Detail of LORNA SIMPSON B”lack & Ice” 2017, on view at Hauser & Wirth, Frieze NY KNOWN FOR INTRODUCING the latest in today’s contemporary art, Frieze New York this year features both must-see new works and gems from the past. Some of the highlights include focused exhibitions of new paintings by Lorna Simpson at...
Lubaina Himid, 2017. | Courtesy the Artist and Hollybush Gardens, Photo by Edmund Blok for Modern Art Oxford via Tate TWO OF THE MOST INTERESTING PAINTERS working in Britain were recognized today. The shortlist for the Turner Prize was announced and Hurvin Anderson and Lubaina Himid are among the four artists selected for the...
Lot 2: CHÉRI SAMBA (b. 1956), “Une Vie Ratée ( A Successful Life), 1995 (acrylic on canvas). | Estimate 20,000-30,000 pounds ($25,844-$38,766). Sold for 52,500 pounds ($67,841 including fees) SOTHEBY’S IS HOLDING ITS FIRST-EVER modern and contemporary African art sale May 16 in London. Featuring more than 60 artists from 14 countries, the selection...
Residence in Hollywood, Calif., designed in 1928 by Paul Williams for banking executive Victor Rosetti. STATELY AND GRACEFUL are the descriptors frequently invoked in real state listings for homes designed by architect Paul Revere Williams (1894-1980). The Williams name adds quantifiable prestige to prime properties on the most desirable streets in Beverly Hills, Hollywood...
Ford Foundation President Darren Walker (center) presented a Skowhegan award honoring the Studio Museum in Harlem to Thelma Golden and William T. Williams. | Photo by Benjamin Lozovsky/BFA.com via Skowhegan ONE SOUGHT AFTER RESIDENCY PROGRAM recognized another this week. Skowhegan paid tribute to the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Artist-in-Residence (AIR) program, presenting the museum...
Chris Ofili shows off his CBE. | Photo by John Stillwell/AFP/Getty Images EXCEPTIONAL BRITISH CITIZENS were bestowed with royal honors at Buckingham Palace last week. In January, artist Chris Ofili was announced among Order of the British Empire honorees for 2017. He received a CBE or “Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the...
THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA announced the appointment of Milton S. Curry as dean of its school of architecture. The institution has a storied history. The first accredited architecture school in Southern California, the program marked a century of architecture in 2014, graduating its 100th class of students. Among its earliest alumni, Paul R. Williams,...
DESIGNATED BY THE UNITED NATIONS Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), World Book Day promotes reading, publishing and copyright. It’s a great excuse to learn more about five new art books. Recently published volumes pay tribute to women artists and explore the work of African American artists active in 1960s and 70s Los Angeles—the work...
Photograph by Broomberg & Chanarin via Time TIME MAGAZINE ANNOUNCED its annual assessment of the 100 Most Influential People and artist Kerry James Marshall made the list. The 2017 roundup of people at the forefront of ideas, innovation, power and change, includes major figures in five categories—pioneers, artists, leaders, titans, and icons. Pope Francis,...
Alma Thomas, “Untitled,” circa 1968. | MoMA A NEW EXHIBITION at the Museum of Modern Art in New York is dedicated to works by women artists created between the end of World War II in 1945 and the onset of the Feminist Movement in the late 1960s. “Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction”...
SPRING SHOWS ARE HERE and the rich selection runs the gamut, from exhibitions of innovative new works to scholarly examinations of important historic movements. Exploring the intersection of race, feminism, political action, art production, the much-anticipated “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85” is opening at the Brooklyn Museum. In advance of his representation...
Cover Artist: Kara Walker on New York magazine’s Art & Design issue (April 17-30, 2017). FOR THE NEW ART & DESIGN ISSUE of New York magazine, writer Doreen St. Félix profiles Kara Walker. She spent time with the 47-year-old artist at her brownstone in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, her Garment District studio, and also talking...
BARKLEY L. HENDRICKS, “Slick (Self Portrait),” 1977 ARTIST AND PHOTOGRAPHER Barkley L. Hendricks (1945-2017) died today. He was 72. With a practice spanning painting and photography and landscapes and figuration, he was most recognized for his life-size realist portraits painted in the 1970s of subjects whose cool poses and style of dress conveyed a...
Embed from Getty Images DURING HIS LIFETIME, James Baldwin (1924-1987) had a lot to say. His insightful observations and thoughtful, sometimes fiery, words about race, civil rights, and the American paradigm resonate 30 years after his death. The recent Oscar-nominated documentary “I Am Not Your Negro,” which is based on an unpublished Baldwin manuscript,...
Artists Sam Gilliam and David C. Driskell. | © 2017 Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington WASHINGTON, D.C. — The first time Lilian Thomas Burwell met Sam Gilliam, he told her if she wanted to be taken seriously as an artist she should get her own studio space. “He didn’t know me...
Lorna Simpson. | Photo by James Wang, Courtesy Hauser & Wirth HAUSER & WIRTH GALLERY announced its worldwide representation of Lorna Simpson today. A conceptual artist and photographer, Simpson’s work challenges conventional views of gender, culture, identity, history, and memory. In describing her distinguished practice, the gallery said she has “emerged as a central...
ADDISON SCURLOCK, Howard University Students,” circa 1920-30 (printed 1970). | Scurlock Studio Records, circa 1905-1994, Archives Center, National Museum of American History FOR THE GREATER PART of the 20th century, America’s black metropolises were documented by visionary black photographers who forged successful businesses and important roles as local community historians. They offered portraits of...
Detail of ALMA THOMAS, “Red Rose Cantata” 1973 (acrylic on canvas). | Courtesy National Gallery of Art Symposium gives a nod to Howard University and local artists, scholars and curators who shaped the field WASHINGTON, D.C. — For decades, Howard University in Washington, D.C., was at the center of the African American art world....
ACROSS THE UNITED STATES and in London, auctions of post-war, modern and contemporary art were held at the end of February and early March. Records were set in Los Angeles, where an Alma Thomas painting was offered, and London where Henry Taylor and Njideka Akunyili Crosby achieved new benchmarks. Auction values for Nigerian-born, Los Angeles-based...
NEARLY 40 YEARS AGO, the College Art Association’s National Women’s Caucus for Art planned an exhibition featuring works by “Afro-American” women artists. Co-curated by Emily Martin and Tritobia Benjamin (1944-2014), an art historian and professor at Howard University, the show was to be presented at CAA’s 1979 annual conference in Washington, D.C. Forty-six artists—including...