black art
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In Yo’ Face Like a Can of Mace: Kehinde Wiley Unveils Black Male Monument in Times Square
Finally, something we can look up to—literally. A powerful image of a black man has been immortalized as a monument—in New York City’s Times Square, of all places. Acclaimed artist Kehinde Wiley unveiled his biggest work to date on Friday night, a massive bronze statue of a young black man in urban regalia sitting astride…
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The Magical, Riveting, Amazing Story of JJ and the Enthralling Power of Art
It’s early September 2019. The store clerk just outside Amsterdam Centraal Station watches me blow a gust of warm breath into my palms and tells me the best parts of summer left one week ago. The city welcomes me, as it had on my last six visits, with a cool breeze and light rain and…
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'Once You Get It, Give It Back': Georgia Teen Pays Tribute to Mom With Winning Google Doodle
If you found yourself clicking with curiosity on Tuesday morning’s “Google Doodle” simply because you couldn’t immediately identify the brown-skinned people in the illustration, you were in luck; today’s Google Doodle is the winner of the 11th annual “Doodle for Google” competition. Offered to students across America in different age groups, this year’s competition theme…
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‘Quiet As It’s Kept’: Artist Kara Walker Creates the New Yorker’s Cover Tribute to Toni Morrison
Anyone familiar with the work of Toni Morrison knew it was a force, as was the woman who wrote it. The visions Morrison rendered were both unflinching and tender, exposing the sometimes shameful truths of our natures and whispering them back to us like a lover’s secret. The same could be said of the work…
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It's Official: Beyoncé Belongs in the Smithsonian
Last year, Beyoncé helped make history when she approved Tyler Mitchell to photograph her for the cover of the September 2018 issue of American Vogue, making the then-23-year-old the first black photographer—and one of the youngest—to shoot the cover of the world’s best-known fashion magazine in its 126-year history. In the year since, that barrier-breaking…
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Figures of Speech: With His 1st Museum Exhibition, Virgil Abloh Says ‘I Was Speaking About Race the Whole Time’
“QUESTION EVERYTHING” reads the black and white flag waving in front of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, coyly relabeled “City Hall” for the duration of Virgil Abloh’s new exhibition, Figures of Speech, which opens Monday. Abloh has certainly faced his share of questions, starting with how a first-gen Ghanaian-American from Rockford, Ill., rose to the…
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John Singleton Introduced Me to a World That Changed My Life
John Singleton passed Monday, April 29, 2019. After suffering a stroke that left him in a coma, his family ultimately decided to take him off life support. To say it was a life gone too soon is an understatement, especially for a figure who has had such a tremendous impact on the black community at…
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Artist Kara Walker Will Premiere New Work at England’s Tate Modern as the 2019 Hyundai Commission
She’s stunned audiences with her unflinching artistic analyses of antebellum slavery and post-colonial black iconography, and now, artist Kara Walker is bringing her bold, always conversational and sometimes controversial visions to Britain’s renowned Tate Modern museum, courtesy of Hyundai. As reported by Dazed Digital: The 2019 Hyundai Commission for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall has…