Black Femaleness in the Display in the Age of Multiculturalism: A Look at Black Female Artists 1990 to 2000 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Visual Voices: Redefining Black Identity within the Visual Arts
The characterization black identity and the process of re-defining black identity in a white-dominated society is not a new concept. Originating during the Black Power era, this was a driving force behind the change in American consciousness and what it meant to be an African American. This desire to express an authentic or ‘real’ example of black masculinity and power spurred a trend within black popular culture, with images of black femininity and positive identity perhaps even more under-represented. The viewer is an active participant in any cultural product and therefore an understanding is incomplete without the act of consumption. Within my research I have examined the ways in which various artists have articulated blackness outside of the historical lens of misery and victimhood. The result is a visual redefining of black identity outside the constructs of a white-dominated society through a reversal of power structures and a liberation of sexual identity.
We Want a Revolution: Black Women Artists at the Brooklyn Museum
ArteFuse, 2017
Focusing on the interwoven narratives of more than forty artists and activists, We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 at the Brooklyn Museum explores the political, social, cultural, and aesthetic priorities of women of color during the emergence of second-wave feminism. The first exhibition of its kind, We Wanted a Revolution brings to light the intersectional experiences of women of color, experiences that often subvert the primarily white, mainstream feminist movement of the 1960s in order to reorient conversations around race, feminism, political action, art production, and history in this crucial period.
A Museum in Progress: The Practice of White Accompliceship with African Exhibitions
Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education
Beginning in the late 19th century, museums were places where the “exotic” was shared with White wealthy visitors. These objects were often from various non-European countries and acquired through illicit means. Still today, art museums display these same confiscated objects to a mostly White audience. But as we seek to ensure that complex stories of African cultural objects are shared, museum staff are asking tough questions that push administration to disrupt a paternalistic White supremacist framework that shapes what many museums exhibit and what audiences’ exhibitions cater to. The Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) in Columbus, Ohio is working to critique this framework as they shape their identity as a “Museum in Progress.” For CMA, to be a “Museum in Progress” is to embark on an iterative, research-centered, and inquisitive journey that intertwines personal convictions, biases, and the professional duty to operationalize self-reflection for themselves and visitors.
Black Image and IdentityAfrican-American Art from the Permanent Collection
2000
which represented the American Pavilion at the 1997 Venice Biennale, offers a unique opportunity for the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden to display a selection of African-American art from its permanent collection. This exhibition, entitled Black Image and Identity, serves several important purposes. First, it locates Robert Colescott, one of the most important and influential African-American artists of the twentieth century, within the broader historical context of a dynamic and diverse African-American visual arts tradition. Second, it focuses attention on the important influence that Colescott has exerted on younger artists who have been concerned with racial identity. Third and finally, Black Image and Identity reveals that there is no monolithic, static, and constant set of features called "black identity" but it is in reality subject to constant negotiation and construction. It is the contested and "unstable" status of what constitutes a "black identity" that has challenged artists who have chosen to engage the issue of black identity.
This paper reports on the use of historically provocative artwork (i.e., artwork that challenges master narratives of history) created by Titus Kaphar and graduate students learning about leading with a socio-political consciousness about racism. The authors provided 17 students a series of prompts, based on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and critical art analysis, to instigate reflection, dialogue, and artistry in response to a painting by Kaphar. The authors organized participant-generated artwork into assemblages and crafted accompanying narratives which illustrated the inter/intra-changes among the components of the process and expressions: (1) compositionality, (2) aesthetics, (3) temporality, (4) historical injustice/oppressiveness, (5) manifestations of power. Thus, participants' artwork exposed how engaging with historically provocative can heighten socio-political complexities relating to the consciousness of race/ism and white(ness) supremacy.
Troubling Canons: Curating and Exhibiting Women’s and Feminist Art, A Roundtable Discussion
2016
A discussion between Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, Artists, Berlin; Angela Dimitrakaki, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Art History and Theory, University of Edinburgh, and author of books including Gender, artwork and the Global Imperative: A Materialist Feminist Critique (Manchester); Kerryn Greenberg, Curator, International Art, Tate Modern, London; Koyo Kouoh, Artistic Director, RAW Material Company, Dakar, and curator of exhibitions including Body Talk: Feminism, Sexuality and the Body in the Work of Six African Women Artists (WIELS); Camille Morineau, Independent Curator, Co-Founder and President of AWARE, Archive of Women Artists, Research and Exhibition, and former Curator at the Centre Pompidou where she curated exhibitions including elles@centrepompidou; Helena Reckitt, Senior Lecturer in Curating, Department of Art, Goldsmiths, University of London, and former Senior Curator of Programmes at the Power Plant, Toronto; Mirjam Westen, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, ...
Curating Inequality: The Link between Cultural Reproduction and Race in the Visual Arts
Although the U.S. population is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, research indicates that minority participation in the arts continues to decline. This article addresses the racial disparity of public art museum attendance by examining the role of the art museum curator and the process by which concepts of race are reproduced within the space of the public art museum. Utilizing Bourdieu’s theories of cultural reproduction, social space, and symbolic power as a preliminary framework of inquiry, we examine the concept of whiteness as privileged social construct. Through face-to-face in-depth interviews with museum curators, we investigate the means by which the dominant cultural narrative of whiteness is maintained through the preferences, decisions, and social interactions of curators. We draw upon critical white studies, a part of critical race theory, to underline the manner in which whiteness presents itself as a position of dominance. Our findings show that whiteness is maintained through the process of exclusion by presenting the white cultural narrative as both ordinary and invisible.