Latest News in Black Art features updates and developments in the world of art and related culture
Jaynelle Hazard. | Courtesy Georgetown Galleries
APPOINTMENTS
Georgetown University Art Galleries Welcome New Director
In Washington, D.C., Georgetown University’s College of Art & Sciences recruited Jaynelle Hazard (above) to helm its art galleries. Hazard was appointed director and chief curator of both the Maria & Alberto de la Cruz Art Gallery and the Lucille M. & Richard F.X. Spagnuolo Art Gallery. She brings experience in the Washington region. Since 2020, Hazard has been serving as executive director and chief curator of Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art in Reston, Va. In a previous role, she was director of exhibitions at Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, Va. She is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University and Sotheby’s Institute of Art. (6/20) | More
New Documenta Finding Committee Includes N’Goné Fall
A new six-person Finding Committee has been appointed for Documenta 16 in Kassel, Germany. The new group is replacing the previous Finding Committee. When one member stepped down after being accused of signing a statement viewed as antisemitic, the remaining members resigned in support en masse. Held every five years, Documenta is a 100-day exhibition that has “played a leading role in taking the international discourse about art in new directions.” The Finding Committee selects the artistic director through an invitational process and review of proposed concepts and formats. The international slate of contemporary art experts on the new committee includes Yilmaz Dziewior, Sergio Edelsztein, N’Goné Fall, Gridthiya Gaweewong, Mami Kataoka, and Yasmil Raymond. Born in Senegal, Fall is an independent curator, educator, and cultural policy specialist. She has organized exhibitions in Africa, Europe, and the United States and was appointed General Commissioner of the Africa2020 Season by French President Emmanuel Macron, presenting more than 1,500 cultural and scientific events throughout France. Documenta 16 is scheduled June 12-Sept. 19, 2027. (7/3) | More
New Design Faculty Appointments at Harvard University
Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) announced eight new faculty appointments for the 2024–2025 academic year, effective July 1. Among the new faculty members, Maurice Cox (right) is the Emma Bloomberg Professor in Residence of Urban Planning and Design. Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Cox was educated at Cooper Union. He is an urban designer whose portfolio spans academia, private practice and public service. Early in his career, Cox gained international experience. A study abroad opportunity in Italy, turned into a decade working in private practice in Florence (1983-93). In Virginia, after co-founding RBGC Architecture, Research and Urbanism Charlottesville (1996-2005), Cox became a member of the city council (2000-04), serving as mayor of Charlottesville during his last two years (2002-04). At the federal level, Cox was appointed design director for the National Endowment for the Arts (2007-09). Working in city government, he served as director of planning and development for Detroit (2015-19) and commissioner of planning and development in Chicago (2019-23). Over the course of his career, Cox has also taught at Syracuse University and held leadership and tenured roles at the University of Virginia and Tulane University. At Harvard, he was a recipient of GSD’s Loeb Fellowship (2004-05). As a a new faculty member in the Department of Urban Planning and Design, Cox is expected to be instrumental in raising GSD’s visibility “as a school addressing important challenges of our time—particularly with respect to disinvested communities, growing racial, class, and ethnic inequality, and the positive role that design excellence in the urban built environment can play in meeting these challenges.” (7/1) | More
IMAGE: Above right, Maurice Cox. | Courtesy Maurice Cox via Harvard GSD
LYNETTE YIADOM BOAKYE (British, born 1977), “An Assistance of Amber,” 2017 (oil on linen). | The Dean Collection, Courtesy of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys. © Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Courtesy the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and Corvi-Mora, London. Photo by Glenn Steigelma
EXHIBITIONS
‘Giants’ is Now Touring
Organized by the Brooklyn Museum, where it recently concluded, “Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys” (Feb. 10-July 7, 2024) is headed South. The exhibition is traveling to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Ga., where it opens Sept. 13. Giants features 115 objects, including 98 major works of art, mostly figurative paintings, by a multigenerational slate of Black artists, including Nina Chanel Abney, Derrick Adams, Kwame Brathwaite, Nick Cave, Barkley L. Hendricks, Arthur Jafa, Meleko Mokgosi, Gordon Parks, Ebony G. Patterson, Tschabalala Self, Amy Sherald, Lorna Simpson, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, and Kehinde Wiley. (7/1) | More
MAGAZINES
Ice Cream Summer
Los Angeles artist Kadir Nelson regularly illustrates covers for the New Yorker. His summer scenes have pictured a father taking his children for “A Day at the Beach,” a young girl with a beach ball, and a young boy indulging in a red, white, and blue popsicle. His latest summer image is featured on the magazine’s July 8 and July 15 double issue. The contemporary image reads boardwalk summer. The subject is a young woman with her hair in an extra-long bubble ponytail. Wearing sunglasses and a rainbow ombre dress, she is holding a perfectly swirled soft-serve ice cream cone. With a ferris wheel and other boardwalk rides in the background, Nelson said the concept channeled his childhood memories of summer and his favorite frozen treat. “As a kid walking along the Atlantic City boardwalk, my all-time favorite summertime sweet was soft-serve vanilla ice cream on a cone,” Nelson told By Françoise Mouly, the New Yorker’s art editor. “To celebrate summer in the city, I switched the setting to Brooklyn’s Coney Island.” (7/1) | More
AWARDS & HONORS
Baltimore Museum of Art Inaugurates New Artist Residency
The Baltimore Museum of Art launched a new artist-in-residency program in collaboration with philanthropists Betsy and Michael Sherman. The Sherman Family Foundation Residency was established with a financial gift from the foundation. The inaugural recipient is Kenturah Davis, who splits her time between Los Angeles, Calif., and Accra, Ghana. Working across drawings, textiles, sculpture and performance, Davis’s practice considers “the fundamental role that language plays in how we understand ourselves and the world in which we exist.” Based in Maine at the Sherman’s home, the residency provides studio space, lodging, funding support for travel and supplies, and a $5,000 stipend. The opportunity for the artist to form an ongoing relationship with the Baltimore Museum of Art is central to the program, by way of meetings with curators and leadership during the residency to discuss their work and benefit from mentorship, with the possibility of the museum acquiring a work by the artist at the conclusion. (7/8) | More
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