MUST-SEE EXHIBITION openings and interesting talks and appearances happening this week in black art:
Through May 31, 2014
Cullen Washington Jr. Exhibition at B2OA | New York
For its inaugural exhibition, B2OA gallery is featuring a series of new abstract collage and assemblage works by Cullen Washington Jr. According to the gallery release, “These works are free of symbolic associations with reality, dealing with mark making as a reflected interest in structure, movement, and constructive interconnection of elements challenging notions of surface.” Washington was an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem from 2012-2013. The exhibition, “Outer Space / Out of Mind,” is his first solo show in New York.
May 12-16, 2014
Contemporary Auctions Feature Black Artists | New York
This week, major auction houses Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips are holding their big spring contemporary sales. Generally void of works by black artists beyond Jean-Michel Basquiat, in recent years the auctions have featured a few and their presence appears to be creeping up as the contemporary market in general continues to heat up. On May 12, Christie’s “If I Live I’ll See You Tuesday” (an experimental sale marketed via Instagram) includes Mark Bradford, David Hammons and Glenn Ligon. On May 13 at Sotheby’s evening sale lots by Ligon and Chris Ofili are among the highlights. Christie’s is holding its Post-War and Contemporary Art sale in two sessions on May 14. Works by Henry Taylor and Carrie Mae Weems appear in the morning session; Hammons, Oscar Murillo, and Julie Mehretu (whose “Excerpt (Molotov Cocktail”) is the catalog’s cover lot) are featured in the afternoon. The Phillips auctions are the evening of May 15 (Bradford and Murillo) and during the day on May 16 (Ligon, site Murillo, Taylor, Weems, Rashid Johnson, Andres Serrano, Kara Walker and Kehinde Wiley). Meanwhile, the real newsmaker in 
terms of black artists is Sotheby’s day sale on May 15, where about 20 works by Hammons, Johnson, Ligon, Mehretu, Ofili, Wiley, El Anatusi, Wangechi Mutu, Martin Puryear and Mickalene Thomas, will go on the block.
Thursday, May 15, 2014 @ 7 p.m.
Lorraine O’Grady Lecture at Brooklyn Museum | New York
Lorraine O’Grady (at left) is delivering the second annual Norma Marshall Memorial Lecture at the Brooklyn Museum. A conceptual artist known for her performance work and video installations, O’Grady will discuss how conversations around “post-racial” and “postfeminist” political ideologies influence her practice.
May 16 – Sept. 14, 2014
Hale Woodruff Murals at NOMA | New Orleans
“Rising Up: Hale Woodruff’s Murals at Talladega College,” an exhibition of Hale Woodruff’s historic Amistad murals (shown above) is debuting at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Talladega College commissioned Woodruff to paint six murals for its Savery Library in 1938. The murals depicting the black struggle for freedom were displayed at the Alabama HBCU for more than seven decades until 2011 when they underwent a process of conservation. The restoration project was a collaboration between Talladega and the High Museum of Art where they were presented to a national audience for the first time in 2012. A book
IMAGES: From top, Amistad Murals by Hale Woodruff via NOMA and Lorraine O’Grady (Courtesy of Alexander Gray Associates) via Brooklyn Museum.
