From left, Artists Hale Woodruff and Jacob Lawrence. GATHERING RESEARCH FOR HER THESIS, a white North Carolina college student wrote to African American artists Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) and Hale Woodruff (1900-1980) more than six decades ago. She sought Lawrence’s view on the influence of Negro artists on American painting and, from Woodruff, insights about...
IN ANTICIPATION OF THE SPRING 2018 SALES at major auction houses in London this month, Culture Type is taking a look back at recent results at Sotheby’s. One of the benefits of observing auctions is the opportunity see works long held in private hands away from public view. The November 2017 Contemporary Day and...
McArthur Binion, 2017 Venice Biennale. LEHMAN MAUPIN GALLERY announced its representation of McArthur Binion today. His autobiographical abstract works are realized in tightly composed grid patterns. For more than four decades, the Chicago-based artist has been exploring the format through painting, drawing, and collage. Binion’s paintings were presented at the 2017 Venice Biennale, part...
Kara Walker and her crew install “The Katastwóf Karavan” at Algiers Point in New Orleans. | Photo © Ari Marcopoulos by via Prospect New Orleans BLACK HISTORY MONTH was rife with notable moments in art history, chief among them, the unveiling of the Obama portraits at the National Portrait Gallery on Feb 12. Washington...
MARK BRADFORD, Detail of “Moody Blues for Jack Whitten” (2018). WHEN JACK WHITTEN JOINED Hauser & Wirth in April 2016, the gallery’s roster claimed two of contemporary art’s most innovative abstract painters—Whitten (1939-2018) and Mark Bradford. A generation apart, while the African American artists have unique approaches to abstraction, both have largely dedicated their...
THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF Andre D. Wagner celebrate everyday excellence and the power of fleeting moments. The New York-based street photographer trains his camera primarily on African Americans throughout the city, documenting the many untold stories found in neighborhoods from Brooklyn and Harlem. His images of blackness have recently been featured in the New York...
FAITH RINGGOLD, “American People Series #15: Hide Little Children,” 1966 THE EXPERIENCES OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ARTISTS and women artists half a century ago, their fight to make any kind of art they wanted and struggles to be recognized and have their work represented in mainstream institutions, has come to the fore in recent books...
THE WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART in New York City is welcoming a new curator of performance. Adrienne Edwards was appointed the museum’s Engell Speyer Family Curator and Curator of Performance today. She is joining the Whitney in May. Edwards is a curator at Performa and a curator at-large at the Walker Art Center in...
Arts and Education Advocate Peggy Cooper Caftritz (1947-2018) FOR THOSE WHO CARE ABOUT equity and access in arts and education, a major ally and important advocate has been lost. Peggy Cooper Cafrtiz (1947-2018), the Washington, D.C., arts patron who co-founded the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, died Feb. 18 at a local hospital....
WASHINGTON, DC—There are many ways to define and depict power. When President Obama’s portrait was unveiled Monday, it was a reminder that leadership, command, and influence, can be inspiring and reassuring, powerful and black. Kehinde Wiley’s portrait of the former president artfully captures the man and the symbol. The image of the first African...
A NUMBER OF ART PATRONS boast impressive collections of African American art. Peggy Cooper Cafritz is probably the loan collector in the category who has assembled two. Over the course of 20-plus years, Cafritz acquired more than 300 works by artists such as Barkley L. Hendricks, Norman Lewis, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Yinka Shonibare,...
BEAUFORD DELANEY, “Portrait of James Baldwin,” 1944 FORTY YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH, Beauford Delaney’s hometown museum plans a major exhibition dedicated to his work. Since 2014, the Knoxville Museum of Art (KMA) has been amassing a collection works by the artist. On Feb. 1, the museum announced the purchase of 12 paintings, drawings, and...
THIS MORNING, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta announced Amy Sherald is the recipient of the 2018 David C. Driskell Prize. Sherald is celebrated for her imaginative portraits of real people and in the past few years has received wide-spread recognition for her distinct work. Recently, she was commissioned to paint First Lady Michelle...
A DECADE AGO TODAY, “Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool” opened at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University (Feb. 7-July 13, 2008). The traveling survey brought renewed attention to Barkley L. Hendricks (1945-2017), the artist and photographer whose powerful portraits dating from the 1960s and 70s masterfully capture the individuality, attitude...
Barbara Earl Thomas discusses her commissioned work “Caught in the Matrix” (2017). SAVANNAH, GA. — A luminesce installation glows and emits shadows at the far end of the gallery. The floor to the ceiling work is a series of paper-cut panels of Tyvek. Standing 14-feet high, from a distance it appears lantern-like. Up close,...
The art world is mourning artist Jack Whitten (left) and curator Kynaston McShine. THE WORLD OF ART lost two important figures in January—inventive abstract painter Jack Whitten (1939-2018) and pioneering MoMA curator Kynaston McShine (1935-2018). In “Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting,” the catalog published to coincide with Whitten’s career-spanning survey (2014-15), the artist...
Jacob Lawrence, “The Card Game,” 1953 SAVANNAH, GA. — Sixty-five years ago, Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) made a painting about a Harlem card game, depicting four nattily dressed card players in the midst of a hand. Left to the devices of a lesser artist, an image of black people engaged in a game of cards...
THE CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM of American Art announced the appointment of Allison Glenn as associate curator, contemporary art. She joins the museum’s expanding contemporary art team and will contribute to all aspects of its work, including exhibition development, publications, and long-term planning. Glenn begins work at Crystal Bridges on Feb. 12. Glenn comes to...
A LARGE-SCALE RETROSPECTIVE of works by Charles White (1918-1979) debuts this summer in Chicago and will travel to New York and Los Angeles, cities where the artist spent key periods of his life. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) announced the exhibition today. “Charles White: A Retrospective” is organized by MoMA, where it will...
IT WAS ALWAYS ABOUT EXPERIMENTATION. For more than half a century, Jack Whitten (1939-2018) pursued the possibilities of paint, material, and technique. While constantly evolving his conceptual practice, he remained proudly political, committed to exploring weighty issues, and intent on lifting up the legacies of fellow African American artists and cultural figures by paying...
Diallo Simon-Ponte is Joining Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, as Inaugural Sam Gilliam Assistant Curator of Artist Programs
Apr 23, 2025
On View: ‘Alberta Whittle: Towards a Motherful Loving Praxis, We Cast Seeds Into the Darkness’ at Nicola Vassell Gallery in New York
Apr 19, 2025
Jack Shainman Gallery Now Represents the Estate of Faith Ringgold, ‘Artist Played Significant Role in Shaping Culture of American Art’
Apr 17, 2025
On View: ‘Robert Carter and Charles White in Dialogue’ Presents Moving Figurative Compositions at ACA Galleries in New York
Apr 12, 2025
Culture Type: The Month in Black Art, Here’s What Happened in April 2025
Apr 11, 2025
