AWARDED: High Museum of Art Names Mark Bradford 2016 Recipient of David C. Driskell Prize

Mark Bradford, 2016 Driskell Prize Recipient.

Artist to be honored at the 12th annual Driskell Prize Dinner on April 29th in Atlanta

From High Museum of Art press release:

The High Museum of Art has named contemporary artist Mark Bradford the 2016 recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize. Named for the renowned African-American artist and art scholar, the Driskell Prize was founded in 2005 as the first national award to recognize an early or mid-career scholar or artist whose work makes an original and important contribution to the field of African-American art or art history. Bradford will be honored at the Driskell Prize Dinner at the High on Friday, April 29, 2016, at 7 p.m.

Based in Los Angeles, Bradford is known for his monumental, abstract collage works, which feature intricately layered forms and lines created using found materials such as string, carbon paper and billboard paper. In his paintings, installations and sculptures, Bradford explores how socioeconomic and political forces converge to shape the diverse culture and physical environments of urban communities. Bradford’s work has been featured in more than 40 solo exhibitions over the past two decades and is included in the collections of distinguished institutions such as The Guggenheim, the Walker Art Center and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

“Mark Bradford is a wonderfully important voice in contemporary art,” said Rand Suffolk, the High’s Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr., director. “His work and life powerfully advocate for social change and provide poignant 21st century perspectives on the politics and psychology of human interaction. The boundary-pushing nature of his practice embodies the spirit of our annual Driskell Prize, and we’re proud to honor him in this way.”

The selection process for the 2016 recipient of the Driskell Prize began with a call for nominations from a national pool of artists, curators, teachers, collectors and art historians. Bradford was chosen from these nominations by review committee members assembled by the High, which included Andrea Barnwell Brownlee, 2013 Driskell Prize recipient and director of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art; Valerie Cassel Oliver, senior curator of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; and Lauren Haynes, associate curator, permanent collection, The Studio Museum in Harlem.

The 2016 Driskell Prize Dinner is co-chaired by M. Alexis Scott and Jim Morgens with Honorary Chair Louise Sams. Tickets for the black-tie event may be purchased by contacting Rhonda Matheison atrhonda.matheison@woodruffcenter.org or 404-733-4403.

Click here to read more about Mark Bradford and the Driskell Prize

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ACQUISITION: Benny Andrews

Click here to read story via Tuskegee.edu.

APPOINTED: Janet Dees

Janet Dees photographed by Kate Russell. Image via newcity.com.

Contemporary art expert joins curatorial team of Northwestern University’s Block Museum of Art

Text | Peter Kotecki for The Daily Northwestern

Published August 27, 2015

Contemporary art expert Janet Dees will join Northwestern’s Block Museum of Art this fall as a curator.

Dees, who joins the museum Sept. 21, will focus on modern and contemporary art with a global perspective, said Kathleen Bickford Berzock, associate director of curatorial affairs at Block. The new curator will work with international, diasporic, colonial and postcolonial art, Berzock said.

Dees said she is excited to come to NU and looks forward to working with the museum staff.

“The opportunity to work at a museum within the context of a research university is very exciting to me, and the opportunity to connect with faculty and students across disciplines, and the ability to really slow down and dig deeper in the kinds of projects that I’ll be proposing,” she said.

Berzock said Dees, a PhD candidate in 18th-20th century American art history at the University of Delaware, is a great fit for the curator position because of her training in contemporary and American art.

“She also has a strong background with modern art, but she has always approached that from multiple perspectives,” Berzock added.

Throughout her career, Dees has worked with African, African American, Native American and Latin American artists to weave their diasporas into the study of modern and contemporary art, Berzock said.

“Those are all really important strengths for the program that we have here at the Block and (Dees) has specific kinds of expertise that complement the expertise on site already,” she said.

Dees is coming to NU from SITE Santa Fe, a contemporary art organization. In Santa Fe, Dees was part of a team that organized “SITElines: New Perspectives on the Art of the Americas,” a Pan-American biennial exhibition series on contemporary art.

“(Dees’) work specifically at SITE Santa Fe has been very important, both because she has worked a lot with living artists … and also because she has really actualized the kind of global approach that we are committed to,” Berzock said.

Berzock said Dees will join two ongoing projects upon assuming her position. The first is an exhibition on the intersection of modernity and Africa produced by French-Algerian contemporary artist Kader Attia, artist-in-residence at Block for the upcoming academic year. For the second, Dees will be the on-site curator of an exhibition on the work of the late photographer and performance artist Tseng Kwong Chi, opening in Fall 2016.

Berzock said Dees will also work on getting to know NU and its neighboring region to propose exhibition projects of her own to Block.

As part of her engagement with the campus and its surroundings, Dees said she is interested in researching art of the African diaspora at the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at NU — the largest Africana collection outside the African continent — and learning about the landscape of the Chicago area.

“I think it’s important to get an understanding of the institution and the wider community to see what the needs are, and to see what resonates within that particular context as I think about how I would shape an exhibition program,” Dees said.

Huey Copeland, art history professor and associate dean for academic affairs at The Graduate School, said Dees’ work has repeatedly shown her commitment to new cultural perspectives that remap art and culture across the Americas.

“(Dees) will not only complement cutting-edge engagements with the arts on campus, but also challenge all of us to think more expansively about how questions of colonialism, geography and power at once shape and deform our experiences of the visual world,” Copeland said in a news release.

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News: Janet Dees Joins the Block Museum of Art

APPOINTED: Thomas J. Lax

Thomas J. Lax photographed by Paul Mpagi Sepuya. Image via galleristnyc.com.

Former Assistant Curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem is now Associate Curator of Media and Performance Art at Museum of Modern Art

From MoMA press release posted on May 12, 2014:

The Museum of Modern Art announces the appointment of Thomas J. Lax as Associate Curator in the Department of Media and Performance Art.  In this role, Mr. Lax will work on a wide range of exhibitions, acquisitions, and performance and screening events. He joins MoMA after seven years at The Studio Museum in Harlem, where he was Assistant Curator. While at the Studio Museum, Mr. Lax organized over a dozen exhibitions as well as numerous live performances and public programs, focusing especially on performance art, dance and video, and socially engaged practices in all media. Mr. Lax will join the Museum in late August.

“Thomas brings an array of interests that will position him as an exciting collaborator both with artists and with curators across the Museum,” said Stuart Comer, Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art at MoMA. “He has been a dynamic part of the Studio Museum’s remarkable programming, and we look forward to bringing his energy and vision to MoMA.”

Most recently, Mr. Lax organized the Studio Museum exhibitions When the Stars Begin to Fall: Imagination and the American South (2014) and the Studio Museum’s presentation of Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art (2013). In 2008, he developed and launched the Museum’s VideoStudio program, an ongoing series of exhibitions of time-based art; in 2011, he initiated Studio Lab, a think tank and short-term residency program for ideas in formation. At the Studio Museum, he has also organized Ayé A. Aton: Space-Time Continuum (2013); the New York presentation of David Hartt: Stray Light (2013); Fore (2012, with Lauren Haynes and Naima J. Keith); Ralph Lemon: 1856 Cessna Road (2012); Lyle Ashton Harris: Self/Portrait (2011); a collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, New York, OFF/SITE (2010); Mark Bradford: Alphabet (2010); Kalup Linzy: If it Don’t Fit (2009); among others.

“I am thrilled to be transitioning from one world-class institution to another,” Mr. Lax said. “I am looking forward to working with a fantastic team of colleagues, the Museum’s esteemed permanent collection, as well as artists and thinkers living across the globe at this exciting moment in the Museum’s history.”

He has contributed to artist monographs locally and internationally for venues including Artists Space, New York; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Jeu de Paume, Paris; Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo; MoMA PS1, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He is a contributor to Artforum, Art in America, Art Journal, and Mousse.

He has lectured widely at institutions including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. (2014); the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2013); Columbia University, New York (2013); the Jeu de Paume, Paris, (2013); the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art (2013); New York Live Arts (2012); and Danspace Project, New York (2012 and 2014).

Mr. Lax is a faculty member at the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts; on the Advisory Committee of the Vera List Center for Arts and Politics; on the Arts Advisory Committee of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; a member of the Catalyst Circle at The Laundromat Project; and on the Advisory Board of Recess.

He received his AB from Brown University and his MA in Modern Art from Columbia University. A lifelong resident of New York City, Mr. Lax currently resides in Brooklyn.

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SIGNED: Jason Moran

Jason Moran performing the Fats Waller Dance Party at Harlem Stage Gatehouse, NYC, 2011. Photo by Eric Sandler via revive-music.com.

Luhring Augustine announces gallery representation of jazz pianist, composer, and performance artist.

Jason Moran's rich and varied body of work is actively shaping the current and future landscape of jazz. His activity stretches beyond the many recordings and performances with masters of the form including Charles Lloyd, Bill Frisell, and the late Sam Rivers, and his work with his trio The Bandwagon (with drummer Nasheet Waits and bassist Tarus Mateen) has resulted in a profound discography for Blue Note Records. 

The scope of Moran’s partnerships and music-making with venerated and iconic visual artists is extensive. He has collaborated with such major figures as Adrian Piper, Joan Jonas, Glenn Ligon, Stan Douglas, Adam Pendleton, Lorna Simpson, and Kara Walker; commissioning institutions of Moran’s work include the Walker Art Center, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Dia Art Foundation, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Jazz at Lincoln Center. 

Moran has a long-standing collaborative practice with his wife, the singer and Broadway actress Alicia Hall Moran; as named artists in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, they together constructed BLEED, a five-day series of live music. BLEED explored the power of performance to cross barriers and challenge assumptions, and it was widely hailed as groundbreaking in the music and performance realm.

Moran’s upcoming ventures include the world premiere of Looks of a Lot, a site-specific performance at Chicago Symphony Center with Theaster Gates in May 2014, and an appearance with The Bandwagon at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in April in conjunction with the museum’s Carrie Mae Weems exhibition. Moran’s new recording, All Rise: A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller, will be released in September by Blue Note Records. 

Moran was born in Houston, TX in 1975 and earned a degree from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Jaki Byard. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2010 and is the Artistic Director for Jazz at The Kennedy Center. Moran currently teaches at the New England Conservatory.

Gallery site

SIGNED: Mickalene Thomas

Mickalene Thomas photographed by Roberto Chamorro. Image via absoluteartbureau.com.

New York based artist now represented by Kavi Gupta CHICAGO | BERLIN

From KaviGupta.com, March 19, 2014:

Drawing from a long study of art history and the classical genres of portraiture, landscape and still life, Mickalene Thomas's political and pop- culturally infused imagery explores constructed notions of identity and the self. Her multi-referential work presents a complex viewpoint on what it means to be a contemporary woman. Best known for her elaborate rhinestone-encrusted paintings, Thomas’s works explore space, pattern and identity through representations of figures and décor and question popular notions of beauty and embodiment from a fragmented perspective.

In Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2012- 2013, the film Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman, premiered. This short documentary, a poignant portrait of Thomas’s mother Sandra Bush, has since been screened internationally and aired on HBO in 2014. Bush was both mother and artistic muse to Thomas, modeling for and appearing in some of her most well known paintings. This sophisticated film continues her thoughtful investigations into the transience of female representation. These explorations are echoed in Thomas’s recent collaged compositions of evocative interiors aimed at challenging conventional notions of domesticity and personal space.

Mickalene Thomas lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally including her upcoming exhibitions Face à Face, 2014, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY and Femme au divan II, 2014, l'Ecole des Beaux Art, Monaco. Recent select solo exhibitions include faux real, 2013, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL; Origin of the Universe, 2012 - 13, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA and Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Mickalene Thomas, 2012, Fontene Demoulas Gallery, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; How to Organize a Room Around a Striking Piece of Art, 2013, Lehmann Maupin, New York, NY; Mickalene Thomas: Mama- Bush: One of a Kind Two, 2011, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan; Put a Little Sugar in my Bowl, 2011, Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles, CA. Thomas earned her MFA from Yale University in 2002, and a BFA from Pratt Institute in 2000. In 2002-03 she participated in the Artist-in-Residence program at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and in 2011 she was a resident at the Versailles Foundation Munn Artists Program in Giverny, France.

Thomas is represented by Lehmann Maupin in New York and Hong Kong, Susan Vielmetter in Los Angeles, and Galerie Nathalia Obadia in Paris and Brussels.

Mickalene Thomas’s first exhibition with Kavi Gupta CHICAGO | BERLIN is forthcoming. 

Mickalene Thomas artist page at Kavi Gupta

ANNOUNCEMENT: Obama taps Chicago artist Kerry James Marshall for arts spot

Kerry James Marshall. Photo via ianationalbar.com.

Acclaimed artist selected for President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities

By Lynn Sweet for voices.suntimes.com, November 18, 2013:

President Barack Obama tapped Chicago artist Kerry James Marshall, a former professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago for a spot on the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. The National Gallery of Art is featuring his work in an exhibit closing next month.

From the National Gallery: “One of the most celebrated painters currently working in the United States, Kerry James Marshall (b. 1955) has exhibited widely in both this country and around the world. His work explores the experiences of African Americans and the narratives of American history that have often excluded black people. Drawing upon the artist’s prodigious knowledge of art history and the African diaspora, his paintings combine figurative and abstract styles and multiple allusions, drawing from “high” and “low” sources.”

From the White House: “Kerry James Marshall is an independent artist with solo and group exhibitions, public projects, and public collections displayed in museums around the United States, including the National Gallery of Art. He works across a broad range of media, including painting, photography, video, sculpture, performance, and installations. He was a tenured professor at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago until 2006. Mr. Marshall worked as production designer for the feature films Daughters of the Dust and Sankofa. In 1997, he received a MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He is a board member of the advisory board of the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Tiffany Foundation, and previously served on the advisory board of the Artadia Foundation. Mr. Marshall received a B.F.A. from the Otis Arts Institute.”

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Chicago artist picked for presidential panel

ANNOUNCEMENT: Clark Research and Academic Program Appoints New Director

Darby English Named New Starr Director

On April 24, 2013, The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute announced the appointment of Darby English, associate professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago, to serve as the next Starr Director of the Research and Academic Program (RAP). English will lead the program’s international agenda of intellectual events and collaborations and will oversee the Clark’s library and its active residential scholars’ program, all based on the Institute’s 140-acre campus.

“Darby English brings a dynamic perspective to the work of the Clark’s Research and Academic Program, rooted in his knowledge of the field of art history—both its traditions and its new critical perspectives,” said Michael Conforti, director of the Clark. “He will build upon the Clark’s extraordinary record of accomplishment achieved during Michael Ann Holly’s fourteen years as director.”

In June 2012, Michael Ann Holly announced plans to conclude her tenure as Starr Director in the summer of 2013. Holly is widely recognized for her leadership in conceptualizing and pioneering RAP’s international series of programs and events. She will remain active in numerous Clark programs and activities in Williamstown and New York. 

“The Clark is both a meeting ground and a forum for exchange and debate,” said English. “The Research and Academic Program is fueled by the international scholars who come to Williamstown as Fellows and as participants in its scholarly programs and by its many collaborations with academic programs across the world. I couldn't be more thrilled by this opportunity to enhance the Clark’s long-established reputation for intellectual leadership in the field.”

Dr. English graduated from Williams College in 1996 with a degree in art history and philosophy and earned a doctorate in visual and cultural studies from the University of Rochester in 2002. He has served on the University of Chicago’s faculty since 2003, teaching modern and contemporary art and cultural studies. He served as the assistant director of the Research and Academic Program from 1999 through 2003.

English is the author of How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness (MIT Press, 2007), which has been called a “groundbreaking and lucid book [that] expands the social and intellectual context for recent African-American art.” [Maurice Berger, research professor, University of Maryland Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture]. Dr. English is also a co-editor of Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress (MIT Press, 2003; republished Rizzoli, 2007). He is currently completing work on a new book, 1971: A Year in the Life of Color, which studies social experiments with modernist art undertaken over a period just prior to that year.

He is the recipient of fellowships, grants, and awards from the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Humanities Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/Creative Capital Foundation, the Getty Research Institute, and the College Art Association, among others. In 2010, English received Chicago’s Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the nation’s oldest such prize.

A seven-member search committee, led by Charles W. “Mark” Haxthausen, the Robert Sterling Clark Professor of Art History at Williams College, oversaw the international search that resulted in English’s selection.

“We had an extraordinarily strong pool of highly qualified candidates for the Starr Directorship,” Haxthausen said, “which underscores the respect and appreciation the scholarly community holds for RAP’s role as a major international forum for the discipline.”

The Clark is one of the few institutions in the world with a dual mission as both an art museum and an independent center for research and higher education in the visual arts. The Research and Academic Program is internationally recognized as one of the leading centers for research in the visual arts and has established collaborations with partner institutions including the Getty Research Institute; the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (France); Institute of Art History of the Estonian Academy of Arts; Power Institute at the University of Sydney; University of the Philippines Diliman; Asia Art Archive (Hong Kong); Asian Civilizations Museum (Singapore); and the University of Witwatersrand (South Africa), among others.

In addition to hosting its fellowship program on the Clark’s Williamstown campus, RAP maintains an active series of conferences, colloquia, symposia, and scholarly conversations presented at venues around the globe.  The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Getty Foundation have provided generous support to these programs.  The Manton Foundation established an endowment to support the activities of the RAP program in 2007; in 2008, the Starr Foundation endowed the program’s directorship.

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POST: Dartmouth's Hood Museum appoints first African Art Curator

Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi. Photo by Franko Khoury, National Museum of African Art. Image via artdaily.org. 

From artdaily.org:

The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College has appointed Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi as its first Curator of African Art. A specialist in modern and contemporary African and African Diaspora arts, Nzewi will be responsible for the documentation, preservation, research, and development of the museum’s African art collection—which encompasses some 1,900 historic and contemporary objects from all regions of the continent in a variety of media—and will engage Dartmouth faculty and students in the development of curricular and co-curricular programming related to the museum’s African holdings. He will begin on August 26, 2013.

“Smooth’s deep knowledge of historical African objects, combined with his unique perspective on African contemporary art, makes him an ideal appointment for the position of Curator of African Art at the Hood,” said Michael Taylor, Director of the Hood Museum of Art. “The establishment of this new position affirms the Hood’s aspiration to build an exceptional collection of African art from all time periods and cultures, and to showcase that collection through groundbreaking exhibition and educational programs that inform a greater understanding of the artistic traditions of the African continent, both past and present.”

Born in Nigeria, Nzewi received his Ph.D. in Art History at Emory University, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Dak’Art Biennial and its influence on contemporary African art, from 1992 to the present. He was awarded a Pre-Doctoral Fellowship from the National Museum of African Arts, Smithsonian Institution, in 2012, and earned a postgraduate diploma in the African Program in Museum and Heritage Studies from the University of Western Cape, South Africa. He has curated exhibitions in Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, and the United States, including most recently Transitions: Contemporary South African Works on Paper at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in 2009 and Windows Part 1: New Works by Ndary Lo as part of the fringe exhibitions of the Dak’Art Biennial in 2012. A practicing visual artist, Nzewi studied sculpture under the supervision of El Anatsui at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he earned a B.A. in Fine and Applied Art. He has participated in over thirty exhibitions and artist residency programs in Africa, Europe, and the United States, and, in 2011, he received the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation Fellowship for African Artists.

“I am truly honored to accept the Curator of African Art position at the Hood Museum of Art. The Hood has a fantastic history and arguably one of the oldest and finest museum collections of African art on any campus in North America. I am coming to the Hood at a very auspicious moment of exciting possibilities, when it is expanding its facility and growing its African collection. I am excited to be joining the curatorial staff at the Hood and to be able to contribute to the vibrant arts community at Dartmouth,” said Nzewi. “The Hood is noted for encouraging a diversity of peoples and perspectives and for placing the art object at the center of the educational experience. I look forward to working with students, faculty, and staff in the development of programming that will bring to life a greater appreciation and understanding of art from Africa, whether it be contemporary or traditional creations.”

The Hood’s African art collection represents the great range of artistic expression, media, and aesthetics on the African continent, and its objects date from approximately 2040 BCE to the present. The collection has its roots in the first decades of the nineteenth century, when works from ancient Egypt were acquired by Dartmouth, and it expanded significantly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to include works from sub-Saharan Africa, beginning with a gift of forty-eight objects from South Africa in 1885 by Josiah Tyler, missionary and son of Dartmouth College President Bennett Tyler. Significant gifts made during the second half of the twentieth century enhanced the collection in colonial-era sculpture from West and Central Africa, including approximately fifty sculptural works given by Evelyn A. and William B. Jaffe, Class of 1964H, during the 1960s and 1970s; almost two hundred brass castings, primarily used as body ornamentation, given by Arnold and Joanne Syrop in the 1980s and 1990s; and about eighty sculptures from the Harry A. Franklin Family Collection in the 1990s. Recent additions to the collection of sculptural works from East Africa further diversify the Hood’s collection of African art. A new direction for the museum is represented by the addition of contemporary works by African and African diasporic artists over the past decade, including art by El Anatsui, Magdalene Odundo, and Wangechi Mutu, among others.

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Q&A with first curator of African art at the Hood Museum

ANNOUNCEMENT: Hurricane Sandy Assistance for Visual Artists

JOAN MITCHELL FOUNDATION OFFERS AID TO VISUAL ARTISTS IMPACTED BY HURRICANE SANDY

The following statement was posted on the Joan Mitchell Foundation web site on November 2, 2012:

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy we hope this message finds you, your families, friends and colleagues well, and that you have been able to ride out this storm safely.

Our thoughts are with those who have been deeply impacted by this week's events. We know that for many of you your losses are tremendous, impacting not only yourselves, but your entire community as well.

If you are - or know of - a visual artist who has been affected by the hurricane please contact us. The Foundation has funding allocated specifically for emergency assistance to painters and sculptors affected by natural disasters. Additionally, we have access to information about other organizations that may be able to assist you.

If you are an arts organization working with visual artists and have been negatively impacted, please reach out to us as well. We are working in partnership with other funders to assess the needs of the visual arts community and identify the best ways of supporting its recovery.

In the meantime, for anyone who has been impacted, we urge you to document your losses as thoroughly as possible. This should be done by taking photographs and keeping records of damage to your home, studio, office, and/or artwork, as well as keeping records of all related expenses going forward.

Please note that due to the hurricane, the Foundation's office is closed and we cannot be reached by phone until power is restored to West Chelsea. We know that communication for many is very limited now, but our staff can be reached by email at: info@joanmitchellfoundation.org. Additionally you can contact us through our Facebook page here.

Please share your stories, your experiences, and let us know if you need assistance. We're here to help.

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ANNOUNCEMENT: Najjar Abdul-Musawwir Son of the Diaspora Journeying Home

Najjar Abdul-Musawwir. BlackArtistNews photo. All rights reserved.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Artist of the People, Najjar Abdul-Musawwir will be traveling abroad to two of the world’s largest continents from July 7th thru August 8th for a month long cultural exchange and artistic dialogue on the influence Islam has had on the African and African-American artistic process. Najjar believes these experiences will lead to the creation of a thematic body of work which will reflect an international experience.

Najjar will begin his sojourn in Morocco, North Africa where he will spend three days doing fieldwork. Here, Najjar will don the hat of archaeologist as he traverses the country looking for artifacts and at architectural structures that speak to the Moroccans Islamic faith and how this informs their artistic expression.

In Senegal, in addition to his field observations of artifacts and architecture, Najjar will lecture at the esteemed Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar. He will explicitly discuss the “Influence of Islam in African-American Art.” This dialogue will delve into the creative impact Islam has had on the works of Muslim and non-Muslim African-Americans.

Malaysia will conclude Najjar’s peregrinations. His Malaysian stay will include a three-week residency as a guest scholar and artist in residence at the Muzium and Galeri Tuanku Fauziah (MGTH) Universiti Sains Malaysia, where he will lecture on the “African-American Muslim Artist: Content and Survival.” During this residency, Najjar plans to look at the connection between art and science in Malaysia; how Islam and outside cultures have influenced indigenous Malaysian art.

Najjar will also debut a new body of work “Muhammad Speaks: Preserving an American Voice” this exhibition will reflect images from the 1969-1975 publications of Muhammad Speaks, founded by the late Nation of Islam leader Al Hajj Malik El Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X. These pieces were created to preserve a certain historical aspect of the African-American Islamic cultural experience in America. It is the artist's hope that this exhibition will be embraced by museums and universities in other countries throughout the globe.

Najjar looks forward to his travels and if time and opportunity permits an additional appearance at the National Gallery of Art in Malaysia.

RELATED LINK:

Najjar Abdul-Musawwir: The BlackArtistNews Interview