Category: United States

  • Ulysses S. Grant our 18th President

    Ulysses S. Grant our 18th President

    Quotes by President Ulysses S. Grant “Enfrancishment and equal rights should accompany emancipation”. “Although a soldier by profession, I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have never advocated it, except as a means of peace”. “The great bulk of the legal voters of the South…

  • HARLEM’S FAITH RINGGOLD

    HARLEM’S FAITH RINGGOLD

    Last night, a special tour of Faith Ringgold’s retrospective was offered at the New Museum by Artnoir. The works were stunning. Overwhelming at times. Everyone learned something new about Harlem’s Faith Ringgold. We highly recommend that folks see this show. The works inspired by France are worth seeing alone. There are…

  • Harriet Powers

    Harriet Powers

    Yesterday was National Quilting Day. And a person that needs a spotlight in the African American community is Harriet Powers. Considered the mother of the African American story quilt tradition, Harriet Powers (1837–1910) was well known when she made these works of art. Born into slavery in Madison County, Georgia, Harriet…

  • Noni Olabisi

    Noni Olabisi

    On this International Women’s Day, we share that revolutionary artist Noni Olabisi has died. She has created powerful murals in Los Angeles for decades. Noni Olabisi was an artist and muralist with over 25 years experience, receiving many awards in recognition of her talents. Noni was a winner of the coveted…

  • Project Backboard

    Project Backboard

      Project Backboard is a 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to renovate public basketball courts and install large scale works of art on the surface in order to strengthen communities, improve park safety, encourage multi-generational play, and inspire people to think more critically and creatively about their environment. St. Nicholas…

  • Honoring Joseph Elmer Yoakum

    Honoring Joseph Elmer Yoakum

      Over a late and brief career, Joseph Elmer Yoakum produced more than 2,000 immersive landscapes that chronicle the terrain of his nomadic youth with bold color and complex detail. Called to art by spiritual means in the last 10 years of his life, Yoakum never formally studied drawing, instead…

  • Philly’s Picture-Taking Man John W. Mosley

    Philly’s Picture-Taking Man John W. Mosley

      John W. Mosley was a self-taught photojournalist who extensively documented the everyday activities of the African-American community in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for more than 30 years, a period including both World War II and the civil rights movement. His work was published widely in newspapers and magazines including The Philadelphia Tribune,…

  • Remembering Charles Alston

    Remembering Charles Alston

    This coming Friday, West Harlem Art Fund will moderate a panel discussion on Mexican Muralism and its impact on American art. If you are familiar with the subject, you know that the movement was immortalized by Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Siqueiros. But their reach crossed North America…

  • Sidney Poitier — Class Act

    Sidney Poitier — Class Act

    He represented the best in all of us. Dignity, grace, courage, joy. We simply loved him. How many of us watched his films with pride. A defiant Black man who would shatter hate with love. His passing is piercing. How do we honor such a man? By living his example.…

  • Urban Art taken to a HIGHER GROUND

    Urban Art taken to a HIGHER GROUND

    Meet this amazing graphic artist! His collage style is breathtaking. Prince George’s County, MD Graphic Artist Broadie fell in love with art when he was a child in elementary school. The moment his teacher gave him a pair of scissors to start cutting shapes, he knew he wanted to create.…

  • Female Hoofers

    Female Hoofers

      To learn even more, you can now sign up as a member and get special videos, information and invitations to special events. Tap dance is an indigenous American dance genre that evolved over a period of some three hundred years. Initially a fusion of British and West African musical…

  • History of Tap Dance

    History of Tap Dance

    To learn even more, you can now sign up as a member and get special videos, information and invitations to special events. Tap dance is an indigenous American dance genre that evolved over a period of some three hundred years. Initially a fusion of British and West African musical and…

  • Remembering HUNG LIU

    Remembering HUNG LIU

      Hung Liu (刘虹) (February 17, 1948 – August 7, 2021) Hung Liu was born in Changchun, China in 1948, growing up during the Maoist regime. Initially trained in the Socialist Realist style, Liu studied mural painting as a graduate student at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing,…

  • Christine Nofchissey McHorse Navajo Ceramist Artist

    Christine Nofchissey McHorse Navajo Ceramist Artist

    McHorse’s mysterious works  called to mind the shapes of Brancusi. She died of the coronavirus at age 72. Born in Morenci, AZ, in 1948, Christine Nofchissey McHorse is a first generation, full-blooded Navajo ceramic artist. After marrying Joel McHorse, a Taos Pueblo Indian, she learned to make pots through his…

  • All News Works by Deborah Roberts

    All News Works by Deborah Roberts

      The first solo Texas museum exhibition by Austin-based artist Deborah Roberts, featuring all new works. Deborah Roberts (American, born 1962 in Austin, Texas) critiques notions of beauty, the body, race, and identity in contemporary society through the lens of Black children. Her first solo museum presentation in Texas, I’m,…

  • MAVIS IONA PUSEY

    MAVIS IONA PUSEY

    African-American artist Mavis Iona Pusey was born in Kingston, Jamaica on September 17, 1928, and grew up in the small rural village of Retreat. Her aunt taught her to sew and by the age of nine, Mavis was designing and making her own clothes. Throughout her youth what she wanted…

  • BIPOC AS CERAMISTS

    BIPOC AS CERAMISTS

    Kevin Snipes was born in Philadelphia, but grew up mostly in Cleveland, Ohio. He received a B.F.A. in ceramics and drawing from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1994. After leaving grad school at the University of Florida in 2003 Kevin has led a seemingly nomadic artistic life, constantly making…

  • SHANEQUA GAY ATLANTA ARTIST

    SHANEQUA GAY ATLANTA ARTIST

    Shanequa Gay, an Atlanta native, received her AA in Graphic Design and Fashion Marketing from the Art Institute of Atlanta (1999), a BA in Painting from The Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), summa cum laude (2015), and an MFA at Georgia State University. Gay was one of ten…

  • THE RISE OF CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN AMERICAN ART

    THE RISE OF CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN AMERICAN ART

    I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge – even wisdom. Like art. Toni Morrison LIVING BLACK ARTISTS Yamou…

  • BLACK — FEMALE — SUFFRAGETTES

    BLACK — FEMALE — SUFFRAGETTES

    On August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment which gave women the right to vote, passed in the United States. This year marks the centennial of that historic moment. And though Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton were the primary leaders of the movement, that vote would never had happened without…