Latest News in Black Art features news updates and developments in the world of art and related culture
Artist Chase Hall. | Photo by Nick Sethi
Representation
Artist Chase Hall joined David Kordansky Gallery. His first solo exhibition with the gallery will be on view in New York in fall 2023. Hall splits his time between New York and Los Angeles. | More
Accola Griefen Fine Art now represents New York artist, poet and curator JoAnne McFarland. | More
Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in London announced its co-representation of artist Qualeasha Wood in collaboration with Kendra Jayne Patrick. Wood is based in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her first solo exhibition with Pippy Houldsworth opens in May 2023. | More
From left, QUALEASHA WOOD, “Out of Stock,” 2021 (cotton jacquard weave, glass beads, 182.9 x 137.2 cm); Portrait of Qualeasha Wood. | Photo by JaLeel Porcha. Courtesy the artist, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London and Kendra Jayne Patrick
Conversations
July 28: The Brooklyn Museum is hosting an evening with artist Lorraine O’Grady, including a film screening and conversation with O’Grady; artist Sydney E. Vernon; and curators Danielle A. Jackson, Catherine Morris, and Jenée-Daria Strand. | More
Artists Amanda Williams and Derrick Adams were in conversation on the occasion of “Amanda Williams: CANDYLADYBLACK,” her recent solo exhibition at Gagosian Gallery in New York. | More
Lives
Michael DeHart Harris (1948-2022), an influential scholar, curator, and artist, died July 11 in Atlanta, Ga. He was 73. Harris, who retired in 2020, was an associate professor emeritus of art history in the Department of African American Studies at Emory University. A published author, Harris contributed an essay entitled “Color and Color Lines” to the exhibition catalog “Alma Thomas: Everything is Beautiful.” His books include “Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representation.” Duke University art historian Richard Powell called the volume “really important” and added: “There’s an interesting balance between [Michael’s] vocation as an art historian, but he’s also an incredible artist. He makes incredible paintings, he makes amazing photographs.” Harris joined the artist collective AfriCOBRA in 1979. | Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Appointments
Led by Steven Nelson, the National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (the Center) announced its latest appointments. More than 40 scholars were selected for the 2022–2023 Academic Year, including:
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Alessandra Raengo, Georgia State University
Paul Mellon Senior Fellow, fall 2022
Liquid Blackness in Contemporary Visual Arts: Black Study as Aesthetic Practice
Delphine Sims, University of California, Berkeley
Wyeth Fellow, 2021–2023
(Re)surfacing Black Presence: Photography, Black Women’s Bodies, and Geographies
Kelvin Parnell Jr., University of Virginia
Wyeth Fellow, 2022–2024
Casting Bronze, Recasting Race: American Sculpture and the Bronze Economy (1840–1890)
Exhibitions
A six-decade survey, “Kentucky Women: Helen LaFrance” opens at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Ky., on Aug. 26. Folk artist Helen LaFrance (1919-2020) “captured memories of small-town domestic and community life, as well as biblical visionary scenes, through her paintings, murals, quilts, wooden sculptures, dolls, and collages.” | More
This fall, the Arts Council of Princeton in Princeton, N.J., is presenting “Retrieving the Life and Art of James Wilson Edwards and a Circle of Black Artists,” featuring the work of James Wilson Edwards, Rex Goreleigh, Hughie Lee Smith, Selma Burke, and Wendell T. Brooks. The exhibition is co-curated by Judith K. Brodsky and Rhinold Ponder. | More
Grants
Sacramento, the capital of California, is documenting the history of African Americans in the city, through the preservation of knowledge, memories, experiences, and spaces. A collaboration between the City of Sacramento’s Historic Preservation team and California State University, the African American Experience Project received a $50,000 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. | Sacramento Bee
More News
Oberlin College awarded sculptor Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907) a posthumous diploma, nearly 160 years after she left the Oberlin, Ohio, school cutting her education short in 1863 due to racist mistreatment and violence. | Smithsonian Magazine
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