Recent News in Black Art features updates and developments in the world of art and related culture
Michaela Yearwood-Dan in her studio, 2024. | Photo by Ollie Adegboye
REPRESENTATION
Michaela Yearwood-Dan Now Represented by Hauser & Wirth
Hauser & Wirth announced its representation of Michaela Yearwood-Dan (b. 1994) in collaboration with Marianne Boesky Gallery. Yearwood-Dan has been working with Marianne Boesky since 2019. The London-based British artist makes large-scale paintings, drawings, and murals, and has been working with sculpture in recent years, too. She will be in residence at Hauser & Wirth Somerset from October to November 2024, in advance of her inaugural exhibition with the gallery, which opens in London in 2025. “Michaela’s abundant botanical allusions and richly layered compositions embrace feminine beauty as a part of her exploration of socio-political and cultural references and ideas,” said Hauser & Wirth President Manuela Wirth. “She has consistently presented her work with a deep consideration of the architectural environment viewers are invited into, and the formal qualities of text and visual cues in her art provide multiple access points for the work. In this way, Michaela is reinventing the role of abstraction as something that can speak to an ever-wider range of audiences.” (9/10) | More
Arthur Jafa (b. 1960), right, is now co-represented by Sprüth Magers and Gladstone Gallery. The Tupelo, Miss.-born artist is newly working with Sprüth Magers in Los Angeles, where he lives and has been based throughout most of his career. Jafa examines the Black life in all its complexity and nuances and attempts to embody Black experiences through the powerful language of visual imagery. He compiles and juxtaposes moving and still images. His best-known works are video montages tuned to incredibly affecting music. The representation news coincides with Jafa’s inaugural exhibition at Sprüth Magers, which is also his first solo gallery show in Los Angeles. “Arthur Jafa: nativemanson” is on view from Sept. 14-Dec .14, 2024. The exhibition features wall works, sculpture, and moving images, including the films Dirty Tesla (2021), SloPEX (2022), and his latest, “BG” (2024), a reinterpretation of Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film “Taxi Driver.” Jafa’s work surfaces the racial animus that permeates the movie, with a particular focus on the violent scene the end, a shootout in a brothel. He revives the original version of the script in which the people killed are Black. (9/13) | More
IMAGE: Above right, Arthur Jafa. | © Arthur Jafa, Courtesy Sprüth Magers
Architect Charles E. Fleming was a trailblazer in Saint Louis, Mo. | Photo courtesy Washington University
LIVES
Pioneering Modern Architect Has Passed
Charles E. Fleming (1937-2024), a pioneering architect in Saint Louis, Mo., recognized for his modern designs, died on July 8. He was 86. Fleming was the first Black person to earn an architecture degree from Washington University in Saint Louis (1961). His Fleming Corporation Architects and Engineers was the first Black-owned, full-service architecture firm in Missouri. In 1965, he co-founded the urban design program at WashU. “Charles Fleming studied architecture here at WashU during the most productive period for modern architecture in St. Louis, which coincided with the Civil Rights movement here and nationally,” Eric Mumford, professor of architecture at the Sam Fox School of Architecture at Washington University said in a tribute published by WashU. “In his career, Fleming made courageous and very significant contributions to advancing architecture by and for Black Americans.” In April, Fleming received the Dean’s Medal, the architecture school’s highest award. (7/30) | The Architect’s Newspaper
AWARDS & HONORS
At the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the 2024 Bucksbaum Award went to Nikita Gale. The Los Angeles artist was selected from among 71 artists and collectives participating in “Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing.” Gale was recognized for “TEMPO RUBATO (STOLEN TIME)” (2023–24), shown at left, a modified player piano programmed to play pop songs by various performers silently, in terms of its musical functions, and at the same time amplify the sounds of its mechanisms. According to the award announcement, the work explores “how labor, performance, authorship, legibility, and sensing are beholden to their technological contexts.” Whitney Museum Director Scott Rothkopf said: “Nikita Gale has an incredible knack for making work that is both conceptually rigorous and full of emotion, somehow disciplined and mysterious at the same time. By honoring Gale with the Bucksbaum Award, we continue the Whitney’s longstanding tradition of celebrating artists who demonstrate great achievement and promise for the future.” The award included $100,000. (9/20) | More
IMAGE: Above left, Installation view of NIKITA GALE, “TEMPO RUBATO (STOLEN TIME),” 2023–24, Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, March 20–Aug. 11, 2024). | Photograph by Ron Amstutz
Karla Barthelmy-Hippolyte. | Photo by Evie Bishop, Courtesy Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
APPOINTMENTS
New Hire at Fort Worth Art Museum
Modern Art Museum Fort Worth in Texas welcomed a new education team and also announced Karla Barthelmy-Hippolyte as its new auditorium program manager. She started in July. The Modern hosts an array of programming in its auditorium, including conversations with artists, designers, and scholars, film screenings, and music and spoken word events. Barthelmy-Hippolyte previously served as cultural programs coordinator for the City of Dallas – Office of Arts and Culture. In prior roles at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, she handled public programs and youth initiatives (2016-21). (9/12) | More
Mickalene Thomas Elected to Pratt Board
Pratt Institute based in Brooklyn, N.Y., announced the election of three new board members: artist Mickalene Thomas; Gilda A. Barabino, president of Olin College of Engineering; and Doug Steiner, chairman of Steiner Studios, a film and TV production facility at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Pratt offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs across art, design, architecture, liberal arts and sciences, and information studies. The appointments were effective July 1. A chemical engineer, Olin is only the second president of Olin College in Needham, Mass., where she is also a professor of chemical and biomedical engineering. Thomas earned a BFA from Pratt (2000). The first international exhibition of the artist, “Mickalene Thomas: All About Love,” opened at The Broad in Los Angeles in May and travels to the Barnes Foundation on Oct. 20. (8/1) | More
Pratt Welcomes Full-Time Faculty for 2024-25
Pratt also recently announced a dozen new faculty leaders and professors for the 2024-25 academic year, including artist Sam Vernon, a full-time assistant professor of fine arts and filmmaker Idrissou Mora-Kpai, an associate professor of film/video, who is part of “Diverse Voices Creating Just Futures,” a special hiring cohort. Both are teaching in the School of Art. (9/23) | More
BOOKS
Publishing Milestones at NMAAHC
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., recently published two notable volumes.
“Reckoning: Protest. Defiance. Resilience” documents the museum’s current visual art exhibition, showcasing works from its collection, and is the institution’s first publication focused on visual art. The 224-page book features more than 100 artworks and “explores how visual art has provided a rich outlet for protest, commentary, escape and perspective for African Americans.” Bisa Butler’s quilted portrait of Harriet Tubman (“I Go To Prepare A Place For You,” 2021) graces the cover. (9/3) | More
NMAAHC also launched its first book of sports photography. “Game Changers: Sports Photographs from the National Museum of African American History and Culture” features images from 1900 to present by 40 photographers, including Ernest C. Withers, Ozier Muhammad, and Moneta Sleet Jr. The volume “explores the sometimes-complex world of athletes, their sports and their impact on American culture on and off the field.” The ninth volume in NMAAHC’s Double Exposure series featuring photography from its collection, “Game Changers” is the first to include images from the Johnson Publishing Company Archive, which the museum co-owns with the Getty Research Institute. Nearly 70 photographs (mostly black-and-white, some in color) are included in 84-page book. Twenty images are from the Johnson archive. (8/13) | More
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BOOKSHELF
“Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing” documents the installation for which Nikita Gale received the 2024 Bucksbaum Award. The recently published volumes “Nikita Gale: IN A DREAM YOU CLIMB THE STAIRS” and “Nikita Gale: End of Subject (Clarion)” also explore the artist’s work. Published a few years ago to coincide with his exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, “Arthur Jafa: MAGNUMB” provides a comprehensive overview of the artist’s video work. “Arthur Jafa: A Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions” also documents the artist’s work. “Cahiers d’Art: Arthur Jafa: 43rd Year” counts Hans Ulrich Obris among its contributors. “Mickalene Thomas: All About Love” accompanies the artist’s current international traveling survey of the same name.
