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 Ligon, A 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.