get Arts & Minds! Arts & Minds is an organization that brings adults with memory disorders and their caregivers together in new experiences of art. Through gallery discussions and hands-on art activities, Arts & Minds opens a window to creativity and well-being.
In the Studio with Jack Whitten
On a chilly winter afternoon, Assistant Curator, Naima J. Keith and I dropped in on world-renowned and revered abstract artist Jack Whitten. Intent on leaving the bustle and chaos behind in Manhattan, Jack converted an old firehouse on a quiet street in Woodside, Queens into his studio 9 years ago.
As we stepped into his spacious main room that has been arranged as part gallery/workspace on one side and living/domestic space on the other, our eyes were immediately drawn to a wall covered with photographs, posters, bones, and wood pieces. He began telling us about his love for deep sea fishing and Crete, which is where many of the skeletons arranged throughout the workspace came from. There was an image of Nkisi Power Figures from Kongo, which were the root of inspiration for all of the impeccable wooden sculptures that Whitten has been creating since the 1960s.
Robert Pruitt
in Conversation with Lauren Haynes
Enjoy a clip from last week's The Artist Voice: Robert Pruitt in Conversation with Lauren Haynes. Pruitt discusses Romare Bearden's impact and influence on his artwork and the impetus behind his drawing Conjuring Woman, 2011 featured in The Bearden Project (on view through March 11, 2012).
Michaela Angela Davis and Melissa Harris-Perry
In Conversation at the Brooklyn Museum
On Thursday, February 16th, I attended an installment of the In Conversation Series hosted by MAD Free at the Brooklyn Museum. It featured an in-depth discussion and forum with Melissa Harris-Perry, professor and MSNBC commentator, and with writer and activist Michaela Angela Davis. The dialogue took cues from Harris-Perry’s new book Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America, which comments on the persistence of stereotypes and misrecognition that afflict black women. Furthermore, these images aid in creating very material consequences that affect black women’s political and social standing in America.
Yinka Shonibare’s Message in a Bottle
Hybrid Citizen-Ship
Entering Trafalgar Square in London, it was nearly impossible to miss the curious installation of an impressive ship in a bottle. Placed atop the Fourth Plinth in front of the National Gallery from May 24th 2010 to last week, was the whimsically oversized model Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle (2010) by British Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare, MBE. Shonibare, celebrated for his potent, yet playful, post-colonial perspective and symbolic use of West African textiles, last exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem in a 2002 solo show. His recent site-specific sculpture across the pond was commissioned by the Mayor of London and Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group as part of a contemporary public art initiative.
Saluting Creative Voices
Thelma Golden on the AIDS Memorial Park
Thelma Golden from AIDS Memorial Park on Vimeo.