SOME OF SUMMER’S MOST INTERESTING museum exhibitions are historic, presenting the first institutional solo shows of artists spanning generations.
The selections include the first U.S. solo museum exhibitions of Frank Walter (1926–2009) at The Drawing Center in New York, Leilah Babirye at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, and Calida Rawles at Pérez Art Museum Miami. In addition, the UK’s The Hepworth Wakefield in West Yorkshire is offering a rare opportunity to see three notable solo shows focused on Igshaan Adams, Sylvia Snowden (first public exhibition in Europe), and Ronald Moody (first major exhibition) at one venue. Meanwhile, a survey of Tyler Mitchell is featured at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, the artist’s hometown museum. Notable traveling shows have opened at new locations and great group exhibitions are on view too, exploring collage works, African American quilts, diasporic photography, and more. A selection of 18 summer shows follows:
ARTHUR JAFA, Love is the Message, The Message is Death (still), 2016 (video: color, sound, 7 minutes, 25 seconds). | Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Gift of R.H. Defares to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2017.34. © Arthur Jafa, Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery
Arthur Jafa: Works from the MCA Collection @ Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, Ill. | June 1, 2024-March 2, 2025
The thought-provoking practice of artist and filmmaker Arthur Jafa (b. 1960) is an elegy on Black life, interrogating all of its complexity through the powerful language of visual imagery. The Los Angeles artist works across film, video, photography, and sculpture. Presenting major video works by Jafa from MCA Chicago’s collection, the exhibition spans the past decade. The videos “APEX” (2013), “Love is the Message, The Message is Death” (2016), “The White Album” (2018), and “Akingdoncomethas” (2018) are on view with additional photographic and sculptural works. Explore more on Culture Type
ZANELE MUHOLI, “Qiniso, The Sails, Durban,” 2019. | © Zanele Muholi. Courtesy the Artist and Yancey Richardson, New York
Zanele Muholi @ Tate Modern, London | June 6, 2024-Jan. 26, 2025
South African artist and activist Zanele Muholi (b. 1972) is celebrated the world over for their artful, powerful, and political images. Initially recognized for photographic portraits that illuminated Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and intersex lives in South Africa, Muholi gained even wider attention for striking black-and-white self-portraits brilliantly styled, often with ordinary objects rife with meaning related to the domestic work of the artist’s mother. This is the first major UK survey of Muholi. More than 300 photographs are featured, from their first body of work in the early 2000s to the present ongoing self-portrait series Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness). The exhibition first opened briefly in 2020, but was shuttered by the lockdown during to the COVID-19 pandemic. This encore presentation follows its European tour and includes new works produced since the initial showing.
Hanging in the background of this work, Michael C. Thorpe has installed an homage to the Studio Museum in Harlem poster for the 1985 group exhibition “Tradition and Conflict: Images of a Turbulent Decade, 1963-1973,” which featured, “Pray for American” (1969), a body print by David Hammons. | MICHAEL C. THORPE, “Living Room,” 2021 (fabric, thread, and quilting cotton, 45.25 h x 65.5 w inches, unframed). | © Michael Thorpe, Collection of Amy Rauner. Photo by the artist
Michael Thorpe: Homeowners’ Insurance @ Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Mass. | June 8-Dec. 1, 2024
Michael C. Thorpe (b. 1993) “paints” in a quilt format, picturing interior scenes, portraits, and landscapes that reflect his daily experiences, friends and family, and historic figures. Within the color-rich compositions, Thorpe explores abstraction, references sports and music, and artistic beacons such as Gee’s Bend quilters, David Hammons, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. The Brooklyn, N.Y.-based artist is presenting 16 works made between 2020 and 2024 in the exhibition.
TYLER MITCHELL, “Albany, Georgia,” 2021 (pigmented inkjet print). | © Tyler Mitchell, Courtesy of the artist
Tyler Mitchell: Idyllic Space @ High Museum, Atlanta, Ga. | June 21-Dec. 1, 2024
The photographs of Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Tyler Mitchell (b. 1995) are tender and alluring. His images are possessed with a keen sense of freedom and self-determination, joy, style, and leisure. In 2018, Mitchell received global attention when he photographed Beyoncé for Vogue’s September issue, becoming the first Black artist in history to shoot the fashion magazine’s cover. The exhibition is a homecoming of sorts for Mitchell who was raised in the suburbs of Atlanta. More than 30 images made between 2017 to 2024 are on view, including “The Hewitt Family” (2021), which was recently acquired by the High Museum of Art, and a photo-based sculptural work featuring more 20 families from the Atlanta area who—like Mitchell when he was growing up—are members of Jack and Jill of America.
FRANK WALTER, “Self Portrait Series: Yellow Shirt (Man in Tree),” n.d. (oil on photographic paper, 10 x 8 inches / 25.2 x 20.2 cm). | © Frank Walter
Frank Walter: To Capture a Soul @ The Drawing Center, New York, N.Y. | June 21-Sept. 15, 2024
“To Capture a Soul” is the first U.S. solo museum exhibition of Frank Walter (1926–2009), a prolific Antiguan artist who consummately captured his surroundings and experiences. Under-recognized in his lifetime, Walter was a brilliant thinker who left behind thousands of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photographs, hundreds of hours of audio recordings, and a 50,000 page archive, including poems, narrative prose, and musical scores. He made portraits, landscapes, and abstract compositions, small works in an array of styles that provided a window into his artistic practice and worldview on “issues of race and identity, the legacy of slavery, the colonial and postcolonial experience, and the history and politics of Antigua, Barbuda, and beyond.”
Installation view of “Leilah Babirye: We Have a History,” de Young Museum, San Francisco, Calif., 2024. | Photo by Gary Sexton, Courtesy de Young Museum
Leilah Babirye: We Have a History @ de Young Museum, San Francisco, Calif. | June 22, 2024-June 22, 2025
Working with ceramic, wood, and discarded objects, Leilah Babirye (b. 1985) makes sculptural portraits representing her LGBTQ+ community. For her first solo museum exhibition in the United States, Babirye is presenting 12 sculptures, including three created specifically for the de Young show. Born in Kampala, Uganda, Babirye lives and works in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her busts, masks, talismans, and towering totemic forms are presented in dialogue with the de Young’s historical African art collection. Explore more on Culture Type
SYLVIA SNOWDEN, “Beverly Johnson,” 1978 (acrylic and oil pastel on Masonite, 121.9 x 243.8 cm). | © Sylvia Snowden. Courtesy Edel Assanti and Franklin Parrasch Gallery. Photo by Andy Keate
Sylvia Snowden: Painting Humanity @ The Hepworth Wakefield, West Yorkshire, UK | March 16-Nov. 3, 2024
The Hepworth Wakefield is presenting the first solo institutional exhibition in Europe of Sylvia Snowden (b. 1942). An abstract artist who lives and works in Washington, D.C., Snowden paints with a sense of abandon. She is not afraid of engaging with the canvas. Thick with paint and rich with color, the result is incredibly powerful and moving. The exhibition is a tight survey of 10 paintings dating from the 1970s to 2001. The earliest works were produced in the years following her foundational education. Snowden earned both a BFA and MFA from Howard University, where she studied with David C. Driskell. Explore more on Culture Type
RONALD MOODY, “Johanaan,” 1936 (elm, 1550 × 725 × 388 mm). | Tate: Purchased 1992. © The Ronald Moody Trust. Photo © Tate
Ronald Moody: Sculpting Life @ The Hepworth Wakefield in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, UK | June 22-Nov. 3, 2024
“Sculpting Life” is the first major exhibition of Ronald Moody (1900-1984), one of Britain’s most highly regarded Modernist sculptors and a founding member of the Caribbean Artists Movement. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Moody arrived in the UK in 1923 to study and practice dentistry and then visits to the British Museum moved him to become a sculptor. More than 50 figurative sculptures and paintings are on view. His work is displayed in conversation with ancient works on loan from the British Museum that inspired the artist to turn to sculpture and works by his peers and contemporaries. Explore more on Culture Type
Installation view of “Igshaan Adams: Weerhoud,” The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, West Yorkshire (June 22-Nov. 3 2024). | Photo by Mark Blower, Courtesy The Hepworth Wakefield
Igshaan Adams: Weerhoud @ Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, UK. | June 22-Nov. 3, 2024
South African artist Igshaan Adams (b. 1982) works in several complementary formats, incorporating a variety of materials in his works, including rope, wire, twine, mohair wool, strands of silver-linked chain, and glass and semi-precious stone beads. For his latest exhibition, Adams is presenting two new tapestries and a new immersive cloud installation with recent sculptures and textiles. The works explore “the impact of lived experiences and traumas on the human psyche, with a particular emphasis on the healing potential of movement.”
THOMAS J. O’HALLORAN, From left, Shirley Chisholm announcing her candidacy for the Presidential nomination, with Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), Rep. Parren Mitchell (D-Md.), and Rep. Bella Abzug (D-N.Y.), Jan. 25, 1972 (photo, reproduction). | Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C., LC-U9-25384-7B
Changing the Face of Democracy: Shirley Chisholm at 100 @ Museum of the City of New York, New York, N.Y. | June 24, 2024-July 20, 2025
Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005) was a trailblazer and a change maker. A Democrat from Brooklyn, N.Y., she was the first Black woman elected to Congress (1968) and first woman to campaign for president on a major party ticket (1972). Celebrating the centennial of the political legend, this is the first major museum exhibition to document Chisholm’s life and work. Presented by the Museum of the City of New York with the Shirley Chisholm Project at Brooklyn College, the show features art, photographs, video, and a wide variety of historical artifacts. Explore more on Culture Type
CALIDA RAWLES, “Away With The Tides,” 2024 (acrylic on canvas, 120 x 96 inches). Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London
Calida Rawles: Away with the Tides @ Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Miami, Fla. | June 27, 2024-Feb. 23, 2025
Bridging hyperrealism and poetic abstraction, Calida Rawles (b. 1976) explores the symbolism of water as a space of healing and history. Working from photographs, the Los Angeles artist paints her subjects immersed in water, usually pools. For her first solo museum exhibition, she engages with the local community, photographing residents of Overtown, a historically Black neighborhood in Miami. From babies to senior citizens, Rawles captures them at a public pool in Theodore Gibson Park and at Virginia Key Beach, working for the first time with ocean water. The show features all new works along with a large-scale video installation. Explore more on Culture Type
WILLIAM M. DUFFY, “Upward Glance,” circa 1990 (basalt). | © William M. Duffy, Courtesy Stephanie Seber
Louisville’s Black Avant-Garde: William M. Duffy @ Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Ky. | June 28-Sept. 29, 2024
A collective of Black artists, the Louisville Art Workshop (LAW) was founded as a source of community and support for artists seeking to sustain their practices in a climate where galleries and museums were not receptive to showing work by Black artists. Artist and educator William M. Duffy (b. 1953) joined LAW in the 1970s, about a decade after it was established (becoming one of its youngest members). Exploring four decades of work, the exhibition features the sculptures for which Duffy is best known, along with drawings, paintings, and digital art. Duffy’s role as a leader in the local art community, who has inspired new generations of artists, is also considered. The show is the second installment of Speed Art Museum’s four-part series shedding light on important Black artists practicing in Louisville between 1950 and 1980. It follows “Louisville’s Black Avant-Garde: Robert L. Douglas,” which was on view last summer.
LUCY T. PETTWAY, (American, 1921–2004), “Birds in the Air,” 1981 (cotton and cotton-polyester blend). | High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Museum purchase and gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation from the William S. Arnett Collection, 2017.70. © Estate of Lucy T. Pettway
Patterns in Abstraction: Black Quilts from the High’s Collection @ High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Ga. | June 28, 2024-Jan. 5, 2025
Drawn from the High Museum of Art’s collection and showcasing a number of recent acquisitions, the exhibition explores the contributions of Black female quilt artists to the history of abstraction. All 17 quilts featured in the exhibition were made by artists in the Southeastern United States—including Gee’s Bend quilters, Atlanta, Ga.-based quilters, and unidentified artists active in the early 20th century. Explore more on Culture Type
FRANK STEWART, “Stomping the Blues,” 1997 (gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches). | © Frank Stewart, Collection of Ron Gibson, Savannah, Ga.
Frank Stewart’s Nexus: An American Photographer’s Journey, 1960s to the Present @ Brandywine Museum of Art, Chadds Ford, Pa. | June 30-Sept. 22, 2024
Over the course of his dynamic career, New York-based photographer Frank Stewart (b. 1949) has captured the heart of African American culture across art, food, and music; made portraits of pivotal Black figures; and traveled the globe with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, documenting the band, climate change, and international scenes from China to Ghana. Along the way, Stewart developed his singular artistic eye and mastered a variety of inventive technical methods. Spanning more than half a century, more than 100 images are on view in the traveling exhibition—some in color, most in black-and-white. Explore more on Culture Type
DEREK FORDJOUR, “Airborne Double,” 2022 (acrylic, charcoal, cardboard, oil pastel, and foil on newspaper mounted on canvas). | © David Forjour. Frances Fine Art Collection, Courtesy the artist, David Kordansky Gallery, and Petzel Gallery, New York. Photo by Daniel Greer
Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage @ The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. | July 6-Sept. 22, 2024
Bringing together a broad array of collage and collage-style works produced with paper, photographs, fabric, and other materials, the traveling exhibition “Multiplicity” considers the complexity of Black identity and the expansive nature of the Black experience. Nearly 60 works by 49 contemporary artists are on view in six sections: “Fragmentation and Reconstruction,” “Excavating History and Memory,” “Cultural Hybridity,” “Notions of Beauty and Power,” “Gender Fluidity and Queer Spaces,” and “Toward Abstraction.” Featured artists include Jamal Cyrus, M. Florine Démosthène, Derek Fordjour, Genevieve Gaignard, Yashua Klos, Tomashi Jackson, Kerry James Marshall, Helina Metaferia, Wardell Milan, Wangechi Mutu, Ebony J. Patterson, Jamea Richmond-Edwards, Deborah Roberts, Tschabalala Self, Lorna Simpson, Devan Shimoyama, Paul Anthony Smith, Mickalene Thomas, and Didier William.
BEAUFORD DELANEY, James Baldwin, 1963 (pastel on paper). | National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. © Estate of Beauford Delaney by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire, Court Appointed Administrator; Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York
This Morning, This Evening, So Soon: James Baldwin and the Voices of Queer Resistance @ National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. | July 12, 2024-April 20, 2025
A literary icon, James Baldwin (1924-1987) was outspoken about civil rights and America’s race problems during a time when he was unable to be his authentic, queer self in public. Curated by Hilton Als, this exhibition marks Baldwin’s centennial. The show explores his life in context with the experiences of his fellow “voices of queer resistance”: Bayard Rustin, Lorraine Hansberry, Barbara Jordan, Essex Hemphill, and Marlon Riggs. Featuring ephemera and photography alongside artworks by Beauford Delaney, Bernard Gotfryd, Richard Avedon, Glenn Ligon, Donald Moffett, Faith Ringgold, Lorna Simpson, and Jack Whitten, the exhibition is titled after a short story by Baldwin published in the Atlantic in 1960.
GORDON PARKS, “Husband and Wife, Sunday Morning, Detroit, Michigan (Bert Collins and Pauline Terry),” 1950 (printed later, gelatin silver print). | Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2016.117.150
Gordon Parks: Camera Portraits from the Corcoran Collection @ National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. | July 14, 2024-Jan. 12, 2025
After the Corcoran Gallery of Art was shuttered nearly a decade ago, the collection of the Washington, D.C., museum was distributed to various local institutions. A significant portion was acquired by the National Gallery of Art, including a cache of photographs by Gordon Parks (1912-2006). The exhibition features 25 black-and-white portraits made between 1941 and 1970, key works capturing some of the most significant subjects of the photographer’s longstanding career, including Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Eldridge Cleaver, and Langston Hughes; a Harlem gang leader, a Chicago pastor, and a Detroit couple on Sunday morning; “American Gothic” picturing Ella Watson cleaning a government office; and Flavio da Silva, a young Brazilian boy living in poverty with his family in a favela in Rio de Janeiro. A 1941 self-portrait of Parks is also on view.
ZUN LEE (Canadian-American, b. Germany 1969), “Jebron Felder and his son Jae’shaun at home, Harlem, New York,” September 2011 (selenium split-tone K7 on Hanhemüle Photo Rag, 20 x 30 inches). | Dr. Kenneth Montague | The Wedge Collection, Toronto. Courtesy Zun Lee, from the Father Figure Project
As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic, Selections from the Wedge Collection @ Artis-Naples, The Baker Museum, Naples, Fla. | July 20-Oct. 13, 2024
Since 1997, Toronto dentist Dr. Kenneth Montague has been building an incredible photography-based collection that visualizes what Black life looks like on both sides of the Atlantic. Showcasing his Wedge Collection, the international traveling exhibition “As We Rise” presents more than 100 images by artists from Canada, the Caribbean, Great Britain, the United States, South America, and the African continent who work across fine art, portrait, documentary, and street photography. Among the artists featured are Stan Douglas, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Barkley L. Hendricks, Texas Isaiah, Liz Johnson Artur, Seydou Keïta, Deana Lawson, Zun Lee, Jamel Shabazz, Texas Isaiah, James Van Der Zee, and Carrie Mae Weems. Explore more on Culture Type
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BOOKSHELF
The most comprehensive volume of her work to date, “Calida Rawles: Away with the Tides” accompanies the artist’s first-ever solo museum exhibition at Pérez Art Museum Miami. “Frank Walter: To Capture a Soul” is accompanied by a publication available in hard copy or a free digital format. Also consider “By Land, Air, Home, and Sea: The World of Frank Walter” and two hefty volumes dedicated to the artist—“Frank Walter: A Retrospective” and “Frank Walter: The Last Universal Man, 1926–2009.” Several other volumes document exhibitions mentioned above: “Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage,” “Ronald Moody: Sculpting Life,” “As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic, Selections from the Wedge Collection,” and “Frank Stewart’s Nexus: An American Photographer’s Journey, 1960s to the Present.” Meanwhile, “Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, Volume II,” a new monograph of the South African photographer, was published this summer. “I Can Make You Feel Good: Tyler Mitchell” is the artist’s first major monograph. “Arthur Jafa: MAGNUMB” provides an overview of the artist’s practice. Finally, the exhibition catalog “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon: James Baldwin and the Voices of Queer Resistance” is forthcoming in September.
