Tag Archives: Franklin Sirmans

GRIEF AND GRIEVANCE CURATORIAL ROUNDTABLE

As images from the civil rights era migrated in the American visual lexicon, some becoming icons… a shift also happened in the aesthetic understanding of what images do and how they function. American society has been saturated with images since the post-Second World War period, and artists growing up at that time were some of the first to turn a critical eye to the production of images and cast doubt on their narrative function…

Black artists understood that though Black people may be the subject of many images throughout U.S. history, those captured by and circulated within those images gave little or no consent. In addition, the Black body and its visual reception have been so predetermined by stereotype that their presentation may undermine even good intentions. — Naomi Beckwith*

To kick off the New Museum exhibition GRIEF AND GRIEVANCE—ART AND MOURNING IN AMERICA—the final show conceived by Okwui Enwezor—join Beckwith, Glenn Ligon, Mark Nash, and New Museum artistic director Massimiliano Gioni for a curatorial roundtable.

See link below to register for this online event.

GRIEF AND GRIEVANCE CURATORIAL ROUNDTABLE

New Museum

Tuesday, February 16.

4 pm on the West Coast; 7 pm East Coast.

See MEETING WORLDS—ON OKWUI ENWEZOR’S WORK, an online conversation featuring Ute Meta Bauer (the founding director of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore), Franklin Sirmans (the director of the Pérez Art Museum in Miami), Terry Smith (a professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at the University of Pittsburgh), and Octavio Zaya, an independent art critic and curator. New Museum director Massimiliano Gioni moderated the January 21 talk.

*Naomi Beckwith, “My Soul Looks Back in Wonder,” in Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America (New York: New Museum; London: Phaidon, 2020), 182.

From top: Naomi Beckwith, photograph by Maria Ponce, courtesy of the photographer, Beckwith, and MCA Chicago; Glenn LigonA Small Band (2015) installation, New Museum, 2021, neon, paint, and metal support, image © Glenn Ligon, courtesy of the artist, Hauser & Wirth, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, Thomas Dane Gallery, London, Chantal Crousel, Paris, and the New Museum; Garrett Bradley, Alone (2017), still, single-channel 35mm film transferred to video, sound, black and white, image © Garrett Bradley, courtesy of the artist and the New Museum; Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America (2020), conceived by Okwui Enwezor, cover image courtesy and © New Museum and Phaidon; Mark Nash, image courtesy of Nash; Massimiliano Gioni, courtesy of Gioni and Alain Elkann.

ON ENWEZOR

We are just beginning to realize what the loss of Okwui Enwezor means for the world of art. Okwui’s curatorial vision was informed by his articulate opposition against hegemonic powers, social injustice, and the continued exclusion of people of color. He was certainly one of the most inspiring and rigorous forces in the field of curating, who seamlessly linked the exclusive contemporary art industry with world politics. Equally important, his absence is deeply felt by many of us on a personal level, by all of those whom he worked with over the past three decades, by those inspired by his charisma, his ambition, and the way he used his position of power to radically shift the status quo wherever he worked. — Ute Meta Bauer

As a preview to the upcoming New Museum exhibition GRIEF AND GRIEVANCE: ART AND MOURNING IN AMERICA—the final project conceived by Okwui Enwezor—join Bauer, Franklin Sirmans, Terry Smith, Octavio Zaya, and New Museum Artistic Director Massimiliano Gioni for a discussion on Enwezor’s curatorial vision and life’s work.

See link below to register for the online conversation.

MEETING WORLDS—ON OKWUI ENWEZOR’S WORK

New Museum

Thursday, January 21.

5 pm on the West Coast; 7 pm East Coast.

From top: Okwui Enwezor, artistic director of Documenta 11, in Kassel, Germany, 2002, photograph by Werner Maschmann, image courtesy and © Documenta Archiv, Kassel; The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994, edited by Enwezor, cover image courtesy and © Prestel; Postwar: Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, edited by Enwezor, Katy Siegel, and Ulrich Wilmes, cover image courtesy and © Prestel; Enwezor (left), Ute Meta Bauer, Octavio Zaya, and Mark Nash in Kassel, 2002, photograph by Maschmann, courtesy and © Documenta Archiv, Kassel; El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale, edited by Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu, cover image courtesy and © Haus der Kunst, Munich; Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, cover image courtesy and © New Museum and Phaidon.