Fifty years ago, the historic Sapphire Show modeled a Black feminist ethics of uplifting one another when others fail to do so.
Alexandra M. Thomas
Alexandra M. Thomas is an assistant professor of art history at Fordham University. She writes and teaches black and queer feminist art histories of Africa and the African diaspora.
Posted inArt
Rotimi Fani-Kayode Captures the Abundant Glow of Black Queer Life
In Tranquility of Communion, soul-stirring photographs blend Yoruba cosmologies, queer desire, and Baroque theatricality.
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The Poetic Grace of Maren Hassinger’s Vessels
Lithe yet sturdy, Hassinger’s sheer organic forms belie their industrial materials.
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At Last, Melvin Edwards’s Steel Abstractions Come to City Hall Park
Brighter Days is bound to transform what we imagine possible with monuments.
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Off the Record Confronts Our Understanding of Objectivity
A forceful rejection of neutrality, the Guggenheim exhibition unearths the deeply biased natures of media and government systems.
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Lorraine O’Grady’s First Retrospective Is Both Invigorating and Overdue
O’Grady’s rebellious spirit has roused the mainstream art world for close to 50 years, and her latest exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum is no exception.
Posted inBooks
Lessons on Propaganda: Visualizing Empire Counters the Colonial Archive
The Getty volume is replete with vital lessons on studying and historicizing imperial ephemera.
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Mildred Thompson’s Confounding, Cosmological Abstractions
There’s a certain irony to the fact that Thompson, an artist who was so in-tune with the patterns of nature and the universe, posed such a fundamental challenge to mainstream art histories.
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In Inky Blacks and Earthy Pastels, Reggie Burrows Hodges Crafts Collective Portraits
Dwelling somewhere between abstraction and figuration, Hodges’s impressionistic paintings enact a critique of rugged individualism.
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The Contours of Black American Life, According to Gordon Parks
Viewing Parks’s photographs in 2021 offers stark, graceful reminders of the ongoing fight for civil rights.
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Enter the Rich, Vibrant Worlds of Thornton Dial
Dial World offers an exciting, if selective, opportunity to gauge the artist’s formal impact — one long overdue.
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A Thought-provoking Teach-in on Anti-Blackness and the Art of Collective Care
Organized by La Tanya S. Autry, scholars, artists, and museum professionals including Christina Sharpe, Key Jo Lee, and William C. Anderson gathered to discuss the limits and possibilities of art to address anti-Blackness.