PIGMENT INTERNATIONAL HONORED AT BLACK ART LOVE AFFAIR FUNDRAISER
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2nd Annual Black Art Love Affair Fundraiser hosted by ILA Creative Studio was held at the Parkway Social Club on June 8th. The celebration was an evening for creatives, collectors, and art aficionados to honor and support Black art in Chicago.
Pigment International founder, Patricia Andrews-Keenan, was proud to join honorees Kahari Blackburn, Otez Gary and Malika Jackson at the event. Through educational programming and experiential events, ILA remains dedicated to recognizing and honoring Black artists in Chicago. Their idea to create a singular physical space for Black artists to connect, commune, and grow, has morphed into a model that’s providing multiple spaces and experiences for Chicago artists. Congrats to the team on a successful event.
THE DE YOUNG MUSEUM PRESENTS UGANDAN ARTIST LEILAH BABIRYE’S FIRST US SOLO MUSEUM EXHIBITION
We Have A History — artist Leilah Babirye’s (Ugandan, b. 1985) first solo museum exhibition in the US — speaks to the power of reclaiming identity and creating community through artistic practices. Through 12 sculptures exhibited alongside works from the historical African Art collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (the “Fine Arts Museums”), Babirye illuminates the connections between past and present and the evolving nature of African arts that is at the heart of the Fine Arts Museums’ African Art program. Inspired by the gender fluidity of a Dogon ancestral figure in the Fine Arts Museums’ African art collection and working with natural clay, wood and found materials Babirye has created three new sculptures for the exhibition.
Press Tour on Friday June 21, 2024, at 10 am. Please RSVP for the tour to press@famsf.org
The Exhibit opens June 22, 2024, and continues through June 22, 2025.
Read the entire release here.
BILL HODGES — 30 YEARS OF LIVING THAT GALLERIST’S LIFE
By P. Andrews-Keenan
Chelsea-based gallerist Bill Hodges clearly and unequivocally states his greatest challenge. Getting the great Black artists practicing between the 1950s — 1970s into museums. Think Romare Bearden, Augustín Cárdenas, Elizabeth Catlett, Eldzier Cortor, Sam Gilliam, Jacob Lawrence and Norman Lewis. He feels that the museum community has ignored the works of these artists, and none figures more prominently in his mission than Lewis. Hodges’ first exhibition, in 1993, featured the work of Bearden and Lewis. It came about because of his time selling Lewis’ work in partnership with Lewis’ widow, Ouida, beginning in 1991. She was interested in selling Lewis’ work in Japan, and Hodges took on the challenge. Realizing that being a resource within the art community came, in part, from being a reliable presence, representing a stable of artists, he opened his first establishment in ‘gallery row,’ along Manhattan’s 57th Street, the center of the mainstream gallery world for more than 50 years. Hodges was the only Black owner on the famous stretch, remaining there for 20 years before moving to his current location in Chelsea. He became a private art dealer in 1979 and has been a collector since 1976.
The New Jersey native and Rutgers grad majored in history and political science. He also took classes under artist Camille Phillips. “She told me I could get photos from (James) Van Der Zee for $25, and he’d sign them for me, so I went to see him. He lived at 7 Canal St. around the corner from Norman Lewis.” And so began the life of an art collector.
To read this story in its entirety get a copy of Pigment International’s 2024 Black Gallery Guide +
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BROTHERS BOSCOE AND GEOFFREY HOLDER LEFT KINDRED LEGACIES IN PAINTING AND PERFORMANCE
Now on view at London’s Victoria Miro through July 27.
