KESHA BRUCE | A Picture Gallery of the Soul | Katherine E. Nash Gallery | University of Minnesota

Katherine E. Nash Gallery

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Kwame Brathwaite
Untitled (Kwame Brathwaite Self Portrait at AJASS Studios), 1964 c., printed 2016
Archival pigment print, mounted and framed, 30 x 30 in, 76.2 x 76.2 cm.
Courtesy of the artist and Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles.

Salimah Ali (born 1954)
Dare (Portrait of Ugochi Egonu), 2019. Pigmented inkjet print.
Image 20 × 13 ³/₈ in. (50.8 × 34 cm), sheet 22 × 15 ³/₈ in. (55.9 × 39.1 cm).
Courtesy of the artist.

Anthony Barboza (born 1944)
Requiem of Rain, 2014. Pigmented digital prints.
Each image 16 ¼ × 23 in. (41.3 × 58.4 cm), each sheet 20 × 24 in. (50.8 × 61 cm).
Courtesy of the artist.

Lola Flash (born 1959), DJ Kinky, London, 2003. From the [sur]passing series.
Pigmented inkjet print from 4 × 5 film transparency, 60 × 48 in. (152.4 × 121.9 cm).
Courtesy of the artist.

Goodridge Brothers Studio (1847 – 1922)
Gertrude Watson Goodridge and William O. Goodridge, Jr., 1883.
Inscribed in plate: “age 3 months/Taken June 18, 1883/W. O. Goodridge Jr.” Tintype, 3 ⁷/₁₆ × 2 ½ in. (8.7 × 6.4 cm).
University of Minnesota Libraries, Department of Archives and Special Collections.

Ayana V. Jackson (born 1977)
Consider the Sky and the Sea, 2019. From the series Take Me to the Water.
Archival pigment print on German etching paper, 46 ⁷/₈ × 42 ⁷/₈ in. (119 × 109.04 cm).
Courtesy of Mariane Ibrahim.

Stephen Marc (born 1954) Untitled (Columbia, South Carolina), 2015.
Digital photograph/inkjet print, 16 × 24 in. (40.6 × 61 cm).
Courtesy of the artist.

Nancy Musinguzi (born 1991)
Son of Sons, 2020.
Pigmented inkjet print, image 63 ½ × 42 in. (161.3 × 106.7 cm), sheet 63 ½ × 42 in. (161.3 × 106.7 cm).
Courtesy of the artist.

Keisha Scarville (born 1975)
Untitled, 2016. From the series Surrogate Skin.
Archival inkjet print, 36 × 30 in. (91.4 × 76.2 cm).
Courtesy of the artist and Higher Pictures Generation, New York.

Harry Shepherd (1856–?)
Frederick (or Fredrick) L. McGhee ( 1861–1912), ca. 1890.
Digital copy of cabinet photograph, 6 ¼ × 4 ¼ in. (15.9 × 10.8 cm).
Minnesota Historical Society. por 11265 r2.

Bruce W. Talamon (born 1949)
David Hammons Slauson Avenue Studio, Los Angeles, 1974. From the Body Print Series. Digital gelatin silver print, image 20 × 16 in. (50.8 × 40.6 cm), sheet 24 × 20 in. (61 × 50.8 cm).
Copyright 2021 Bruce W. Talamon.
All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of the artist.

​​Shawn Walker (born 1940)
From Be-Bop to Illusion #1, 2010.
Pigmented inkjet print, image 12 ½ × 19 in. (31.8 × 48.3 cm), sheet 16 × 24 in. (40.6 × 61 cm).
Courtesy of the artist.Next

A Picture Gallery of the Soul
September 13 – December 10, 2022

Rightly viewed, the whole soul of man is a sort of picture gallery, a grand panorama, in which all the great facts of the universe, in tracing things of time and things of eternity, are painted. — Frederick Douglass

About the Exhibition
The Katherine E. Nash Gallery presents A Picture Gallery of the Soul, a group exhibition of over 100 Black American artists whose practice incorporates the photographic medium. Sampling a range of photographic expressions from traditional photography to mixed media and conceptual art and spanning a timeframe that includes the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, the exhibition honors, celebrates, investigates, and interprets Black history, culture, and politics in the United States.

From the daguerreotypes made by Jules Lion in New Orleans in 1840 to the Instagram post of the Baltimore Uprising made by Devin Allen in 2015, photography has chronicled Black American life and Black Americans have defined the possibilities of photography. Frederick Douglass, a former enslaved person, and nationally prominent abolitionist recognized the quick, easy and inexpensive reproducibility of photography. He presciently developed a theoretical framework for understanding the implications of photography on public discourse in a series of four lectures. The exhibition title comes from Douglass’ Lecture on Pictures, delivered in Boston in 1861 during the Civil War.

Related Exhibitions
Gordon Parks High School Student Scholar Projects
September 13 – October 8
Quarter Gallery, Regis Center for Art

The Eyes See What the Heart Feels: From the Archives of Photographer & Painter Adger Cowans
September 12, 2022 – January 31, 2023 at the Elmer L. Andersen Library

Panel Discussion with Adger Cowans and guests | Thursday, Sept 22 | 9:30 – 11:00 am | Elmer L. Andersen Library, Rm 120, Register here
Reception | Wednesday, Sept 21, 5:30-8:30 pm | Elmer L. Andersen Library

Related Events
Public Program | Thursday, Sept 22 | 6:00 – 7:00 pm CDT | InFlux Space, Regis Center for Art
Presentation with the exhibition curators and guest speakers
Cornell University Professor Cheryl Finley and photographer Adger Cowans
Event Registration Now Closed – Maximum Attendance Reached

Public Reception | Thursday, Sept 22 | 7:00 – 9:00 pm CDT|Katherine E. Nash Gallery
Come celebrate with the curators and visiting guests
RSVP required: https://z.umn.edu/RegisRSVP

Spoken Word Event | Wednesday, Oct 12 |12:15 pm CDT | InFlux Space, Regis Center for Art
Program with Ty Chapman, Keno Evol, and Andrea Jenkins
RSVP required: https://z.umn.edu/RegisRSVP
Also join us for a tour of the exhibition after the Spoken Word event at 2:00 PM

Writers Reading Event | Thursday, Nov 17 | 12:15 pm CDT | InFlux Space, Regis Center for Art
Program with Mary Moore Easter, G.E. Patterson, and Davu Seru
RSVP required: https://z.umn.edu/RegisRSVP

Artists in the Exhibition
Salimah Ali, Devin Allen, The Rev. Henry Clay Anderson, Jean Andre Antoine, Thomas E. Askew, Radcliffe Bailey, J. P. Ball, John L. Banks, Anthony Barboza, Ronald Barboza, Miranda Barnes, C. M. Battey, James “Jimmy” Baynes, Endia Beal, Arthur P. Bedou, Hugh Bell, Dawoud Bey, Mark Blackshear, Kwame Brathwaite, Sheila Pree Bright, George O. Brown, Nakeya Brown, Kesha Bruce, Crystal Z Campbell, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Micaiah Carter, Charles Chamblis, Vanessa Charlot, Albert Chong, Tiffany L. Clark, Mark Clennon, Tameca Cole, Florestine Perrault Collins, Bill Cottman, Adger Cowans, Gerald Cyrus, Louis Draper, Barbara DuMetz, Mara Duvra, John Edmonds, Dudley Edmondson, Cydni Elledge, Awol Erizku, Nona Faustine, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Al Fennar, Alanna Fields, Lola Flash, Krista Franklin, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Russell Frederick, Tia-Simone Gardner, Courtney Garvin, Bill Gaskins, John F. Glanton, Tony Gleaton, Goodridge Brothers, Kris Graves, Walter Griffin, Allison Janae Hamilton, Lucius W. Harper, Charles “Teenie” Harris, Daesha Devón Harris, L. Kasimu Harris, LeRoy Henderson, Jon Henry, Chester Higgins, Bobby Holland, Mildred Howard, Earlie Hudnall, Ayana V. Jackson, Frank Jackson, Leslie Jean-Bart, Rashid Johnson, Caroline Kent, Dionne Lee, Fern Logan, Stephen Marc, Robert H. McNeill, Ozier Muhammad, Nancy Musinguzi, Bruce Palaggi, Gordon Parks, Ebony G. Patterson, Howardena Pindell, John Pinderhughes, Carl Robert Pope, Jr., Deborah Roberts, Herb Robinson, Bobby Rogers, Keris Salmon, Keisha Scarville, Addison N. Scurlock, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Jamel Shabazz, Harry Shepherd, Coreen Simpson, Lorna Simpson, Marvin and Morgan Smith, Ming Smith, Jovan C. Speller, Bruce W. Talamon, Elnora and Arthur Chester Teal, Hank Willis Thomas, Richard A. Twine, James Van Der Zee, Shawn Walker, Augustus Washington, Carrie Mae Weems, Carla Williams, Deborah Willis.

Exhibition Catalog
The exhibition catalog provides additional context on the connections between Black American history and culture and the photographic process. Co-published with University of California Press, the catalog includes a full-page image, statement, and biography for each artist in conjunction with essays by prominent scholars and artists Cheryl Finley, crystal am nelson, Seph Rodney, and Deborah Willis. The U of M Bookstore now has the book in stock.

Sponsorship
The organizers gratefully acknowledge The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation, Kate and Stuart Nielsen, Metropolitan Picture Framing, BluDot and The Givens Foundation for African American Literature, whose generous support has made this project possible.

The exhibition is organized by independent curator Herman J. Milligan, Jr. and Howard Oransky, Director of the Katherine E. Nash Gallery. It includes a display of related historical material curated by University Librarian Deborah Ultan and a program of recorded music curated by Herman J. Milligan, Jr. A Picture Gallery of the Soul is co-sponsored by the Department of African American & African Studies, the Department of Art History, the Department of History, the Race, Indigeneity, Gender & Sexuality Studies Initiative, the Office for Public Engagement, the Imagine Fund, and the University Libraries, including the Archie Givens Sr. Collection of African American Literature.

Available Artwork by KESHA BRUCE.

di Rosa Museum of Contemporary Art | ADIA MILLETT | A Force of Nature

JULY 23 – OCTOBER 30, 2022

adia millett: a force of nature | opening july 23

“the land at di rosa… changing like the direction of the seasonal smoke, reveals to us that with death comes new life.” -adia millett

Adia Millett: A Force of Nature presents new paintings, textiles and sculptural installations by the Oakland-based artist, created in response to di Rosa’s distinctive landscape. “The land at di Rosa,” Millett writes, “lush with soaring vultures, cracks in the decomposing earth, traces of snakeskin, and endless layers of shadows, arouse our creative minds to remember where we come from. The multitude of colors, changing like the direction of the seasonal smoke, reveals to us that with death comes new life.”

Ranging across diverse media, Millett’s practice is rooted in “taking things apart, removing, replacing, cutting, pasting, sewing and building.” Evoking “the mended shapes of an old quilt, or polygonal segments of a cathedral window,” the works suggest “the importance of renewal and rebuilding, not only through the artistic process, but also through the possibility of transformative change.” Human beings, like earthquakes, forest fires or floods, are also forces of nature.

Millett earned her BFA from UC Berkeley followed by an MFA from CalArts. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Craft and Folk Museum in Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Atlanta; the Santa Monica Museum of Art; and the Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans.

related programs

July 23: opening reception

October 29: Artist talk

Adia Millett, Snake in the Fire, 2022.

“The countless creatures I witnessed living on the land, including a baby rattler, became mirrors. We are able to see ourselves in other living beings. As they navigate the land, so do we. I imagine the young snake using its senses to transition from the challenges of one season to another. Here the triangle-shaped painting, not only integrated the shades of red to symbolize fire, but blue, green, yellow, and gold, for the water, air, and earth. Like the snake, we move, shed, and thrive.”

Quilted Ancestor: Earth (unfinished)

The three Quilted Ancestors titled Sun, Moon, and Earth were created to bring the fabric to life. As a viewer, we can begin to imagine a ghost, spirit, or loved one beneath the shrouds. In turn, the titles suggest that we can then image our planet or the moon as an entity, or family member. The quilts are covered with pieces of fabric that reveal the layers and complexity of who we are.

The Collective ( 1 of 10)

The Collective is a series of ten abstract forms, slightly resembling the shape of a figure or mummy. These forms are designed to float amongst the wall, each one unique and still connected to the others. Millett does not see these as body forms, but rather an energetic trace within the body. Like all the work in this exhibition, they are emblematic of transition, elevation, and the many dimensions of who we are.

Grandmother is perhaps the most personal piece in this exhibition. It starts with a piece of an unfinished quilt top from Millett’s grandmother. Adia adds hand-stitching in and around it and moves outward creating a mandala of feathers, most of which were collected from the land at Di Rosa. Earth tones surround what Adia calls a “medicine wheel”. Being the great-grandchild of Indigenous and African American slave foremothers, Adia uses her art to pay homage to the woman who came before her. The vast elements of the earthwork as a connection point to her matriarchal lineage.

di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art 5200 Sonoma Hwy, Napa, CA 94559 | 707-226-5991 | Hours | Contact

©2022 di Rosa Terms and Conditions | Privacy Policy | Site Credits

Available Artwork by ADIA MILLETT

Virtual Gallery Talk: Successions: Traversing US Colonialism September 14, 6-7PM ETDC mixed-media artist Amber Robles-Gordon talks Successions with curator Larry Ossei-Mensah at American University

A American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center Fall exhibitions are on view through December 12. View our exhibitions, hours, and health and safety protocols. Plan Your Visit

Virtual Gallery Talk: Successions: Traversing US Colonialism September 14, 6-7PM ETDC mixed-media artist Amber Robles-Gordon talks Successions with curator Larry Ossei-Mensah. Successions is a conceptual juxtaposition that celebrates abstraction as an art form while leveraging it as a tool to interrogate past and current US policies within its federal district (Washington, DC) and territories (including Guam, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands) that it controls. This event will be held virtually. Please register to receive the Zoom link via email.RegisterRead the Exhibition Catalog Online Featuring essays by curator Larry Ossei-Mensah and Noel W Anderson.#AskACuratorDay Featuring Successions curator Larry Ossei-Mensah #AskACuratorDay is Wednesday, September 15! Larry will be on Twitter to answer your questions about Successions, his career as an independent curator, and more. Tweet your questions to @aumuseum_katzen and @youngglobal using hashtag #AskACuratorDay.Feminist Art History Conference Online September 24-26 The conference builds on the legacy of feminist art-historical scholarship and pedagogy initiated by Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard at American University. With the goal of fostering a broad dialogue on feminist art-historical practice, the event will feature papers spanning a range of chronological, geographic, and intersectional topics.RegisterPlease consider making a contribution by becoming a member. No gift is too small, and your support matters now more than ever before.Give NowImages (top-bottom): Amber Robles-Gordon, y mi bandera vuela mas alto que la tuya, and my flag flies higher than yours, 2020. Mixed media collage on canvas, 18 x 24 in. Courtesy of the artist. Installation view of Successions: Traversing US Colonialism. Courtesy of Greg Staley.  Ossei-Mensah headshot, photo credit: Anthony Artis.

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VONN SUMNER in “Wayne Thiebaud Influencer: A New Generation” on view January – June 2021 at Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art

Wayne Thiebaud Influencer: A New Generation

The profound influence of Wayne Thiebaud on a new generation of artists is front and center in this celebration of the longtime UC Davis art professor’s centennial. Pairings explore how Thiebaud forecast the future of painting through his personal journey to find meaning and reinvention in the medium’s history in ways that are both current and timeless. Works by contemporary artists who have been inspired by Thiebaud as a fellow painter as well as those of former students reveal unexpected connections and sources of inspiration.

Curators: Rachel Teagle and Susie Kantor

An exhibition featuring
Andrea Bowers, Julie Bozzi (’74, MFA ’76), Christopher Brown (MFA ’76), Robert Colescott, Gene Cooper, Richard Crozier (MFA ’74), Fredric Hope, Alex Israel, Grace Munakata (’80, MFA ’85), Bruce Nauman (MA, ’66), Jason Stopa, Vonn Cummings Sumner (’98, MFA ’00), Ann Harrold Taylor (MFA ’85), Michael Tompkins (’81, MFA ’83), Clay Vorhes, Patricia Wall (’72), Jonas Wood and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

On view January 31–June 13, 2021

• 

  Vonn Sumner, Worry (2020)

• 

  Vonn Sumner, Existential Crisis (2019)

• 

  Vonn Sumner, Golla! A Dolla (2020)

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  Vonn Sumner, Krazy Mask (2020)

• 

  Vonn Sumner, Shopping (2020)

• 

  Vonn Sumner, Study for Don’t Worry (2020)

• 

  Vonn Sumner, The Elephant in the Room (2020)

• 

  Vonn Sumner, Watching a Dumpster Fire (2020)

Available Artwork by VONN SUMNER

Morton Fine Art, 52 O St NW #302, Washington, DC 20001

(202) 628-2787 (text or call)

info@mortonfineart.com

mortonfineart.com

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston & Nathaniel Donnett’s installation “Acknowledgement: The Historic Polyrhythm of Being(s)”

 

 

Nathaniel Donnett | Acknowledgement: The Historic Polyrhythm of Being(s)

July 23, 2020 – August 31, 2020

CAMH presents Acknowledgement: The Historic Polyrhythm of Being(s), a newly commissioned public art installation by Houston-based artist Nathaniel Donnett, as part of the Museum’s new Beyond CAMH initiative series.

The community-engaging work is located upon more than 120 feet of construction fencing surrounding the Museum’s front lawn during its ongoing capital campaign renovations. Initiated through a backpack exchange with the youth of Houston’s Third, Fourth, and Fifth Wards, the text- and object-based artwork acknowledges and reflects the importance of history, education, family, and visibility in these communities and Black American social life. The work will remain on view—day and night—through August 31, 2020.

Acknowledgement: The Historic Polyrhythm of Being(s) sets an important precedent by including youth as an integral part of the public art process through direct collaboration with community organizations, including S.H.A.P.E. Community Center, Change Happens!, Lindsay Gary, Jack Yates High School, and Kashmere Gardens Elementary. For Donnett, this project engages the youth’s social imagination by uplifting everyday objects as material for the artwork, and the exchange as a gesture of human kindness. The exchange seeks to inspire youth around the value of education, through the gift of a new backpack and by highlighting the inner resources and strength of Houston’s Black community. The multi-faceted nature of this artwork emphasizes the power of direct action and social exchange.

The artwork comprises a 120-foot pre-existing fence, upon which is printed imagined words and phrases common to the aforementioned neighborhoods, and a series of backpacks mounted on the fence. Some of the backpacks contain photographs taken by the artist and objects collected from these three neighborhoods, which reference Nkisi power figures of the Congo and the notion of being both present and not present at the same time. At night, the backpacks are illuminated with lights that continuously pulse in Morse code, the phrase “A Love Supreme” from the John Coltrane song “Acknowledgement,” an excerpt from a James Baldwin’s essay “The Uses of the Blues,” and a verse from the song “Mad” by singer-songwriter Solange.

While CAMH remains closed for construction and COVID-19 precautions, Donnett’s work provides a source of community-based art in keeping with the Museum’s mission to present extraordinary, thought-provoking arts programming and exhibitions to educate and inspire audiences nationally and internationally.

Images

NATHANIEL DONNETT’s “Acknowledgement: The Historic Polyrhythm of Being(s)” installation at Contemporary Art Museum Houston

ART & EXHIBITS
A Houston artist sends a coded message with his new work for CAMH
Nathaniel Donnett has filled the construction walls around the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston with backpacks that contain photographs, found objects and lights that blink in Morse code.

Molly Glentzer July 23, 2020

Updated: July 24, 2020, 11:19 am

A detail of Nathaniel Donnett’s “Acknowledgement: The Historic Polyrhythm of Being(s),” a public artwork made with LED lights, photographs and the used backpacks of youth in Third, Fourth and Fifth Wards, installed along 120 feet of construction fencing around the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston  Photo: Andrew Buckler / Contemporary Arts Museum Houston

People passing by Contemporary Arts Museum Houston have an eyeful right now with Nathaniel Donnett’s engaging and challenging new public art installation.

“Acknowledgement: The Historic Polyrhythm of Being(s)” occupies 120 feet of construction fence around the building, which is being renovated.

During the day, a long, unbroken line of block letters may spin heads first. They’re a tight mashup of imagined words and phrases common to residents of the city’s Third, Fourth and Fifth Ward neighborhoods. You might have to study it a while to break them apart, but the string becomes a kind of stream-of-consciousness chant: “PSYCHOSLABACKNOWLEDGMAYNEHOLUPBLACKSPATIALISTIC.”

Dozens backpacks hung on the fence bookend the sign, glowing and blinking mysteriously at night. The lights convey a message too — in Morse code.

Donnett’s commission both dresses up the construction site and launches Beyond CAMH, a museum initiative to create community-based work that positions artists as change-makers in society. He gathered some of his materials by collaborating with youth from Jack Yates High School, Kashmere Gardens Elementary, the Re-Education Project, SHAPE Community Center and Change Happens! Through those schools and organizations, dozens of students from Third, Fourth and Fifth Wards traded in their old backpacks for new ones.

The exchanges took place outside the museum during some of this summer’s hottest days, when the temperature was at 100 degrees or more. Donnett, his team and the participants wore masks, and he sanitized all the backpacks as a precaution against the spread of COVID-19.

He filled the old backpacks with LED lights. Some also hold photographs taken by the artist and objects collected from the neighborhoods that reference Congolese Nkisi power figures and ideas about being simultaneously present and absent. Through Morse code, the LEDs pulse out culturally significant lyrics and text: The phrase “Love Supreme” from John Coltrane’s composition “Acknowledgement,” an excerpt from James Baldwin’s essay “The Uses of the Blues” and a verse from Solange’s song “Mad.”

All that may be useful information, but a viewer doesn’t have to decipher any of it to be pulled in. It’s kind of a shame there isn’t a bench across the street where people could just sit and contemplate it for a while. Although the constant, frenetic movement around the fence — cars, walkers and bikers coming and going wherever they are going — seems fitting.

‘Movement and displacement’
“Acknowledgement” is partly informed by the writer and philosopher Fred Moten’s ideas about “fugitive blackness.” African Americans have had to navigate their environment for centuries, since they first arrived in the U.S. as slaves, Donnett explains. “There’s always movement and displacement.”

The families of Third, Fourth and Fifth Wards have experienced gentrification, cultural erasure, income disparities and unjust state and municipal policies. Yet this is no victim’s wall. Donnett’s work expresses power in many forms — the power of direct action, social exchange, language, and the strength and resources of Houston’s Black community.

“It is about memory and history but also about collective exchange, and the use of a type of familiar language and transformation,” he says. “And lastly, everyday aesthetics and Black social life.” The word ‘Being(s)’ in the installation’s title is important, he adds, because “now is a time where people limit Blackness to one thing or another and not the multiple of a being.”

On HoustonChronicle.com: ‘Soul of a Nation’ at MFAH

Donnett is no stranger to works this complex. His 2008 installation at Project Row Houses incorporated a book exchange for Ryan Middle School, and he organized a 2015 project in Milwaukee that involved people of all ages. “Acknowledgement” is the first to reach across three neighborhoods, although he knows them well. Donnett grew up in Third Ward and has always had relatives in Fourth and Fifth Wards.

“Acknowledgement” is a piece of a larger pie, rolled into other work he is producing through a 2020 Dean’s Critical Practice Research Grant from Yale University, where he is a 2021 MFA candidate, and a 2020 Art and Social Justice Initiative Grant.

The Beyond CAMH initiative has another dimension, too.

A ‘vocal portrait’
Unrelated to Donnett’s piece, the museum has opened up a phone line to help create a Houston edition of Texas-born artist their native languages. Anyone can participate by calling 281-248-8730 or visiting camh.org/beyond. A separate time-lapse video to document the work’s evolution will feature people who participated during the project’s first 100 days (through Nov. 2).

Ekene Ijeoma’s national project “A Counting.” That one aims to gather a “vocal portrait” of the city and address the under-counting of marginalized communities in the U.S. census.

Ijeoma, who founded the group Poetic Justice at Boston’s MIT Media Lab, is gathering the voices of Houstonians as they count to 100 in “A Counting” is “a meditation on what a truly united country would sound like,” Ijeoma says. “Houston has reached majority-minority status ahead of the curve across the country.”

CAMH director Hesse McGraw hopes Beyond CAMH will help the museum reach new audiences, embrace “unexpected contexts” and directly impact civic life. While the museum’s doors remain closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, “we’ve had time to think,” he says.

“To be quarantined and disconnected from daily, in-person contact with artists and audience is disorienting for a museum that exists solely for that purpose. Yet … we’re working to reimagine the ethic and practice of a more porous museum — one that spills onto the street, engages in long-term collaborations with artists, meets audiences where they are and serves our communities’ most urgent needs.”

molly.glentzer@chron.com

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ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY Featured in the James Renwick Alliance Craft Quarterly, Winter 2018!

Artist ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY is featured in the upcoming print and online editions of the Winter 2018 issue of the James Renwick Alliance Craft Quarterly. You can get a sneak peek below. To see available work by Rosemary, please visit our website or stop in and see us at the gallery!

Art & Culture Magazine Houston features artist NATHANIEL DONNETT

We are thrilled to share news that Houston, TX based artist Nathaniel Donnett has been featured in this month’s Art & Culture Magazine Houston in regards to his current solo exhibition ‘In One Form or Another; Verse One’ on view at Houston’s Art League through January 20th.  This exhibition is funded by grants from the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.

“HOUSTON—For Nathaniel Donnett, whose work finds expression in a wide range of modes, the studio has a way of expanding beyond the walls of his art-making space into the larger world. For In One Form or Another; Verse One, his exhibition at Houston’s Art League on view through Jan. 20, Donnett is tying his own work to a long history of vibrant protest movements created by African Americans, while slyly referencing geometric abstraction.”  ~ Arts & Culture Magazine

In other exciting news The Ulrich Museum in Witchita, Kansas has acquired an original work by Donnett for their collection titled ‘Leonora Draper’.  The piece, pictured above, incorporates human and synthetic hair, and graphite on paper!

You can find images of available work by Nathaniel Donnett on our website, and please contact the gallery for any additional details or inquiries!

 

VICTOR EKPUK Mention in The Herald Sun

JULY 12, 2017 6:00 AM

Long-neglected art of Africa assumes its rightful place of honor at museum

BY BLUE GREENBERG

RALEIGH 

African art has come a long way since Picasso saw the 1907 exhibition of African objects in Paris’ Trocadero Ethnographic Museum.

What had been regularly relegated to museums of anthropology now has its place in the hallowed halls of art museums. Witness the entire first floor of the East Building of the North Carolina Museum of Arts now completely devoted to the art of Africa.

The story of art scholars and their ignorance about work from Africa goes back to the early days of colonialism when explorers and conquerors brought African objects back to Europe as souvenirs.

If the objects were made from important materials like ivory, gold and silver they would be shown next to Western paintings and sculpture and curiosities from the animal and mineral world. Meaning was ignored — only ownership was important.

In the 19th century, as if colonization and slavery had not destroyed any regard for the worth of African objects, there was also the scholarly classification that divided art and science and the natural from the human-made world. It was then that African artifacts ended up in ethnographic museums, where they were shamefully mislabeled. There was no scholarship to distinguish the artistic differences between the countries of Africa or for that matter between Africa and Southeast Asia.

Since the 1950s Africa has found its way into most art museums, but always seemingly out-of-place wherever it landed. That will no longer be the case at our state museum. The African collection will have an entire floor of the old (East) building and while it is separated from the main collection it definitely has a position of honor.

At a press preview I saw John Coffey, deputy director for art and curator of American and modern art, and Linda Dougherty, chief curator and curator of contemporary art, standing together and asked them how long the staff had been thinking about what would be the best way to make the East Building equal in importance to the new West Building even when there were no special exhibitions.

“A very long time,” they answered in unison. When I asked if it had been an “Aha” moment to house the African collection there, they said that decision came because African materials are constantly being acquired and the East Building has the perfect lighting controls to safely display such fragile artifacts as fabrics and costumes, key parts of African heritage and art.

At the end of the first floor, above the stairway, is a stunning “Masquerade Costume.” Beside it is a video of a dancer wearing the costume, calling attention to the use of the costume and to the patrons who bought the fine fabrics to create this extravagant object. It also reminds the audience that the art of Africa is a vibrant part of a human community and was never meant for display only.

In the beginning of the exhibition, there is a map of Africa and another one showing the gallery installation which is grouped by theme and location, like “Western” or “Central Africa” or “Divinely Regal: Western Africa” or “Modern to Contemporary.”

Just behind the stairwell is the core of the collection which spans 16 centuries and was created by a complicated and sophisticated society. Included are contemporary works, a palace door, masks and some pristine posts created to glorify special spirit gods. The posts were commissioned for a cultural center in Nigeria but were never used and come to the museum’s collection in untouched beauty.

The exhibition includes gold objects, usually communally owned, and a “Seated Male Figure,” c. 600, which is from a group of the oldest known ceramic figures of Western Africa, and is the oldest piece in the collection. Among contemporary works are a chalk drawing by Nigerian-American Victor Ekpuk made especially for this installation, Ghana-born El Anatsui’s large textile-like sculpture made of discarded aluminum and copper wire, which was a commission for the museum when the West Building opened, and Yinka Shonibare’s “Eleanor Hewitt” 2005, a fiberglass mannequin standing on stilts high above the crowd.

Most of the objects were created in the 20th century and are tradition based and can only be understood in the context of their use. For instance, the mask is always worn in a performance that carries on ancient traditions.

An ongoing area will be devoted to North Carolina collections and the first to be included are objects given to Bennett College by the estate of Warren M. Robbins, founder of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. One fine example is a delicately beaded skirt with a multiple diamond design in variegated colors.

A large space is devoted to interactive experiences where visitors can try their hand with techniques used by the African artists, like weaving on a floor-to-ceiling loom threaded with yarns from North Carolina sheep and goats.

With this collection now front and center, we must imagine each piece as playing a vital role in a human community — that the masks, for example, are not sculptures made for glass cases but were part of sacred ceremonies performed as a glorification to a god or spirit or to mark significant rites of passage.

This material covers an entire continent and, as visitors, we can see the expertise of the artists and how they differ from region to region; the fabrics on display give us a tiny glimpse into the originality of patterns that came from these areas. And all this beauty and craftsmanship flourished in spite of colonialism and slavery.

To my mind, the stars here are the drawing by Ekpuk and the sculpture by Anatsui. Ekpuk’s drawing shows an abstract figure cradling graphic symbols from diverse cultures in his arms, combining writing and art. Anatsui’s sculpture folds and undulates like fabric, but is made of metal bottle tops sewn together with copper wire. They have found their Africa with a contemporary voice.

For AVAILABLE WORKS by VICTOR EKPUK, please visit the gallery website HERE

Video: VICTOR EKPUK Installation of Mural at North Carolina Museum of Art!

Washington DC based Nigerian artist VICTOR EKPUK recently completed a mural,  Divinity, for the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, NC. It was part of their newly opened African art galleries. You can see a time-lapse of him creating the mural above.

To see more available works by VICTOR EKPUK, please visit his page on our website HERE or contact the gallery.

Below, you can find an article written about his installation in the Indy Week:

Victor Ekpuk’s Divine Mural at the North Carolina Museum of Art Heralds New Life for Its African Galleries

By Chris Vitiello

Photo by Ben McKeown

Victor Ekpuk’s new mural at NCMA was commissioned to augment the museum’s expanded African art gallery.

• PHOTO BY BEN MCKEOWN
• One of the best ways to see the Washington, D.C.-based Nigerian-American artist Victor Ekpuk‘s large chalk mural at the North Carolina Museum of Art is to turn your back on it and look around the rest of the gallery it’s in.

Ekpuk’s work covers a thirty-by-eighteen-foot wall in one of NCMA’s new African art galleries, which have been expanded in the museum’s East Building to include works from across the continent spanning sixteen centuries. Opening to the public by the end of June, the galleries will almost double the number of African works on display, including never-before-seen textiles and works on paper in light-controlled areas.

El Anatsui‘s “Lines that Link Humanity,” a quilt-like sculpture of aluminum and copper wire, hangs on a wall adjacent to Ekpuk’s work. Valises opposite the mural contain objects including a Yoruba divination board and ornately carved totems. Approaching this commission with no preconceived composition, Ekpuk sat in the space for a day considering the neighboring works before he pulled out his iPad to begin sketching.

“It’s more about the aura of the objects that were pulling me as I got closer to some of them,” Ekpuk says. “Some of them I’m familiar with. Some of them not so much. The power and aura of the objects themselves created an atmosphere where I felt a sense of divinity.”

Rendered in white chalk on a black wall, Ekpuk’s composition forms an abstracted figure wrapping long arms around the perimeter. Hundreds of signs and symbols are densely packed within the arms, which are themselves filled with little circles. The large figure has a placid, stylized face at the top, and its distended arms terminate in huge hands that gather the chaos of the symbols together.

The mural has a presence and an intricate density comparable to that of Anatsui’s sculpture. Ekpuk counts Anatsui as an elder, and they’ve shown together in a 1994 group exhibit in Lagos. Ekpuk was one of five up-and-coming Nigerian artists paired with a trio of established African artists.

The Yoruba divination board, however, inspired the mural’s form. Ekpuk talks about how a diviner shakes objects in the tray-like board in order to answer questions or make predictions by interpreting their proximities. Instead of objects, Ekpuk fills his mural with symbols that draw upon nsibidi, a Nigerian system of ideograms. But the symbols are so crowded and intertwined that any attempted reading will be foiled. It’s hard to focus on one sign to see what it might refer to or depict. Instead, one’s vision darts around and takes in the overall density.

“I know it teases your brain to think that you could read it,” Ekpuk laughs, “but it’s not writing that tells you A or B or C. I never try to analyze them or say that they are any one particular thing. I open it up so that people can just see what they see in it.” Echoing this semiotic openness, Ekpuk deflects talk of any overt political message in the work. But neither is it apolitical.

“I walked into the space and, initially, I thought, Let’s not just do another social-political thing. At the same time, I’ve found that art is always politics. Sometimes I don’t think about politics, but once I start making art, this feeling starts coming out in the work. After I made this, I thought, Oh, I’m actually responding to this siege that I feel right now in the political climate in America.'”

Ekpuk describes the composition as a divine embrace, but the arms could be read as a crowded space of containment, like a refugee camp or border wall. The empty zeros might exude the banal homogeneity of power.

Ekpuk won’t say it’s a wrong reading, just that he sees something different. He’s inclined to cede the artist’s intention by making a willfully undetermined work. He’s leaning toward leaving the mural untitled so that a visitor can react to what it is rather than what it means. [Editor’s note: Ekpuk ultimately decided to title the work “Divinity.”]

“It forces you to abandon what you know and have an opportunity to be aware of something else,” he says. “Not everything has to be explained. If you want to bring what you know, then you’re just going to hit the wall. Perhaps it’s sort of a comfort work, rather than an angry work. It’s a reminder that, whether we believe in it or not, there is a divine source of our strength. It’s beyond us.”

This article appeared in print with the headline “Symbol Crash”