Latest News in Black Art features updates and developments in the world of art and related culture
TYLER MITCHELL, Self-portrait in the artist’s studio, 2024. | Photo by Tyler Mitchell, Courtesy the artist and Gagosian
REPRESENTATION
Gagosian Announced Representation of Tyler Mitchell
One of the largest international galleries in the world, Gagosian added artist, photographer and filmmaker Tyler Mitchell (b. 1995) to its roster. News of the global representation follows “Tyler Mitchell: Chrysalis,” the artist’s first solo exhibition with Gagosian, presented in 2022 at the gallery’s Davies Street location in London, and anticipates notable forthcoming projects. Mitchell’s work will be presented by Gagosian in conversation with photographs by Richard Avedon next month at the Paris Photo (Nov. 6-10) art fair. A solo gallery exhibition of Mitchell will be on view at Gagosian in New York in spring 2025. Mitchell is also contributing new photographs to “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” the catalog accompanying the Costume Institute’s Black dandy exhibition opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on May 10, 2025. Atlanta-born Mitchell lives and works in New York. A closely watched talent, Mitchell came to prominence in 2018 when he photographed Beyoncé for American Vogue’s September fall fashion issue, becoming the first Black photographer to shoot a cover for the magazine. “Tyler Mitchell: Wish This Was Real” a 10-year survey traveling to four European museums through 2026, just opened at the Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki. The High Museum of Art in Atlanta is currently showing “Tyler Mitchell: Idyllic Space,” the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in his hometown. “I Can Make You Feel Good: Tyler Mitchell,” the first monograph of the artist, was published in 2020. Mitchell was previously represented by Jack Shainman gallery. (10/23) | More
Roberts Projects in Los Angeles now represents Luke Agada (b. 1992), left, in collaboration with Monique Meloche gallery in Chicago. “Luke Agada: Two Suns,” a solo exhibition of recent paintings by the artist is currently on view at Roberts Projects, through Nov. 2. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Agada was a veterinarian briefly before focusing on his art practice. Today, he is based in Chicago, Ill., where he earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The representation announcement described his work: “Agada reinterprets the phenomena of globalization and cultural estrangement through his oil paintings. By employing a terrestrial palette, Agada recalls the rusted rooftops, rugged roads, and radiant sun of his native landscape. A tangible energy arises as his surreal, biomorphic forms are pulled in conflicting directions, striving to find resolution within their tense microcosms. This dynamic reflects the psychological strain experienced along the migratory pursuits of beings in transit—longing for the familiar while memories of home become distorted over time.” (10/25) | More
IMAGE: Above left, Luke Agada. | Courtesy the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles. Photo by Robert Chase Heishman
LIVES
An artist and educator, Alicia Henry (1966-2024) died Oct. 17. She was 58. Born in Illinois, Henry lived in Nashville, Tenn., where she had been a professor of art at Fisk University, the HBCU, since 1997. Henry made paintings, mixed-media sculptural works, and installations. Her work is currently on view in a two-artist exhibition with Fahamu Pecou at the Huntsville Museum of Art in Alabama, through Feb. 27, 2025. In her biographical statement, Henry described the themes of her work: “A common recurring image in my work is the human figure—the figure in isolation and the figure interacting with others. I am interested in exploring how gender (females particularly), race, cultural and societal differences affect the individual and groups.” She earned a BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Yale School of Art. Over the course of her career, Henry was awarded many grants, fellowships, and prizes. In 2016, she won the 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art from the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, S.C. “Repercussions II: Recents Works by Alicia Henry” was on view at Liliana Bloch gallery in Dallas, Texas, in 2021. The same year, Tiwani Contemporary presented “Alice Henry: To Whom It May Concern” in London, the artist’s first solo exhibition in the UK. In 2022, Art Gallery Nova Scotia hosted “Alice Henry: Witnessing.” | Tiwani Contemporary and ARTnews
T: New York Times Style Magazine, Oct. 20, 2024: From left, Lorna Simpson, Photographed by Ming Smith; Theaster Gates, Photographed by Jon Henry
MAGAZINES
The Greats: Lorna Simpson and Theaster Gates
Each year since 2015, The New York Times has been identifying a handful of talents in art, music, fashion, and performance who are transforming the culture. This year “The Greats” include artists Lorna Simpson and Theaster Gates, along with Florence Welch and Jonathan Anderson. Ming Smith photographed Simpson and Dean Baquet, former executive editor of the Times, conducted an interview with the New York artist. “It might be best to understand Lorna Simpson—a chameleonic artist whose work bridges various media and genres, from photography to video, sculpture to painting—as an archivist, cataloging the lives and images of generations of African Americans,” Baquet wrote in the introduction to the conversation. “Simpson’s work is about a lot of big topics—race, gender, identity, language—but perhaps above all it is about who gets to be the storyteller.” A solo exhibition of Simpson, “Earth & Sky” opens at Hauser & Wirth gallery in New York on Nov. 2. | T: The New York Times Style Magazine
In Chicago, Gates was photographed by Jon Henry and profiled by Siddhartha Mitter. Gates is a ceramicist who makes sculptures, paintings, and installations. He also performs with the Black Monks, his experimental music group. The artist is probably best known, however, for acquiring archives and redeveloping properties on the South Side of Chicago, where he lives. “Gates’s business dealings and art making are not at odds: Salvage from the buildings goes into his art installations; proceeds from his art sales fund his building renovations and community programs,” Mitter wrote. “But they also stem from shared soil—his upbringing as the son of a roofer on Chicago’s West Side, his training as an urban planner—and commingle in his projects to the point where it would be artificial to separate them. Gates himself draws no distinction: He hopes to demonstrate, he told me, “an open model for what an artist can be.” Stony Island Arts Bank, the Chicago property Gates renovated as a base for his Rebuild Foundation and to house his archives and present exhibitions, is currently showing “Theaster Gates: When Clouds Roll Away: Reflection and Restoration from the Johnson Archive” through March 16, 2025.
| T: The New York Times Style Magazine
From left, Portrait of the artist © Adam Pendleton. | Photo by Matthew Septimus; ADAM PENDLETON, “WE ARE NOT (Composition),” 2024 (silkscreen ink and black gesso on canvas. 19 x 15 inches / 43.3 x 38.1 cm). | © Adam Pendleton. Photo by Andy Romer
EXHIBITIONS
Adam Pendleton Exhibition Forthcoming at Hirshhorn Museum
Next year, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will present Adam Pendelton‘s first solo exhibition in Washington, D.C. “Adam Pendleton: Love, Queen” will feature new and recent paintings and debut a new video work, “Resurrection City Revisited (Who Owns Geometry Anyway?).” The exhibition will be on long-term view, from April 4, 2025 to Jan. 3, 2027. Born in Richmond, Va., Pendleton lives in New York. “Introducing Adam Pendleton’s recent work in our 50th year is intentional,” Hirshhorn Director Melissa Chiu said in a statement. “His exhibition reflects the Hirshhorn’s mission as a 21st-century art museum that amplifies the voices of artists responding to history and place in real time. ‘Adam Pendleton: Love, Queen’ invites our almost one million annual visitors to think about the complexities of abstraction within the American experience, and its potential to forge associations among our shared past, present and future.” Organized by Hirshhorn Head Curator Evelyn C. Hankins, the exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog. | More
Artist Demond Melancon is a self-taught artist known as Big Chief in the Black Masking Culture of New Orleans
AWARDS & HONORS
1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art
The Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, S.C., announced Demond Melancon is the 2024 winner of the 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art, which includes a $10,000 award. A self-taught artist known as Big Chief in the Black Masking Culture of New Orleans, Melancon is recognized for “creating massive suits featuring intricate, hand-sewn beadwork that reveal a collective visual narrative.” Artists Carlie Trosclair and Ato Ribeiro received honorable mention. Artists from states in the U.S. South are eligible to apply for the prize. (10/17) | More
Celebrating Paul Coates and Black Classic Press
Publisher W. Paul Coates will be among the honorees at the 75th National Book Awards Ceremony & Benefit Dinner on Nov. 20 in New York. A military veteran and former member of the Black Panther Party, Coates founded Black Classic Press in Baltimore, Md., in 1978. Publishing Black history and literature, he has focused on out-of-print titles (Amiri Baraka, Bobby Seale, W.E.B. Du Bois) and also published original works (Yosef Ben-Jochannan, John Henrik Clarke, Walter Mosley). In 1980, he reproduced the Harlem Renaissance edition of Survey Graphic (1925) edited by Alain Locke. Coates told The Washington Post he was greatly influenced by Richard Wright’s memoir, “Black Boy,” which he encountered after enlisting in the Army at age 17. “Once I recognized there was a body of books, a genre, devoted to Black subjects and life—it opened up a different world to me,” he said. Coates is receiving the 2024 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. Mosley will present the award. (9/4) | More
GALAS | On Oct. 22, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, the summer residency in rural Maine, held its 2024 Awards Dinner in New York City. The event benefitted Skowhegan. The honorees included artist Howardena Pindell, who taught at Skowhegan in 1980. | Photo by BFA, Courtesy Skowhegan
GALAS
The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art announced its fall gala honorees: conceptual and performance artist Senga Nengudi, postminimalist artist and author Richard Tuttle, and Hammer Museum Director Ann Philbin, who is retiring in November. The artists are receiving the Archives of American Art Medal and Philbin will be awarded the Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History. “Being primarily a conceptual, performance and installation artist, it has always been my mantra to Document, Document, Document,” Nengudi said in a statement. “The value of the Archives is it’s a place to house that documentation to prove something did happen and the when, where and how. It allows all interested parties access to that information free of charge.” The Oct. 29 gala is in New York at the Rainbow Room. (10/24) | More
IMAGE: Above right, Senga Nengudi. | Photo by Ron Pollard
MORE NEWS
Harriet Tubman: Maryland Museum is Saying Her Name
Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis, Md., changed its name to honor the legacy of Harriet Tubman, who was born into slavery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and became a powerful abolitionist leading others to freedom. Gov. Wes Moore signed the bill authorizing the name change on April 9 and the new name was officially enacted July 1. The new Banneker-Douglass-Tubman Museum is celebrating its next chapter with a Nov. 1 renaming ceremony. The live-streamed event will feature a keynote address by Nikki Giovanni. The museum is operated by the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture. (10/11) | More
CT
FILMS | Trailer for “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found”: Following the recent publication of “Ernest Cole: The True America,” Raoul Peck’s documentary film about one of the first Black freelance photographers in South Africa hits theaters on Nov. 22. After capturing the atrocities of apartheid in the late 1950s and 1960s, Ernest Cole (1940-1990) fled to the United States where documented racial disparities in American cities and rural communities. LaKeith Stanfield voices Cole in the film. “In South Africa, I was afraid to be arrested,” he said. “In the United States, I was afraid to be killed. But I never ceased photographing, even for a single moment.” | Video by Magnolia Pictures
