IN DETROIT, MICH., the Modern Ancient Brown Foundation (MAB) welcomed Taylor Renee Aldridge as executive director. Aldridge joined the foundation from the California African American Museum (CAAM) in Los Angeles, where she had been visual arts curator & program manager since 2020. The MAB appointment marks a homecoming for Aldridge, who was born and raised in Detroit.
Founded by artist McArthur Binion in 2019, the Modern Ancient Brown Foundation supports BIPOC artists and writers in Detroit through visiting fellowships and a post-baccalaureate artist residencies. The appointment announcement said, Aldridge will focus on expanding the foundation’s programming “to all Detroit-based community members interested in developing an artistic practice. Her goal is to create access to thoughtful relationships, tactical resources, workshops from leading artists and arts professionals and overall bolster Detroit’s ever-evolving arts landscape.” She started in the new role on Sept. 1.
Taylor Renee Aldridge. | Photo by Bella Lopez
“I am honored to initiate my homecoming to Detroit as Modern Ancient Brown’s Executive Director,” Aldridge said in a statement. “I see supporting artists as a holistic process that must center interpersonal care and mutual aid as much as professional mentorship and rigorous critique. I have long admired McArthur Binion’s practice and vision for the Foundation and I am thrilled to be a part of its legacy where I will expand upon the arts ecosystem in the city I call home.”
A curator and writer, Aldridge is co-curator of the Los Angeles presentation of “Simone Leigh,” which is currently on view at CAAM and the Los Angele County Museum of Art, through Jan. 20, 2025. The traveling exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of Leigh, who represented the United States at the 2022 Venice Biennale. At CAAM, Aldridge’s exhibitions also include “Troy Montes Michie: Rock of Eye” (2022); “Mario Moore: Enshrined: Presence and Preservation” (2022); and “Enunciated Life” (2021), exploring Black spiritual beliefs. In addition, she organized solo shows of Chloë Bass, Darol Olu Kae, Matthew Thomas, and LaToya Ruby Frazier at CAAM.
Her portfolio also includes exhibitions at Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, and the Detroit Institute of Arts, where she briefly served as assistant curator of contemporary art (2016-18).
In 2014, Aldridge and Jessica Lynne co-founded ARTS.BLACK, an online journal of art criticism. Aldridge’s writing has appeared in many other art publications and she has edited and contributed to several exhibition catalogs. Most recently, she edited “All These Liberations: Women Artists in the Eileen Harris Norton Collection.” In terms of her academic background, Aldridge earned an MLA degree from Harvard University with a concentration in museum studies and a BA degree from Howard University with a concentration in art history.
“I have long admired McArthur Binion’s practice and vision for the Foundation and I am thrilled to be a part of its legacy where I will expand upon the arts ecosystem in the city I call home.” — Taylor Renee Aldridge
BINION HAS BEEN ACTIVE for more than 50 years, developing an artistic practice that is intensely personal. He makes autobiographical abstractions that engage with minimalism. Combining painting, collage, and drawing, from afar his tightly composed grid patterns read as fields of monochromatic color. Viewed at close range, the artist’s unique visual language and the complexity of the paintings comes into sharp focus. Exploring his personal narrative, collaged elements of the layered works have included fragments of childhood photographs and photocopies of his birth certificate and pages from address books he kept across decades.
Born in Mason, Miss., Chicago-based Binion grew up in Detroit, where he is investing in the city’s artists and creative community. His Modern Ancient Brown Foundation is based in East Detroit at The Shepherd, a multi-faceted art campus established by Library Street Collective that opened to the public in May.
Aldrdige is the foundation’s third executive director. Her appointment announcement included an expansive, laudatory statement from the foundation’s board of trustees, a four-member body led by Binion with his three adult children serving as officers. “When it came time to elect a new Executive Director, there was no question in our minds that Taylor would be a meaningful fit,” the board said.
“When we met, we had an opportunity to dig deeply into the DNA of Detroit, which made clear that she has an intimate understanding of the needs of the arts ecosystem in the city, which will inform the partnerships and collaborations she initiates at the foundation. We feel she is poised to develop the ways our organization contributes to the preexisting arts community and to fuel the role of the arts in Detroit’s ongoing revitalization without extracting from artists themselves. Most importantly, what she brings to the foundation is an ethos of mutual aid and cooperative economies that are vital to the sustainability of any artist’s career—these processes are enabled first through a capacity to build trust, facilitate connection and practice care, all of which Taylor exemplifies.” CT
FIND MORE about Taylor Renee Aldridge on her website and Instagram
BOOKSHELF
Taylor Renee Aldridge is the editor of “All These Liberations: Women Artists in the Eileen Harris Norton Collection,” which was published earlier this year. “Enunciated Life” documents the exhibition she curated at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles in 2021. Aldridge also contributed to “Terence Nance: Swarm” and the newly published volume “Jamea Richmond-Edwards: Ancient Future.”
