APPOINTED: Harlem's Studio Museum curator Naima J. Keith named California African American Museum deputy director

Naima J. Keith photographed December 12, 2012. Photo from BlackArtistNews archive.

Text | Carolina A. Miranda for The Los Angeles Times

Published | February 4, 2016

Curator Naima J. Keith, who for five years helped organize lauded exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem, has been named the new deputy director for exhibitions and programs at the California African American Museum  in Los Angeles' Exposition Park. The move brings a nationally recognized curator to the institution, which organizes artistic and historical exhibitions related to African American life in California and beyond.

"She was the top candidate," says the museum's executive director George Davis. "She was so impressive. And I really feel that the California African American Museum will have a great vision as a result of her presence."

In her time at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Keith curated the traveling exhibition"Charles Gaines: Gridwork 1974-1989," the first museum survey devoted to the early works of the L.A.-based abstractionist, which opened at the Hammer Museum early last year.

The show received a nomination for “Best Monographic Museum Show in New York" by the International Assn. of Art Critics — competing against exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.

Moroever, she organized "Rodney McMillian: Views of Main Street," scheduled to open at the Studio Museum in March, the first major solo museum exhibition devoted to the work of the Los Angeles sculptor and installation artist.

Keith's hire brings a ray of good news to CAAM, a small, largely state-funded institution that had been without a director for roughly a year since long-time director Charmaine Jefferson stepped down in July of 2014.

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NEW YORK: Robert Pruitt

Robert Pruitt, Diasporic Leaps and Bounds, 2012, mixed media on hand dyed paper , 59" x 49". Image via KoplinDelRio.com. 

Robert Pruitt: Women

July 18 – October 27, 2013

THE STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM

144 West 125^th Street

New York, NY

Robert Pruitt (b. 1975) is Houston-based artist well known for drawings, videos and installations dedicated to examination of the historical and contemporary experiences of African Americans. Robert Pruitt: Women includes nearly twenty large-scale conté drawings of black women. Combining elements of science fiction, hip-hop culture and comic-book graphics, each figure is at once politically charged, physically grounded and fantastic—a blend of willful self-determination and culturally conditioned myth.

Robert Pruitt received his BFA from Texas Southern University and MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to his solo work, Pruitt is a founding member of the artist collective Otabenga Jones & Associates. He has exhibited his work at venues including the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Dallas Museum of Art and The Studio Museum in Harlem, and he was a participating artist in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and SITE Santa Fe 2010. Pruitt received the Artadia Artist Award in 2004 and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award in 2008.

Robert Pruitt: Women is organized by Naima J. Keith, Assistant Curator.

Exhibit Link

CAPTURED: Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle and Naima J. Keith

Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle and Naima J. Keith photographed December 15, 2012 at The Studio Museum in Harlem.
BlackArtist News photo. All rights reserved.

Los Angeles-based artist and mother-to-be Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle (left) and The Studio Museum in Harlem Assistant Curator Naima J. Keith were in good spirits following Hinkle’s well-received spoken word presentation on December 15, 2012. Her appearance was part of the Studio’s perFORMance series, two three-day presentations (in December and again in February 2013) created as a platform for new and commissioned performance art in conjunction with their current exhibition Fore which runs until March 2013, the same month Hinkle and her husband musician Kevin Robinson expect their new addition. 

Exhibit description:

Fore is the fourth in a series of emerging artist exhibitions presented by the Studio Museum, following Freestyle (2001), Frequency (2005–06) and Flow (2008). This exhibition traces the development of artistic ideas since Flow, taking into account social, political and cultural conditions in the United States. Whether gathering and assembling everyday objects, referencing urban architecture and economies, or using film and video to mirror the transmission and reception of information through social media, the artists in Fore emphasize that contemporary art is deeply tied to its location, time and historical context. This exhibition investigates questions at the core of the Studio Museum’s mission, exploring art’s relationship to U.S. and global communities.

Organized by Lauren Hayes, Naima J. Keith and Thomas J. Lax, Assistant Curators at the Studio Museum, Fore continues the Studio Museum's mission as the nexus for artists of African descent, locally, nationally and internationally, and for work inspired by black culture. Fore runs from November 11, 2012 - March 10, 2013.

Fore exhibit brochure. Cover: Sienna  Shields, Untitled, 2010-12.

Fore exhibit link 

Radical Redefinition in Progress - 'Fore' at Studio Museum in Harlem

(NY Times art review)