Latest News in Black Art features updates and developments in the world of art and related culture
CHANELL STONE (American, born 1992), “Cotton Mud,” 2022 (inkjet print, 50 x 60 inches / 127.00 x 152.40 cm). | Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh: WTL.2024.158 © Chanell Stone; Photo by Chanell Stone
MUSEUMS
Carnegie Museum Exhibition Unites Photography, the Environment, and Venus Williams
“Widening the Lens: Photography, Ecology, and the Contemporary Landscape” at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pa., considers the state of the environment and climate change and our connections to the natural world and the American landscape. Opening May 11, the show features nearly 100 works by 19 artists, including David Hartt, Dionne Lee, Xaviera Simmons, David O. Alekhuogie, and Chanell Stone (above). A new fully illustrated catalog and a six-episode podcast series hosted by art collector and tennis champion Venus Williams accompany the exhibition. (5/1) | More
Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Hosting Inaugural Delta Triennial
This summer more than 40 artists representing Arkansa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas, will participate in the first Delta Triennial. Hosted by the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts (AMFA) in Little Rock, the exhibition will be on view from June 28 to Aug. 25, 2024. More than 1,200 artists applied to participate. The 39 selected artists include Brian Ellison (Houston, Texas), Ajamu Kojo (Little Rock, Ark.), and Aaron Turner (Fayetteville, Ark.). Kevin Demery (Kansas City, Mo.), and Letitia Huckaby (Fort Worth, Texas), are among the seven artists explicitly invited to show their work. (5/2) | More
AWARDS & HONORS
Greg Tate Among 2024 Pulitzer Prize Winners
The late cultural critic Greg Tate (1957-2021), left, won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for journalism on Monday. Tate received a Special Citation Award that said his “language—cribbed from literature, academia, popular culture and hip-hop—was as influential as the content of his ideas. His aesthetic, innovations and intellectual originality, particularly in his pioneering hip-hip criticism, continue to influence subsequent generations, especially writers and critics of color.” He covered music for the Village Voice, Vibe, Spin, The Wire, and Downbeat, and also wrote thoughtfully about visual art and artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ellen Gallagher, Arthur Jafa, Deana Lawson, and Kerry James Marshall. (5/6) | More
Karimah Ashadu Wins Silver Lion at Venice Biennale
British-born Nigerian artist Karimah Ashadu was awarded the Silver Lion for a Promising Young Artist in the International Exhibition (Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere) at the 60th Venice Biennale. Ashadu presented a video titled “Machine Boys” with a brass sculpture titled “Wreath.” The jury said her work “upends gendered assumptions about the gaze and what is considered proper to commemorate. With a searing intimacy, she captures the vulnerability of young men from the agrarian north of Nigeria who have migrated to Lagos and end up riding illegal motorbike taxis. Her feminist camera lens is extraordinarily sensitive and intimate, capturing the bikers’ subcultural experience as well as their economic precarity. Masterfully edited to draw out yet subtly critique the performance of masculinity on display, her sensual attention to surfaces of machine, flesh, and cloth reveals the rider’s marginal existence.” Ashadu lives and works in Hamburg, Germany. Open April 20-Nov. 24, this year’s Venice Biennale is curated by Adriano Pedrosa. (4/20) | More
Galerie Magazine Published New Creative Minds List
New York-based Galerie magazine announced its sixth annual Creative Minds list, featuring 24 visionary talents whose practices across art, design, fashion, jewelry, architecture, and food are “a true art form.” Published in the spring issue, the 2024 list includes Miles Greenberg (Performance Art, Sculpture, and Installation); Tiff Massey (Visual Art); and Christopher John Rogers (Fashion Design). The honorees will be celebrated at a cocktail reception on May 9 in New York. (4/30) | More
IMAGE: Above left, Greg Tate. | Photo by Nisha Sondhe, Courtesy Duke University Press
APPOINTMENTS
Project Row Houses Names Executive Director
Danielle Burns Wilson (left) is the new executive director of Project Row Houses (PRH) in Houston, Texas. Project Row Houses is a platform for art and community based in a series of renovated shot-gun houses in the Third Ward, one of city’s oldest African American neighborhoods. The nonprofit focuses on exhibitions, fellowships, residencies, and grant opportunities for artists, alongside community enrichment and neighborhood development programs. Wilson joined PRH in 2021 as curator and art director and since last fall has served as interim executive director. Previously, she spent about a dozen years as curator and manager of the African American Library at The Gregory School, a special collections unit of the Houston Public Library System. (5/1) | More
Newark Arts Announced New Leadership
Newark Arts announced the appointment of Lauren LeBeaux Craig as executive director. The new role is a promotion. Craig has been engaged with the Newark, N.J., nonprofit for more than a decade, first serving on the board (2013-16). She led marketing and branding for seven years before being named interim executive director last summer. Four new members have also joined the board of directors at Newark Arts: Reggie “Redman” Noble, Kim Alexander-Cook, Andrew Coombs, and Chisa Hutchinson. (2/12) | More
IMAGE: Above left, Danielle Burns Wilson. | Photo by Emile Browne, Courtesy Project Row Houses
PUBLIC ART
Boston Staging its First Public Art Triennial
Boston announced a new citywide exhibition occurring every three years. The inaugural Boston Public Art Triennial will be open May 22-Oct. 31, 2025. Organized by artistic director Pedro Alonzo and curator Tess Lukey, the triennial will feature 15 new public art commissions by local, national, and international artists, including Boston-based Stephen Hamilton and Ekene Ijeoma. (5/1) | More
2024 list of Most Endangered Historic Places includes New Salem Baptist Church in Tams, W.V. | Photo by Cody Straley/WV SHPO, Courtesy National Trust for Historic Preservation
MORE NEWS
Latest Endangered Historic Places Announced
May is Preservation Month and the National Trust for Historic Preservation marked the occasion by announcing its annual list of Most Endangered Historic Places. The 2024 list features 11 sites, including Eatonville, Fla., one of the first self-governing Black municipalities in the United States and the town where Zora Neale Hurston grew up; New Salem Baptist Church in Tams, W.V. (above), a central gathering place for Black coal miners and their families and a landmark reminder of their significant contributions to the U.S. coal mining industry; and Roosevelt High School in Gary, Ind., one of three Indiana high schools built in the Jim Crow era to educate Black students, it counts the Jackson 5 among its alumni. (5/1) | More
Senegal Delays Biennale by Six Months
Originally scheduled to open on May 16, the Dakar Biennale has been delayed following political protests and a contentious presidential election. Senegal’s Youth, Sports, and Culture Ministry said the 15th edition of the African contemporary art exhibition will now run from Nov. 7-Dec. 7, 2024, in anticipation of “optimum conditions.” (4/25) | Reuters
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