Selection of Upcoming Art Talks: Highlighting Black Art or Artists

Atlanta, Georgia

Michael C. Carlos Museum

Tuesday, April 21, 2015 | 7:30 - 8:30 p.m. | Reception Hall, Level Three

Mildred Thompson (American, 1936-2003), 1989
The Second Mystery, Etching, Artist's Proof
Lent by Wes and Missy Cochran

"In a program titled Let’s Talk About Mildred, collectors Wes and Missy Cochran join curator of the Mildred Thompson estate, Melissa Messina, and Carlos Museum Associate Curator of Works on Paper, Andi McKenzie, for a conversation about the life and work of artist Mildred Thompson, whose prints are featured in the exhibition Creating Matter."   

Birmingham, Alabama

Birmingham Museum of Art

Kelli Morgan, Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow
of African American Art 

Lecture: Decoding Black Art: Rising Up: Hale Woodruff's Murals at Talladega College
Sunday, June 21, 2015 | 2 - 3 p.m.

"Join Kelli Morgan, Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow of African American Art at the BMA, for a lecture series on African American art. The series will analyze and illuminate important works of African American art within the Museum’s permanent collection. All lectures are free and open to the public.

Kelli will discuss Rising Up: Hale Woodruff’s Murals at Talladega College."

Cambridge, Massachusetts
The Ethelbert Cooper Gallery
 of African and African American Art at the Hutchins Center

Sunday Afternoon at the Cooper Gallery

In Conversation: Steven Nelson and Abigail DeVille 

Sunday, April 12, 2015 | 2 p.m. | 102 Mount Auburn Street

Steven Nelson, Associate Professor of African and African American Art History, University of California, Los Angeles; Cohen Fellow at the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute, Hutchins Center, Harvard University.

Abigail DeVille, Independent Artist; Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.

Chicago, Illinois

Chicago Cultural Center

Gallery Talk: Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist

Tuesday, April 14 and Tuesday, June 9, 2015 | 12:15 p.m. | Sidney R. Yates Gallery, 4th Floor North

The themes of Motley's work—identity, migration and social change—will be central to the discussion. 

Columbus, Ohio

The Ohio State University,

Department of African American and African Studies

Artist Talk:  Art as Resistance: Emory Douglas, Minister of Culture for The Black Panther Movement 

Thursday, April 16, 2015 | 4:30 - 6 p.m. | Barnett Collaboratory, Sullivant Hall 141

Registration

Emory Douglas, Artist

"Emory Douglas will deliver a lecture along with a power point presentation related to his graphic artwork during 1960s and 1970s Black Panther Party era, when he served as the Minister of Culture and Revolutionary Artist. He will also showcase some of his more recent work, putting into context the social and political importance of the artwork being displayed." The event being produced in conjunction with: Department of African American and African Studies, Barnett Center for Integrated Art and Enterprise, Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Office of Student Life, Department of Art and the Department of English.

East Lansing, Michigan

Michigan State University

Lecture: Mickalene Thomas

Monday, April 27, 2015 | 7 p.m. | S. Kedzie Hall, 107

"The paintings of Mickalene Thomas combine iconic images of African American women alongside the classic genre of portraiture.  Drawing on art history and popular culture, her monumental works consider the relationship between black female sexuality, beauty, and power.  Her work is represented in the collections of the Guggenheim, Whitney, MoMA, and many others." Free and open to the public.

Hanover, New Hampshire 

Hood Museum of Art

Dartmouth College 

Artist Lecture: Victor Ekpuk: Excavating Memories

Friday, April 24, 2015| 4:30 p.m.  
 

Victor Ekpuk. Composition No. 13 (Sante Fe Suite),2013
Graphic and pastel on paper
Courtesy of the artist. © Victor Ekpuk

Victor Ekpuk will discuss how he mines historical, cultural, and social memories to shape his aesthetics.  

 Hartford, Connecticut

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art

Contemporary Art Series: Hank Willis Thomas: History Doesn't Laugh

Wednesday, May 6, 2015 | 6 p.m.

Hank Willis Thomas, Basketball and Chain, 2003, digital c-print photograph, 

Gift of Jean Crutchfield and Robert Hobbs 

in honor of Susan Talbott, 2014.14.1

"One of the most provocative and innovative conceptual artists of today, Hank Willis Thomas discusses the impact of photography on his work and explores how the concepts of spectacle and display connect to notions of African American identity and commodification."

Los Angeles, California

Hammer Museum, UCLA

Panel Discussion: A History of Refusal: Black Artists and Conceptualism

Wednesday, May 20, 2015 | 7:30 p.m.

"This panel explores the politics and legacy of African American artists, both of Charles Gaines’s generation and after, who use strategies of conceptual art to investigate identity, representation, and American culture. The panel also considers the impact of past exhibitions that examined black conceptual practices and questioned what constitutes a “black aesthetic.” With speakers Thelma Golden, director and chief curator, the Studio Museum in Harlem; Hamza Walker, associate curator and director of education, The Renaissance Society, Chicago; and artist Rodney McMillian."   

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Lecture: Norman Lewis: Abstracting African American Art

Tuesday, April 21, 2015 | 12 - 1 p.m.

"Norman Lewis (1909-1979) was among the earliest African American artists to explore abstraction. Ruth Fine, Independent Curator and former Curator of Special Projects in Modern Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., provides a preview of PAFA’s fall 2015 exhibition, Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis, examining the parallel courses of his abstract and figurative motifs."

San Francisco

Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, de Young Museum

Docent Lecture: An African American Experience, by Sharon Walton

Sunday, April 26, 2015 | 2:15 p.m.

"This lecture reflects upon personal, national, and collective African American experiences and illustrates how they have influenced American art."

Waltham, Massachusetts

Rose Art Museum, Brandeis Museum

Artist Lecture: Melvin Edwards

Friday, April 17, 2015 | 1:30 - 2:45 p.m.

Melvin Edwards

"Pioneering African American artist Melvin Edwards will join Brandeis Professor Chad Williams (Chair of African and Afro-American Studies) and Christopher Bedford (Henry and Lois Foster Director of the Rose Art Museum) for a conversation in front of sculptures from Edwards’s “Lynch Fragments” series, currently on display as part of the Rose Art Museum’s presentation of new acquisitions."

Select Art Exhibitions: Highlights for Spring 2012

This highlight features a few exhibitions that open this spring (second quarter of 2012). Presenting the exhibitions as they approach their opening dates assures a freshness and currency of information for the visual art enthusiasts. For a more comprehensive coverage of ongoing exhibitions in 2012, look to the right sidebar of the blog. This sidebar is updated on a weekly basis by either adding newly discovered exhibitions or removing those that are closely approaching their expiration date. Because a number of important traveling exhibitions from previous months are still on tour in 2012, they are not featured in these highlights; however, they are accessible from the sidebar.

Black Art Project (BAP) welcomes any information or leads that you might have relating to Black art exhibitions, particularly regional exhibitions that are not traditionally marketed on a national scale. BAP will verify the accuracy of any information submitted. Thank you for any assistance that you provide.

Brooklyn, New York

Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art

(MoCADA)

The Box That Rocks: 30 Years of Video Music Box and the Rise of Hip Hop Music and Culture is an exhibition of contemporary art that celebrates the global influence of Video Music Box, and the show’s historic contribution to urban music and culture. The exhibition features photography, painting, mixed-media, video installation, and interactive digital art. 

The Box That Rocks will be on view at MoCADA through May 28, 2012.  

Boston, Massachusetts

Boston University, Sherman Gallery



Tony Gray

 Tony Gray: The Panther Series is on view at the Sherman Gallery, School of Visual Arts at Boston University. "This solo exhibition presents recent work and continuations of ongoing series in which Gray explores representations of African American men and women in popular culture and mass media. Through painting and mixed-media works on paper, Gray presents an Afro-centric worldview through which to address social and racial issues."

 The Panther Series will be on view through May 20, 2012.

Chicago, Illinois

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Rashid Johnson, Death by Black Hole: The Crisis,
2010, Steel, black soap, wax, books,
shea butter, plant, space rocks,
mirror, gold paint, stained wood,
96 1/2 x 76 1/4 x 30 in.,
Courtesy Gagosian Gallery,
Image courtesy of the artist
and David Kordansky Gallery,
Los Angeles, CA

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago presents Rashid Johnson’s first major solo museum exhibition, Rashid Johnson: Message to Our Folks, which will survey the first ten years of his career. This exhibition of the Chicago-born artist "opens up a dialogue with historically important figures ranging from W. E. B. DuBois and Sun Ra to Miles Davis and Public Enemy. The title of the exhibition is taken from a 1969 album by avant-garde musicians Art Ensemble of Chicago, who performed with a variety of percussive found objects, spanning musical styles to radically redefine the rules of jazz. Inspired by their message, Johnson pays homage to these creative pioneers of his hometown and channels their nonconformist vision for his generation of artists."

Rashid Johnson: Message to Our Folks will be on view April 14 - August 5, 2012. A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition. 

Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art

The Soul of a City: Memphis Collects African American Art will be on view at Brooks Museum of Art from June 9 - September 2, 2012. This exhibition puts its hand on the pulse of collecting in Memphis, highlighting the variety of paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings, and mixed media works from the 20th and 21st centuries in both private and public collections.

Santa Monica, California

Santa Monica Museum of Art

Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe is the first major solo museum exhibition for the artist. It opens at the Santa Monica Museum of Art on April 14 and will be on view through August 19, 2012.



Mikalene Thomas, Qusuquzah, Une Très
 Belle Négresse #3, 2012, Rhinestones, acrylic,
oil, and enamel on wood panel, 96" x 80",
Courtesy of the artist, Lehmann Maupin Gallery,
New York, and Susanne Vielmetter,
Los Angeles

 In Origin of the Universe, Thomas "introduces a new model of trans-generational female empowerment as she explores interior and exterior environments in relation to the female figure. The exhibition consists of 15 works in a variety of sizes and media that examine art historical constructs of feminine identity, sexuality, beauty, and power.

Origin of the Universe will travel to the Brooklyn Museum from September 28, 2012 to January 20, 2013. A full-color, illustrated catalog accompanies the exhibition.   

Washington, DC

Smithsonian American Art Museum

African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond consists of 100 artworks by forty-three Black artists that are from the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s rich collection of African American art.

The artists, working in various styles, address a diverse array of subjects. Their artworks present a vision of America from an African American perspective.

Some of the artists included in African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond are as follows: Benny Andrews, Richmond Barthé, Romare Bearden, Roy DeCarava, Thornton Dial, Sr., Melvin Edwards, Roland Freeman, Sargent Johnson, Loïs Mailou Jones, Jacob Lawrence, Robert McNeill, Marilyn Nance, Gordon Parks, James Porter, Alma Thomas, and others. This exhibition is a part of the Smithsonian's Traveling Exhibition Program, and will be on tour at other museums through the coming years. "More than half of the featured works...are being exhibited and circulated by the museum for the first time, and ten works are recent acquisitions." 

African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond will be on view, 1st floor West, American Art Museum, from April 27 - September 3, 2012. A catalogue accompanies this exhibition.

NOTE: For a more comprehensive coverage of ongoing exhibitions in 2012, look to the right sidebar of this blog. Remember, this sidebar is updated on a weekly basis.