American scholar Saidiya Hartman and British artist Steve McQueen are the highest-ranking Black people on this year’s Power 100 list.
SINCE 2002, ARTREVIEW has published a Power 100 list of influential artists, curators, gallerists, collectors, funders, and thinkers. The London-based contemporary art magazine describes the Power 100 as a “structural portrait of international contemporary art, identifying and accounting for the figures and faces who have created, inspired and crafted the art we see.” The list is intended as a barometer of power and influence in the art world. This year, there are no collectors on the international list and the rankings are topped by people of color.
According to ArtReview, curator Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi is the most powerful person in contemporary art. No. 1 on the 2024 Power 100 list, Al Qasimi is director of the Sharjah Biennial and founder of the Sharjah Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates. Second on the list, Argentina-born, Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija is also a curator and educator. “Rirkrit Tiravanija: A Lot of People,” his largest exhibition to date, was recently on view at MoMA PS1 in Queens, New York. Both Al Qasimi and Tiravanija have appeared on the list many times, each reaching their highest rank this year.
American historian and author Saidiya Hartman (3) and British artist Steve McQueen (4) are the highest-ranking Black people on the Power 100 list. Hartman is a singular scholar whose work has transformed the study of Black life and the legacy of slavery. A professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, her orbit bridges art, history, and literature. Her books include “Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval” and “Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route.” Hartman has been in conversation with many artists over the years, including recent public talks with Simone Leigh, Charles Gaines, Cameron Rowland, John Afomfrah, and Arthur Jafa. More recently, she interviewed author Dionne Brand for the Fall 2024 issue of Bomb magazine.
McQueen, who won a Best Director Oscar for “12 Years a Slave” in 2014, has a new film streaming on Apple TV+. Set in World War II London, “Blitz” is about a young boy whose mother sends him to safety in the English countryside and the perilous journey he embarks upon to return home to her. In New York, exhibitions of McQueen’s work are on view at Dia Beacon (where a newly commissioned light and sound installation occupies a 30,000 square foot gallery) and Dia Chelsea (film installations and photographs), well into 2025.
Reflecting a shift in influence and expansion of the art world, people of color account for about two-thirds of the Power 100 list, representing the United States, Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South America. More than 25 percent are Black.
The top half of the list includes artists Kerry James Marshall (8), John Akomfrah (10), Carrie Mae Weems (11), Ibrahim Mahama (14), Sammy Baloji (17), Mark Bradford (19), Isaac Julien (22), Julie Mehretu (26), Theaster Gates (32), and Yinka Shonibare (36).
Reflecting a shift in influence and expansion of the art world, people of color account for about two-thirds of the Power 100 list, representing the United States, Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South America. More than 25 percent are Black.
ARTREVIEW’S POWER 100 LIST is developed in consultation with an international panel of invited artists, curators, critics, and collectors. The geographically diverse group of more than 40 unnamed experts considers spheres of influence and the key figures shaping the art world, according to ArtReview. The outcome is “an annual tally of who and what made art happen during the past 12 months.”
Only this year has the panel seen fit to include critically acclaimed mid-career artists Bradford and Mehretu on the list. Each has a unique approach to abstraction and generally explores social behavior and social justice issues in their work. “Mark Bradford: Exotica,” a solo exhibition of the artist is currently on view in Hong Kong as Hauser & Wirth, one of the top art galleries in the world.
Mehretu is presenting major exhibitions on two continents. “Julie Mehretu: Ensemble” at Palazzo Grassi in Venice, Italy, is co-curated by the artist. The largest exhibition of Mehretu’s work to date in Europe also features works by some of her closest friends: Nairy Baghramian, Huma Bhabha, Robin Coste Lewis, Tacita Dean, David Hammons, Paul Pfeiffer, and Jessica Rankin. “Julie Mehretu: A Transcore of the Radical Imaginatory,” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, is the artist’s first major survey in Australia and the Asia Pacific Region.
At auction, Los Angeles-based Bradford’s sales are the second-most expensive at auction by a living Black artist, behind Marshall. Their records are $12 million and $21 million, respectively. Based in New York, Mehretu’s work is the third most-expensive by a living Black artist and holds the record for the most expensive at auction by a Black woman, living or dead ($10.7 million).
Artist Amy Sherald (23) also made the list for the first time. Sheroald gained broad recognition when she was commissioned to paint a portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. “Amy Sherald: American Sublime,” the largest-ever exhibition of her work, recently opened at SFMOMA and will travel to the Smithsonian museum next year.
BEYOND ARTISTS, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (20), director of HKW in Berlin and curator of the 36th São Paulo Biennial in 2025, has been on the list since 2017. Fred Moten (27), poet, critic, and scholar of Black aesthetics, has also ranked for several years. Ndikung and Moten both moved up on the list this year. Darren Walker (37)—outgoing president of the Ford Foundation, a powerful funder and supporter of artists, exhibitions, and museums—fell in the ranks from a high if No. 10 in 2022.
Manthia Diawara (46), a cinema studies professor at New York University, was included in the Power 100 for the first time. Diawara is co-curating this year’s Bamako Encounters, the African biennial of photography in Mali, which runs through Jan. 16, 2025. Another new initiate, South African-born curator Gabi Ngcobo (76) is director of Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Brazil has a notable presence this year. Adriano Pedrosa (33), the director of the Museum of Art São Paulo, who served as artistic director of the 60th Venice Biennale this year, has been listed multiple times. Rio de Janeiro-born Raphael Fonseca (86) made the list in 2023 and 2024. A curator at the Denver Art Museum in Colorado, Fonseca organized the 14th Mercosul Biennial earlier this year in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Brazilian curator Thiago de Paula Souza (90) is new to the list this year.
Dalton Paula (87) also debuted on the 2024 list. Earlier this year, the Brazilian artist was a recipient of the $100,000 Chanel Next Prize. Paula’s imagined portrait of Zeferina, a leader of Brazilian slave rebellions was featured prominently in “Afro-Atlantic Histories” and graced the cover of the exhibition catalog. (The international traveling exhibition was originated by Pedrosa at the Museum of Art São Paulo.) The portrait was also featured on the September 2024 cover of Art Review, above the cover line “Counternarratives: How art makes space for those who history left behind” and illustrating an essay by Izabella Scot titled “Can There Be History Without Facts.”
Over the past two decades, numerous people have appeared on the Power 100 multiple times, rising and falling in rank year to year. In New York, Legacy Russell (74) is director of The Kitchen, a nonprofit art space that presents dynamic and experimental works and performances. Russell is making inroads after landing at No. 100 in 2020, the first year she was featured on the list. Koyo Kouoh, director of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art in Cape Town, South Africa, was announced as the artistic director of the next Venice Biennale (2026) the day before the Power 100 list was released. The celebrated international curator has been included on the list every year since 2014, when she was ranked No. 96. Kouoh is now ranked No. 16, up from No. 21 last year. CT
IMAGES: Top of page, from left, Courtesy Saidiya Hartman; Steve McQueen, Photo by James Stopforth
FIND MORE about Saidiya Hartman on her website, Instagram, and a recent New Yorker profile
FIND MORE about Steve McQueen at a 2022 symposium dedicated to his work at Yale Center for British Art, and a recent profile in Vanity Fair
FIND MORE In October, an interview with artist Mark Bradford was published in the Winter 2024 issue of ArtReview Asia
BOOKSHELF
“Steve McQueen: Bass” is a new volume published to accompany the artist’s exhibition at Dia Beacon. Saidiya Hartman is the author of several books including “Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval,” “Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America,” and “Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route.” Julie Mehretu Ensemble is published on the occasion of the artist’s exhibition at Palazzo Grassi in Venice, Italy. Key publications exploring Mark Bradford’s work include “Mark Bradford: Tomorrow Is Another Day” documenting the Bradford’s Venice Biennale exhibition in the American Pavilion; “Mark Bradford,” from the Phaidon Contemporary Artists series; and “Mark Bradford: Merchant Posters.” “Amy Sherald: American Sublime” documents the artists new traveling exhibition. Also consider, “Dalton Paula: Brazilian Portraits” and “Afro-Atlantic Histories.” Paula’s portrait of Zeferina, a leader of Brazilian slave rebellions, is featured on the cover of the catalog and in the exhibition.
