Latest News in Black Art features updates and developments in the world of art and related culture
Charisse Pearlina Watson, a 2022-23 Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, is now represented by Patron Gallery. | Courtesy Patron Gallery
Representation
Charisse Pearlina Watson has joined Patron Gallery in Chicago. Watson is a conceptual artist and writer whose work “examines Black interior life, resistance, and technologies of surveillance. Encompassing both physical and ideological apparatuses, these technologies work to reify anti-blackness,” the announcement said. “Working across sculpture, writing, and photography, she examines how practices of repetition, enfoldment, concealment, and delay can re-articulate intimacy and Black interiors as sites of resistance.” Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Watson lives and works in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her formidable academic background includes an MFA in studio art, with an emphasis on critical theory, from the University of California at Irvine; a masters of science degree in modern art history, curating and criticism from the University of Edinburgh’s Edinburgh College of Art; and an undergraduate degree in art history earned at the University of North Texas. Watson participated in the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art and is a 2022-23 Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Her work is currently featured in “And ever an edge: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2022–23,” at MoMA PS1 through April 8, 2024. Patron will present Watson’s first solo exhibition with the gallery in fall 2024. (12/4) | More
From left, Danielle A. Jackson, 2023. | Photo by Sean Eaton, Courtesy Carnegie Museum of Art; Atiba Edwards. | Courtesy Brooklyn Children’s Museum
Appointments
The Carnegie Museum of Art announced the Kathe and Jim Patrinos Curators of the 59th Carnegie International are Danielle A. Jackson, Ryan Inouye, and Liz Park. The longest running international exhibition in North America, the Carnegie International occurs every four years in Pittsburgh, Pa. The next edition will be on view from May 2, 2026-Jan. 3, 2027. Jackson is the curator of Artists Space in New York and previously served as a curatorial assistant in the Department of Media and Performance at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. (12/1) | More
Details of Frieze Los Angeles were released. The fifth edition of the art fair runs Feb. 29-March 3, 2024, at the Santa Monica Airport. 95 galleries from 21 nations are participating with half based in the greater Los Angeles area and 13 showing for the first time. Essence Harden, visual arts curator at the California African American Museum, is organizing the Focus section, where presentations by art galleries that have been in business for 12 years or less will explore “ideas of ecology.” (11/30) | More
Atiba Edwards is the new president and CEO of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum (BCM). Edwards had been acting in the role since August. Previously, he was chief operating officer and executive vice president of the museum in Brooklyn, N.Y. In earlier roles, Atiba was director of operations at a middle school called Brooklyn East Collegiate and an analyst at J.P. Morgan. Founded in 1899, BCM describes itself as the first children’s museum in the world. (11/29) | More
Karyn Oliver, a Philadelphia-based artist, has joined the board of directors of the Public Art Fund in New York. Oliver’s “Approach,” a monumental sculpture installed last year in Terminal A at Newark International Airport in New Jersey, was commissioned by the Public Art Fund. (11/28) | ArtDaily
EMILY KAM KNGWARRAY, “Untitled (Alhalkere),” 1989. | © Estate of Emily Kam Kngwarray DACS 2023, All rights reserved
Exhibitions
In 2025, Australian artist Emily Kam Kngwarray (circa 1914- 1996) will have her first large-scale European exhibition at Tate Modern. The celebrated Indigenous painter has been hailed as “one of Australia’s greatest artists,” “a renowned figure of 20th century art,” “one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists,” and “one of the most prominent and successful artists in the history of Australian art.” The Tate presentation is organized in collaboration with the National Gallery of Australia, where a major survey of the artist opened Dec. 2. Kngwarray is an Anmatyerr woman and senior custodian of her country, Alhalkere, which adjoins a remote desert area known as Utopia (about 150 miles north east of Alice Springs in Northern Territory). She started painting late in life and was about 80 when she gained recognition. Kngwarray “created works that encapsulated the experience and authority she gained throughout her extraordinary life and career,” according to the Tate announcement on Nov. 30. “Her ritual, ceremonial and spiritual engagement with her homelands was translated into vibrant batik textiles and later into monumental paintings on canvas.” Key textiles, paintings and works on paper spanning the 1970s, 80s and 90s, will be on view at Tate Modern, many shown for the first time outside Australia. (12/1) | Art Newspaper
Magazines
The latest issue of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art (Volume 2023, Number 53) features on the cover an installation by Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama at the Sharjah Biennial 15. On view in the United Arab Emirates, from Feb. 7 to June 11, 2023, the international exhibition was conceived by Okwei Enwezor (1963-2019), founding publisher of Nka, and curated by Hoor Al Qasimi. The issue is a special portfolio of critical reviews dedicated to the biennial. | More
Cover Image: IBRAHIM MAHAMA, Installation view of “A Tale of Time/Purple Republic,” 2013–2022, Sharjah Biennial 15, Kalba Ice Factory, 2023. | Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation, Photo by Selene Wendt
Awards & Honors
Winners of the 2023 Apollo Awards were announced Nov. 22 and Wangechi Mutu was named Artist of the Year and Digital Benin, cataloging more than 5,240 artifacts from the West African Kingdom of Benin, won for Digital Innovation of the Year. Apollo, the London-based art magazine, published short lists for the awards in seven categories in early November. The candidates also included Henry Taylor for Artist of the Year. The June debut of the International African American Museum in Charleston, S.C., was under consideration for Museum Opening of the Year. Options for Acquisition of the Year included “Bélizaire and the Frey Children” (circa 1837), attributed to Jacques Guillaume Lucien Amans, which is now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A rare depiction of an enslaved Black person with the family of his white enslaver, for decades, the image of Bélizaire was painted over. The awards also included Book of the Year, Exhibition of the Year, and Personality of the Year. (11/22) | More
The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant was awarded to 27 writers. Grants ranging from $15,000 to $30,000 support book projects, articles, and short-form writing. 2023 grantees include Kemi Adeyemi, Writing About Black Art (Books); Emilie Boone, Haiti Chooses You: A Contemporary Pedagogy on Photography (Book); Uri McMillan, The Seventies in Color (Book); and Edna Bonhomme and Yinka Elujoba (Short-Form Writing). (11/30) | More
Installation view of CHRISTOPHER MYERS, “Feathers on the Waves,” 99 Scott Avenue, Brooklyn, N.Y., Nov. 28, 2023-Jan. 15, 2024 (Opened to the public Dec. 1). | Image Courtesy Studio Skate
Public Art
A new site-specific artwork by Christopher Myers is installed in Bushwick, Brooklyn, underneath a layer of ice at Studio Skate. Curated by Zoe Lukov, “Feathers on the Waves” by Myers “aims to capture the inherent grace of the Black figure, suspended in space, radiating a sense of weightlessness and winged freedom.” The immersive commission is on view in an open-air, 2,500-square-foot ice rink at 99 Scott Street. Presented by Scott Avenue Associates, the second annual edition of Studio Skate, a pop-up holiday event including food, shopping, and free skating and public programming is open Dec. 1-Jan. 15. (All spaces will be closed from Dec. 25-Jan. 7.) | More
CT
TELEVISION | The second season of High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America debuted on Netflix Nov. 22. Based on the book by Jessica B. Harris and hosted by Stephen Satterfield, the series explores and celebrates the history and contemporary mastery of Black American food. The trailer reviews highlights of the four-episode season, which takes viewers to Chicago, New York City, Atlanta, New Orleans, and beyond, and examines how the cuisine powered the Civil Rights Movement. | Video by Netflix
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