Black Art Culture

Candace Hunter's Intentionality opens September 24th The Dan Ryan Expressway carries Chicagoans across the city every day. For artist Candace Hunter, it also marks a rupture. On September 24, Hunter opens Intentionality 1960, Whose Dreams?, an exhibition that asks viewers to look past the familiar story of urban development and confront the communities erased to make it possible. The project begins with a number: 50,831. It represents the estimated number of African Americans

Decadence Deux opened during Third Friday in Bridgeport. Top top middle: work by Eric Stephenson. Top row right: September Gray with work by Preston Sampson. Bottom row left: Marryam Moma and work by Kevin Okeith. Decadence Deux is open. September Gray Fine Art, in partnership with Pigment International, launched the second chapter of Decadence of Another Kind at the Bridgeport Art Center during the building’s Third Friday Open Studios. The exhibition brings together an inter

From top row middle - Artists Howard Simmons, Candace Hunter, Edo, Salome Jaffe and Jesse Howard. The inaugural fair opens at THE MART, October 7–10 Pigment International will exhibit at the first-ever Spectrum Chicago Show, October 7–10 at THE MART (formerly the Merchandise Mart) — a new fair joining Chicago's fall art calendar with an opening night preview and three days of public programming. Pigment's presentation features five artists, listed alphabetically: Edo, Jesse H

Top row middle D. Lamar Preston and Patricia Andrews-Keenan. Right - Gwen Yen Chiu and D. Lamar Preston, past Richard Hunt Award winners, in conversation with Christie's Steven Zick. Bottom row - Gwen Yen Chiu, Steven Zick of Christies and D. Lamar Preston. Middle: a maquette of Preston's work Gifted to Me. Right - Sculptor Eric Stephenson and Naomi Davis, Blacks in Green. Anniversary gala honored Richard Hunt Award winners at Theater on the Lake Chicago Sculpture Exhibit (CS

Middle row right - President of Columbia College Chicago Shantay N. Bolton. Bottom row - Reverend Wheeler Parker, Jr., foreground; background curator Sarah Elizabeth Lewis. An exhibition that imagines a life, not a loss Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago opened "If Emmett Till Lived: Freedom on American Ground" with an emotionally moving convening. The exhibition imagines the life Emmett Till might have lived had he safely returned home to Chicago,

French artist Frank Schroeder's work will be included in Decadence Deux at Bridgeport Art Center opening September 19th. This fall, Pigment International joins September Gray Fine Art for Decadence Deux, the highly anticipated second iteration of Decadence of Another Kind, opening at the Bridgeport Art Center. On view from September 19 through November 6, the exhibition brings together an intergenerational and international group of artists whose work moves across memory, mig

Top Row: Cultural Impact Award was given to Lavett Ballard; work by Dwight White and Marryam Moma. Middle Row: Pigment’s Allison Casselberry and Patricia Everett with Norman Teague; Cow Horn Sculpture by Teague, Paul Bacardi Smith’s Watermelanin. Third row: Chicago in Indy; Work by Lavett Ballard and Nyzere Dillon. The 6th Annual BUTTER Fine Art Fair returned to Indianapolis Labor Day Weekend, continuing its evolution as one of the country’s most consequential artist-centere

Issue VI of Pigment International's award-winning magazine issue lands this September, and it is one of our most ambitious editions yet. Inside, readers will find a profile of designer Norman Teague, whose furniture and architectural work continues to reshape how Chicago sees Black craftsmanship. The issue also spotlights Chicago artists connected to the Obama Presidential Center, tracing how the campus is emerging as a new anchor for the city's creative community on the Sout

Stephen Marc, Untitled, from Changing Chicago Project, 1988. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy: Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago. The Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) invites the public to a day of programming marking the opening of If Emmett Till Lived: Freedom on American Ground, an exhibition curated by Dr. Sarah Elizabeth Lewis and Reverend Wheeler Parker, Jr., Emmett Till's cousin, close friend, and last surviving witness to his 1955 k

Jane Carpenter Rock, Deputy Director, Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State continues its tribute to Betye Saar with a curator talk by Jane Carpenter-Rock, Deputy Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery. Carpenter-Rock wrote her doctoral dissertation on Saar's work and is the author of Betye Saar, part of the David C. Driskell Series of African American Art. Her talk arrives weeks after Saar's passing on July

Heads/Hearts/Hands by Candace Hunter and In the Land of the Free by Reggie McFly. Both works are headed to museum exhibitions. Flag reinterpretations from Candace Hunter snd Reggie McFly move to museum exhibitions Two artists whose work has moved through Pigment International's galleries are now commanding national attention. Candace Hunter, whose piece Heads/Hearts/Hands from Glory! Glory! — Pigment's exhibition reimagining the American flag through Black artists' eyes — has

Artists Jesse Howard, Edo, and Reggie McFly in conversation with D. E. Simmons to close out the exhibition Revolutionary at Vjosa Cafe. Revolutionary closed the way it opened — in conversation. At Vjosa Café & Events in Bridgeport, artists Jesse Howard, Reggie McFly and Edo joined Pigment International founder Patricia Andrews-Keenan and D.E. Simmons of Diaspora Rhythms for a closing-night talk that moved from craft to calling. Edo (Eddie Santana White) went deeper into his o

Phyliss North, Rhonda Sewell and Patricia Andrews-Keenan during the Museum Leaders Meet & Greet at the Vjosa Café in Bridgeport during Pigment International’s exhibition Revolutionary. On Friday, August 14, Pigment International welcomed a distinguished group of museum professionals and DEI practitioners to Vjosa Café & Events in Bridgeport for an intimate meet-and-greet focused on Black art, cultural leadership and the work of building more inclusive museum spaces. Organized

The Pigment International art team - Barrett Keithley, Patricia Andrews-Keenan, Brenda Dickerson, Amorion Bell and Phyliss North; Dickerson and Fred Hampton Jr. view the mural; Barrett Keithley and Ray Thompson, whose University of Iowa number is on the basketball court at Wharton Elementary School; Dickerson and her mother Delilah and with April Kates-Ellison with the Nubian Nine an d The Lights On Collective. (photo credit Doug Kenney) A ribbon cutting at Argo Park marked

What if the Black home could be read as a museum—one filled not with objects behind glass, but with the furniture we inherit, photographs we keep, textiles we make, books we read, and traditions we pass from one generation to the next? That question sits at the center of AfroBohemian Home: An Installation by Zsudayka Nzinga, opening September 2 at the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art at Colorado State University. Curated by Louise Cutler, the exhibition transforms the gallery in

Above: Norman Teague in conversation with Pigment International will be one of the featured artists at this year's Butter Art Fair; Bottom row: Bianca Marks will be a curator for Butter. Middle and right, Truss Chair and Ibaaka AKA Mule by Norman Teague Design Studios. (Teague image by Big_X_Tsu. Furniture images courtesy of Norman Teague Design Studio) Guest curator Bianca Marks helps shape an expanded Labor Day weekend fair in Indianapolis, as Teague's full profile debuts i

Edo will be in conversation with D. E. Simmons about his series C.O.L.O.U.R.S. exploring racism in animation this Friday at Vjosa Cafe. Board games, good company, and a conversation that matters — that's the lineup for Pigment International's Revolutionary Game Night on Friday, August 14, from 6 to 9 p.m. at Vjosa aCafe 1010 W. 35th Street in Bridgeport. Bring your competitive spirit for an evening of games, then settle in for a special artist talk with longtime Pigment colla

Improvisations in Color” brings new works by the Ethiopian-born painter to Oakland, marking the centennial of jazz legend John Coltrane OAKLAND, CA — Thelma Harris Art Gallery welcomes summer's close with its signature White Linen Afternoon on Saturday, August 22, from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m., celebrating the opening of Improvisations in Color: Wosene Worke Kosrof Celebrates Coltrane. The exhibition, on view through October 25, presents a new body of work by the internationally acc

Monetta White, executive director of MoAD (bottom right) visited Chicago last week Monetta White, Executive Director of the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco, brought her vision for Black artistic economic empowerment to Chicago this summer, meeting with Pigment International and a gathering of local artists and arts leaders, including Monique Brinkman-Hill, Executive Director of the South Side Community Art Center.  White's visit centered on building na

Seminal artist Betye Saar Betye Saar, the artist who turned cigar boxes, washboards, and family heirlooms into some of the most incisive statements in American art, died July 26 in her Laurel Canyon home, four days shy of her 100th birthday. For seven decades, Saar was assemblage's most fearless practitioner. She did not simply collect discarded objects; she indicted them. Her 1972 work The Liberation of Aunt Jemima seized a servile stereotype and armed it with a rifle and a