WE WELCOMED BACK 20,000 VISITORS

2022

Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks

10.20.21 - 2.27.22

Curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah, Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks, was the premier museum solo exhibition for Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo. Soul of Black Folks is a timely exploration into the varying strategies that Boafo employs within his practice to capture the essence of the Black figure. Variables such as COVID-19, the constant resistance against systemic oppression, and the commodification of Black bodies in the media are some of the issues that heighten this exhibition’s urgency.

Billie Zangewa: Thread for a Web Begun

10.20.21 - 2.27.22

Malawi-born, Johannesburg-based artist, Billie Zangewa’s first solo U.S. Museum e xhibition, Thread for a Web Begun, curated by Dexter Wimberly included e xamples of the artist’s work from the past 15 years, as well as new pieces made specifically for the show. Although many of the scenes depicted in Zangewa’s layered silk tapestries are autobiographical, there is a relatability that goes beyond her personal journey as an artist. Zangewa’s labor-intensive processes recall the historic implications of “women’s work” but remain a steadfast contemporary interpretation of lived experiences.

Beyond the Sky

10.20.21 - 2.27.22

Curated by Leila Weefur, Beyond the Sky was a presentation of four short films from a selection of contemporary African filmmakers. Each film moves seamlessly between the personal and metaphysical, connecting cinematic voices across the different regions of Africa. Finding comfort floating in uncertainty, these filmmakers pose questions some obvious, some hidden in an attempt at guiding us toward futurity. While maintaining allegiance to specific regional traditions, the images presented in this series reframe traditional African images into a new digital vernacular.

Presented Films

Kalu Oji - Beyond the Moon

Lebohang Kganye - Ke sale teng

Yo - Yo Gonthier - Burey Bambata

Tabita Rezaire - Deep Down Tidal

Sam Vernon: Impasse of Desires

3.31.22 - 9.18.22

Curated by Elena Gross, Sam Vernon: Impasse of Desires was a site-specific installation and solo exhibition which used Matt Richardson’s 2013 publication The Queer L imit of Black Memory as a critical entry point. Vernon draped the first-floor gallery and lobby of the museum with sheets of colored fabric creating a constellation of made and found images. Long sheets of colored textiles act as connective tissue, bringing together the museum’s internal and external publics, by creating a visual bridge between the museum’s lobby and the building’s facade. In Richardson’s introduction, he cites the photomosaic based on Chester Higgins Jr’s Young Girl from Ghana that adorns two and a half floors of the museum’s exterior street front as a troubling site of both celebration and erasure: while the mosaic offers a k aleidoscope of Black faces, familial structures, and community, it noticeably underrepresents non-normative gender and sexual expression.

David Huffman: Terra Incognita

Curated by Elena Gross, this exhibition showcased the extensive narrative that David Huffman has been designing since the early 1990s across a range of media including large-scale canvas, works on paper, ceramics, video, and printmaking. This work explored an Afrofuturistic landscape disrupting the canon of historical narrative painting with otherworldly horizons.

Elegies: Still Lifes in Contemporary Art

Curated by Monique Long, this group exhibition brought together an international group of artists who have disrupted or extended the traditional presentation of still lifes. The artists have appropriated the genre to create works within a framework of Black diasporic identities, histories, and collective experiences. Featured: Sadie Barnette, LaKela Brown, Elizabeth Colomba, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, David Antonio Cruz, Awol Erizku, Leslie Hewitt, Yashua Klos, Deana Lawson, Azikiwe Mohammed, Rashaad Newsome, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Devan Shimoyama, William Villalongo, and Brittney Leeanne Williams.

The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion

Curated by Antwaun Sargent and organized by Aperture, this exhibition highlighted the work of 15 contemporary fashion photographers—from London to Lagos, New York to Johannesburg— whose images presented radically new perspectives on the medium of photography and art, race and beauty, and gender and power. Featured: Campbell Addy, Arielle Bobb-Willis, Micaiah Carter, Awol Erizku, Nadine Ijewere, Quil Lemons, Namsa Leuba, Renell Medrano, Tyler Mitchell, Jamal Nxedlana, Daniel Obasi, Ruth Ossai, Adrienne Raquel, Dana Scruggs, and Stephen Tayo.