Art News & Updates

DRIFTING EN A MEMORY –

CHICAGO YOUTH ART CHALLENGE

CALLING ALL YOUNG ARTISTS: CHICAGO ART CHALLENGE 2024! DRIFTING EN A MEMORY (DREAM)!

Event - April 6, 2024 at The Study Hotel, University of Chicago

Are you a budding Basquiat or a future Frida Kahlo? Do you dream in colors, shapes and rhymes? We're thrilled to announce the inaugural Chicago Youth Art Challenge, inviting talented young artists from high schools across the Chicagoland area to showcase their creativity and passion for art!

DEADLINE MARCH 29TH, 2024

HARLEM RENAISSANCE AT

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM

The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism at the Metropolitan Museum features some 160 works of painting, sculpture, photography, film, and ephemera, exploring the comprehensive and far-reaching ways in which Black artists portrayed everyday modern life in the new Black cities that took shape in the 1920s–40s in New York City’s Harlem.  It explores the early decades of the Great Migration when millions of African Americans began to move away from the segregated rural South. The first art museum survey of the subject in New York City since 1987, the exhibition establishes the Harlem Renaissance and its radically new development of the modern Black subject as central to the development of international modern art.

GIANT AT THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM

Concrete jungles where dreams are made of precisely describes the atmosphere of GIANTS: Art from the DEAN COLLECTION of SWIZZ BEATZ and ALICIA KEYS. Grammy-Award winning producer Swizz Beatz and Grammy-Award winning singer and songwriter Alicia Keys opened the exhibit in early February at the Brooklyn Museum. 

“We want people to see themselves. We want people to feel inspired,” said Keys. “We want you to see the giants on whose shoulders we stand.” The exhibit features 37 of today’s most sought after contemporary artists from the Diaspora, among them Nick Cave, Ebony Patterson, Titus Kapher, Deborah Roberts, Lorna Simpson, Hank Willis Thomas, Derrick Adams, Tschabalala Self, Odili Donald Odita, Mickalene Thomas and Esther Mahlangu. Rarely seen landscapes by portrait painter Barkley Hendricks, done during his time in Jamaica, were surprising and delightful. Also featured are works from the couple’s extensive Gordon Parks Collection.  

MORE PHOTOS FROM

THE HARLEM FINE ART SHOW 16

Read the current issue of the HFAS Magazine that includes the centerpiece story penned by Pigment International’s founder Patricia Andrews-Keenan.

GOVERNOR PRITZKER VISITS SSCAC AS PART OF BRONZEVILLE'S OFFICIAL DESIGNATION AS A STATE OF ILLINOIS CULTURAL DISTRICT!

Governor J. B. Pritzker and Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton along with Alderman Pat Dowell; Alderman Lamont Robinson; and State Representative Kimberly DuBuclet visited the South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC) to formally announce that Bronzeville has been designated as a Cultural District by the State of Illinois! 

Launched in 2023, the State-Designated Cultural Districts program aims to uplift the unique contributions of historic cultural districts with the overarching goal of increasing economic development opportunities.

State-Designated Cultural Districts are communities, towns, or specific geographic areas that have a distinct shared historical and cultural identity that binds the community together. The intended purpose of the program is to encourage economic development; support the preservation and development of history and culturally significant structures, traditions, and languages; foster local cultural development and education; provide a focal point for celebrating communities' unique cultural identities; and promote equitable growth and opportunity without generating displacement.

THE UNIVERSE OF BEN JONES

Over his six-decade career, artist Ben F. Jones has focused on interconnections and relationships between global issues including politics, health, the environment, racism, and capitalism, among others. “The imagery is both figurative and abstract, interacting and affecting,” he says in a statement in the exhibition catalog. “We cannot solve our ecological, political, and even spiritual problems in the world if we fail to see the relationships among these things.”

This retrospective of the extraordinary artist presents many works—bold, insightful, and in a visual language all his own—that have rarely been exhibited or are on display here for the first time. Come see how Jones’s symbology has transcended global and local issues of ecology, technology, politics, and spirituality, making him the conscience of his generation and of today.

His works are currently on exhibition at the New Jersey City University Art Galleries through April 3, at The Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery.

Read this review from The Jersey City Times.

MONUMENTAL WOMEN FOR THE ARTS CHAPTER, AND THE SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM (SAAM)

You are cordially invited to join the Monumental Women for the Arts Chapter, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) in celebration of Women's History Month on Sunday, March 10 from 12 noon - 3:00 p.m. View works in the permanent collection by Black women artists and current exhibitions featuring: Composing Color: Art of Alma Thomas; Carrie Mae Weems: Looking Forward, Looking Back; and Fighters for Freedom:William H. JohnsonPicturing Justice.

Also visit the National Portrait Gallery portraits of Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Beyoncé,Octavia Butler, and more!   

A “Toast to Society Women” will be held at 2:00 p.m. where Debra Mahone, The Society’s National Recording Secretary and Stephanie Stebich, SAAM’s Museum Director will give remarks.

You may download and distribute the flier below. Members and friends in the DMV area are encouraged to attend. Please Register Here. 

Know the names of the women in our graphic? E-mail them to Valerie A. Cooper at vcooper1018@gmail.com for a special gift, a Fighters for Freedom: William H. Johnson Picturing Justice Exhibition Catalog. Exhibition opens March 8th. 

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