Such transformative moments, big and small, make up the core of the new show, Black Is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite, at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles through Sept. 1, curated by his son, Kwame Jr. On display are over 40 black-and-white images of everyday people as well as jazz legends like Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln, Dizzy Gillespie or Art Blakey taking five with a smoke and a drink.
Art News
Since March 2, the Driehaus Museum has been imbued with new, electric energy courtesy of British Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare CBE, whose ongoing solo show marks the first time contemporary art has filled its spaces. It’s also the first in a new series of exhibitions at the Driehaus collectively titled A Tale of Today, a name that nods to Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s eponymous novel that critiques the corrupted politics of the Gilded Age.
This week, the Met debuts a large new exhibition sure to please the summer the crowds. Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll is the first exhibition at a major museum to tell the history of rock and roll through its instruments.
Several connecting threads run through the show, promised to contain both regional and larger world themes. Many artists explore the variegation of human condition, ranging from politics and racial identity to grief and humor. Yet some so embrace or distance themselves from their source material that they create cerebral, technical works.
Critiquing the performative nature of high society, Marisol Escobar's "The Party" (1965-66), shows that despite looking the part, it can still be lonely at the top.
Upon seeing the first daguerreotype around 1840, the French painter Paul Delaroche (1797-1856), declared: “From today, painting is dead.” Painting did not die that day, but photography was born, disrupting the world and its social order through the creation of new ways to see, understand, and explore.
For nearly four decades, Chippewa aritst David Bradley has been a major participant in and critic of the Santa Fe art scene. Luckily, Bradley has a biting sense of humor, and he brings this and a vibrant palate to his paintings that honor his Native heritage, stand up for it in the face of commodification, and poke fun at the community he calls home.
Art historians use careful observation and description to begin their analyses of a work of art. Here, Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker take a close look at Henry Moore's sinuous Reclining Figure (1951, plaster and string).
Did you know that almost all of Jeffrey Gibson's materials are sourced from a vendor that serves the powwow circuit? Hear from the artist as he talks hip hop, art school, identity politics, and Indigenous economies. All that and more is packed into If I Ruled the World, one in a series of punching bag sculptures by Gibson. We've got galleries more where this punching bag came from. See paintings, sculptures, videos, and a new multimedia installation in Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer at the Seattle Art Museum through May 12.
This month the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, DC, presents a comprehensive study of one of the greatest painters of the 16th century. Jacopo Tintoretto (c. 1519–1594) was one of the most prominent painters of Venice during his lifetime.
