Latest News in Black Art features news updates and developments in the world of art and related culture
 


Thomas J. Price’s bronze sculpture “Warm Shores” (2022) was unveiled on Windrush Day. | Photo by Damian Griffiths

Public Art

On Windrush Day (June 22), the legacy of Afro-Caribbeans who emigrated to the UK after World War II, between 1948 and 1971, was acknowledged and honored with the the installation of new permanent public art works. At Waterloo Station in London, members of the Windrush generation were joined today by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor for the unveiling of a monumental sculpture of three figures—a Black family dressed in their Sunday best standing on suitcases—by Jamaican-born, Atlanta, Ga.-based artist Basil Watson. | The Guardian

About five miles away, a newly installed bronze sculpture by British artist Thomas J. Price pays tribute to the Windrush generation. Depicting a Black man and woman standing nine-feet high, “Warm Shores” (2022) was unveiled today outside Hackney town hall in east London. | Financial Times

The American Manifest (right), the first public art exhibition of Los Angeles-based artist Charles Gaines, will debut in New York’s Times Square on July 13, featuring performances and sculpture. The three-part project will also include a monumental sculpture installed on Governors Island in New York (October 2022) that will travel to the banks of the Ohio River in Cincinnati, Ohio (Summer 2023). Presented by Creative Time, Governors Island Arts, and Times Square Arts, the exhibition explores the role of the waterways of New York and Cincinnati in both “upholding slavery and securing liberation, a duality that challenges reductive narratives of the history and legacy of slavery in America.” Introducing the project Gaines said: “By exploring the Dred and Harriet Scott Decision, The American Manifest is intended both critically and poetically to unpack the complexity of America’s humanist ideals. It is intended to take us through the slippery contradictions that make up the American narrative.” | More

French artist Paul Maheke will present a performance titled “A fire circle for a public hearing” on the High Line (June 28, 29, and 30), the elevated public park that stretches from the Meatpacking District to Hudson Yards in New York City. The event marks the first U.S. presentation of the performance and Maheke’s first public performance in New York. Featuring three performers, the work extends the artist’s “ongoing engagement with the potential of the body as an archive; the performance addresses how history, memory, and identity are formed.” | More

IMAGE: Above right, Rendering of Charles Gaines’s Moving Chains, 2022. | Courtesy TOLO Architecture

 

The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center has a new name and a new visual identity.

 
Museums

The DuSable Museum of African American History announced a new name on June 18. Founded by Margaret Burroughs in 1961, the Chicago museum is now called The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center. The change includes a new logo and visual identity expressed throughout its signage and a refreshed website. “While The DuSable is an iconic and historical institution, we’re also constantly evolving to reach new audiences here at home and across the world,” Perri Irmer, president and CEO of The DuSable Museum, said in a statement. “Our new name and new visual identity further reinforce our founder’s commitment to preserve and promote Black history, art and culture, and to educate and inform our visitors, especially during these challenging times. This is a tremendous moment for The DuSable—we don’t just preserve history, we make it, too.” | Chicago Sun-Times

Envisioned by Opal Lee, forthcoming National Juneteenth Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, spans 50,000 square feet and is expected to open in advance of the Juneteenth holiday in 2024. | New York Times

Louise Bernard, museum director at The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, answered a wide-range of questions providing a preview of the Chicago institution expected to open in 2025. | ARTnews

 
Representation

Sabrina Amrani gallery in Madrid, Spain, added photographer Ishola Akpo of Benin to its roster of artists. | More

 


From left, Elizabeth Colomba for The New Yorker. | June 20, 2022; Fares Micue for Aesthetica. | June/July 2022

 
Magazines

“What I like to do,” Elizabeth Colomba said, “is to insert Black bodies into historically white spaces and thus into the canon of painting.” For her first cover of The New Yorker, the French-born, Harlem-based artist made a historical portrait. The watercolor image for the June 20 issue is titled “157 Years of Juneteenth” and features a family wearing their Sunday best standing before a flower-embellished, horse-drawn buggy, a traditional element of Juneteenth celebrations. | More

The latest issue of York, UK-based Aesthetica magazine features Nod to Surrealism, a portfolio of self-portraits by Spanish photographer Fares Micue. Her work also graces the cover of the June/July 2022 issue. More

 
More News

The Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University is collaborating with Oxford University Press on a three-year research project to produce the Oxford Dictionary of African American English. Henry Louis Gates Jr., is serving as editor in chief. | More

On June 20, Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise visit to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., where she spoke briefly with elementary school students and their parents about Juneteenth. | UPI

 
Opportunities

Brandywine Workshop and Archives (BWA) in Philadelphia, Pa., seeks an executive director. Founded in 1972, BWA is a nonprofit visual arts institution that promotes the fine art of printmaking, working primarily with artists of color through printmaking residencies, exhibitions, educational programming, and other initiatives. Succeeding retiring founder Allan L. Edmunds, the executive director is a foundational role responsible for staff management, programming and institutional advancement/fundraising, strategic planning, financial management, and operations. Originally June 17, the application deadline has been extended to widen the pool of qualified candidates considered and is ongoing through the summer or until an adequate number of applications is received. | More here and here
CT

 

UPDATE (06/22/22): Added mention of new Basil Watson sculpture at Waterloo Station honoring legacy of Windrush generation.

 

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