The Week in Black Art | Sept. 6 – 12, 2014

A REVIEW OF THE WEEK’S NEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS IN THE ART WORLD Featuring performance art at MOCA LA, Swann’s forthcoming African American art auction, the passing of Detroit artist Gilda Snowden, and more

MOCA LA is Embracing Lives Art Programming Again
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is gearing up for Step and Repeat: Performance at the Geffen, four Saturdays of robust live arts programming beginning tomorrow, Sept. 13. The museum has announced a multidisciplinary slate of creative voices from across the nation, including performance artists, comedians, musicians and poets—Jacolby Satterwhite, Ashland Mines, DJ P. Morris, Derrick Beckles, Fred Moten, Le1f, Will Alexander, Isla Cheadle and Reach LA, Yung Jake, and Jibade-Khalil Huffman, among them.

“The goal of Step and Repeat is to celebrate the hybrid, convergent, nascent spirit of art today, to collapse some categories, and to explore new directions in artistic practices.” — MOCA LA

David Kordansky is Upgrading his Gallery Space
W magazine reports that dealer David Kordansky (artists include Sam Gilliam and Rashid Johnson) is moving his Los Angeles gallery from Culver City to a 20,000 square foot space on South La Brea Avenue, where his first exhibition will be Johnson’s “Islands” opening tomorrow, Sept. 13.

Upcoming Swann Auction Features Art Collection of Richard A. Long
Swann Auction Galleries has released the catalog for its Oct. 9 sale of African American fine art. Sixty works from the collection of Richard A. Long (1927-2013), the storied Atlanta-based, scholar and cultural historian, will be featured in the auction. The diverse selection includes early and contemporary works by the likes of Henry O. Tanner, Augusta Savage, Beauford Delaney (at left), Alma Thomas, Kara Walker and Radcliffe Bailey.

Hammer Museum to Fete Artist Mark Bradford
Los Angeles-based artist Mark Bradford and singer Joni Mitchell will be honored at the Hammer Museum’s annual fundraising gala on Oct. 11, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Apollo Magazine Names 40 Under 40
London-based Apollo magazine has published a list of 40 under 40, “a selection of the most talented and inspirational young people who are driving forward the art world today.” Artists Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Grace Ndiritu, and African art dealer Patric Didier Claes, were among those chosen across the categories of artists, thinkers, collectors and business. Filmmaker and installation artist Isaac Julien was one of five judges who identified the winners.

Nick Cave x New York Fashion Week
Art is influencing fashion and vice versa. Jack Shainman Gallery hosted Grey Ant’s New York Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2015 eyewear presentation on Sept. 6 at its West 20th Street location. The label’s sunglasses were on view among Nick Cave‘s Soundsuits and new mixed-media sculptures. Later in the week, on Sept. 10, the artist discussed his forthcoming monograph Nick Cave: Epitome at the New York Public Library.

Dazed visits with Gilda Snowden in her studio less than a year before she died. | Video by Dazed

Detroit Artist Gilda Snowden Has Died
Beloved Detroit artist Gilda Snowden, 60, died of heart failure on Sept. 9. Several glowing tributes celebrating her life and mourning her passing have been published by outlets including the Detroit Free Press and the Huffington Post. After teaching at Wayne State University, for the last 31 years Snowden was a professor of fine arts at the College of Creative Studies where, for a time, she served as chair of the department. Her work is in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Fine Arts Museum.

Times Reviews Norman Lewis Exhibition at Jewish Museum
Karen Rosenberg’s New York Times review of “From the Margins: Lee Krasner and Norman Lewis, 1945-1952” at the Jewish Museum describes the exhibition as “nuanced, sensitive and profound.”

“The show isn’t really a dialogue, in the conventional sense. But it bravely elides differences of gender, race and religion, finding that [Lee] Krasner and [Norman] Lewis — a Jewish woman and an African-American man — shared a visual language that was a subtler, more intimate dialect of Abstract Expressionism.” — Karen Rosenberg, The New York Times

Who are the Twitter Generation’s Top Artists at Auction?
Increasingly, work by young artists whose careers are emerging in the social media age is selling (well) at auction. artnet News has compiled a list of 36 top-selling artists (including Oscar Murillo, Theaster Gates and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye) born after 1970, whose work was first offered at auction in 2009 or later. CT

IMAGE: Second from top, at left, “Portrait of Richard A. Long,” 1965 (color pastel) by Beauford Delaney via Swann Auction Galleries.