by Sandy | Oct 22, 2012 | Art, Blogroll, Education, Exhibits, Photograhy
I love the Schomburg, it always has something going on. Currently, it celebrates one of our most famous photographers and film makers with Gordon Parks: 100 Moments
This event “…celebrates a photographer who transformed the visual story of America with his ever-questioning lens, highlighting—in particular—the significance of Parks’s photographs from the early 1940s. 100 Moments focuses on Parks’s photographic practice of documenting African Americans in Harlem and Washington, D.C., during a pivotal time in U.S. history. These photographs were taken when both cities were going through significant changes—arising from post-WW II urban migration, the expansion of the black press, concern for children’s education, and entrenched segregation and economic discrimination. “ 
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 515 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, NY
FYI: The Schomburg Library was the vision of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg. Of African/ Puerto Rican descent, he recognized the need to consolidate the culture, history and art of people of color. His collection was absorbed into the New York Public Library system after his death in 1938. It became a part of the “Division of Negro History” at the 135th Street Branch.
by Sandy | Oct 15, 2012 | Art, Artist, Blogroll, Exhibits, Museums
“Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe” is the first solo museum show for this Brooklyn artist, whose portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.
She is “best known for her elaborate, collage-inspired paintings, embellished with rhinestones, enamel, and colorful acrylics. Her depictions of African American women explore a spectrum of black female beauty and sexual identity while constructing images of femininity and power… the exhibition highlights recent bodies of work that examine interior and exterior environments in relation to the female figure. Their settings are often inspired by her 1970s childhood.”
“Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe”
September 28, 2012 thru January 20, 2013
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York
by Sandy | Sep 28, 2012 | Art, Arts, Entertainment and Music, Blogroll, Exhibits, Museums
“In the early 20th century, African art had a profound influence on the development of European abstract art… Artists were avid collectors of African art objects—Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso had studios packed with African statuettes and textiles—and also carefully studied these works, mimicked them, and even openly copied their forms. European artists had more than just a stylistic affinity for African art; these artists, on the cusp of abstraction, found African abstraction to be the perfect aid to their pursuit of new modes of representation.”
“This installation brings together works from the Dallas Museum of Art’s collection by Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, and Paul Klee, presented alongside objects from the Museum’s internationally acclaimed collection of African art.” 
African Influences on Modern Art
Dallas Museum of Art until October 28, 2012
1717 North Harwood, Dallas, Texas
(Images: Pablo Picasso, Bust, 1907-08 and Helmet mask (kifwebe), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Songye or Luba peoples, late 19th-early 20th century)
by Sandy | Sep 17, 2012 | Art, Artist, Blogroll, Exhibits, Museums, Photograhy
The Cleveland Museum of Art offers a retrospective, “Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video” thru September 2013.
“The first section of the exhibition will feature selections from the 1980s and early 1990s that were inspired by the artist’s direct experiences and observations. The next section will feature works made in response to historical situations that have impacted African American identity, as well as that of other disempowered peoples. A third grouping will contain photographs that focus on the role of place in Weems’s examination of the underlying causes and effects of racism, slavery, and imperialism… A notion of universality is present throughout: while African Americans are typically her primary subjects, Weems wants “people of color to stand for the human multitudes” and for her art to resonate with audiences of all races.”
Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video
The Cleveland Museum of Art Until September 2013
11150 East Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio
by Sandy | Sep 3, 2012 | Blogroll, Exhibits, Museums
There’s an exhibition called “Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties” that’s been traveling around the country since the end of last year. This month it ends its run at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
The program “brings together for the first time the work of sixty-eight painters, sculptors, and photographers who explored a new mode of modern realism in the years bounded by the aftermath of the Great War and the onset of the Great Depression.”.
Some of the artists presented are:
Thomas Hart Benton, Imogen Cunningham, Charles Demuth, Aaron Douglas, Edward Hopper, Gaston Lachaise, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Luigi Lucioni, Gerald Murphy, Georgia O’Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Weston.
Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties until 9/16/12
The Cleveland Museum of Art
11150 East Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio
Image: “Self-Portrait with Rita”, 1922. Thomas Hart Benton
by Sandy | Aug 31, 2012 | Artist, Blogroll, Creativity, Exhibits, Museums
This July, the Detroit Institute of Arts presents the work of 2 legendary artists together is the presentation: Picasso and Matisse: The DIA’s Prints and Drawings
“Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) and Henri Matisse (1869–1954) were ground-breaking visionaries who constantly experimented with techniques and materials… The story of Picasso’s and Matisse’s stylistic progression and artistic range will be told through more than 100 prints and drawings, including exceptional works such as Matisse’s 1919 drawing The Plumed Hat and Picasso’s 1939 gouache The Bather by the Sea. Other highlights include Matisse’s famous series Jazz and Picasso’s etchings for the Dream and Lie of Franco, as well as many linoleum cuts by both artists.”
Picasso and Matisse: The DIA’s Prints and Drawings
Until January 6, 2013
Detroit Institute of Arts/ DIA, 5200 Woodward Ave., Detroit, MI
