Latest News in Black Art features news updates and developments in the world of art and related culture
Artist Lauren Halsey. | Photo by Russell Hamilton, Courtesy David Kordansky Gallery
Commissions
Lauren Halsey is the latest artist commissioned to create a site-specific installation for The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s rooftop garden. Titled “eastside of south central los angeles hieroglyph prototype architecture (I),” the installation will be “a full-scale architectural structure imbued with the collective energy and imagination of the South Central Los Angeles Community where she was born and continues to work.” A new publication will be published on the occasion of the Met installation, which opens May 17. | More
MICHAEL ARMITAGE, “Enasoit,” 2019 (oil on Lubugo bark cloth, 66 7/8 × 118 1/8 inches / 170 × 300 cm). | © Michael Armitage, National Gallery of Australia
Representation
Kenyan-British artist Michael Armitage joined David Zwirner, one of the top galleries in the world. The representation is in collaboration with White Cube, the London gallery that has worked with Armitage since 2015. Expressing himself through drawing and painting, his works “have given shape to real and imagined histories of East Africa, constructing deeply rooted but nuanced impressions of the myriad sociopolitical and cultural contexts that affect contemporary daily life in the region.” His debut exhibition with David Zwirner will take place in 2024 in New York. Armitage splits his time between London and Nairobi. | More
Massimo de Carlo Gallery announced its representation of Ludovic Nkoth (left). Cameroon born Nkoth is based in New York. The gallery has locations in Milan, London, an Hong Kong, and a presence in Paris. “Transferred Memories (Work No Day),” Nkoth’s debut solo exhibition at Mossimo de Carlo in London, opens April 8. | More
Awards & Honors
Architect Diébédo Francis Kéré, whose projects have primarily been built in Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo, Kenya, Mozambique and Sudan, won this year’s Pritzker Prize. Born in Burkina Faso and based in Berlin, Kéré is the first African architect to receive the highest prize in architecture. | New York Times
South African photographer Lebohang Kganye won the 2022 Foam Paul Huf Award. The internationally recognized annual prize celebrates emerging photographers. | More
Hilton Als, curator, professor, and Pulitzer Prize-winning critic at The New York, and independent curator and writer Helen Molesworth are recipients of the 2022 Clark Prize for Excellence in Art Writing. Both will be honored at a spring event at the Clark Institute in Williamstown, Mass. | More
Grants
Hauser & Wirth Institute announced two new grants: $360,000 to The Studio Museum in Harlem for a three-year project to digitize the museum’s archives; and $280,000 to fully fund tuition for two graduate students starting the dual-degree master’s program in library and information science and history of art and design at Pratt Institute. | More
Richard J. Powell is delivering the 2022 A. W. Mellon Lectures, six lectures beginning with Colorstruck! Painting, Pigment, Affect on March 20. At left, JENNIFER PACKER, Detail “Tremor of Intent,” 2021 (oil on canvas, 22 × 28 inches / 55.9 × 71.1 cm). | Artwork © 2022 Jennifer Packer
Talks
March 20-May 2: Beginning today, Professor Richard J. Powell, the Duke University art historian is presenting the 2022 A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. In-person and virtual, the six-lecture series includes: Colorstruck! Painting, Pigment, Affect (March 20); Jacob Lawrence’s Viridian (March 27); Yellow, Orange Glow (April 3); Red Combustion, Blue Alchemy (April 10); Chromatic Dispatches: Télémaque, Basquiat (April 24); The Bronze Thrill (May 1). | More
March 28: On the occasion of the publication of “Lorna Simpson” the newly revised and expanded monograph from Phaidon (due to be published April 6), the artist Lorna Simpson and Naomi Beckwith, deputy director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, join Ford Foundation President Darren Walker for a conversation at the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice in New York. The event is virtual and in-person. | More
April 7: Art historian Julie McGee is giving the Annual Distinguished Lecture in the Visual Arts in Honor of David C. Driskell. An associate professor of Africana studies and art history, and director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center at the University of Delaware, McGee is a longstanding scholar of David Driskell. Her recent projects include curating the traveling exhibition “David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History” (2021) and publishing a new volume to accompany the retrospective. This year, the lecture is a Zoom event hosted by the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park. | More
CT
UPDATE (03/21/22): Artist Michael Armitage joined David Zwirner gallery, not Hauser & Wirth as originally reported in error.
