Katya Kazakina has a good story on the recent donation of two major works be black artist’s to MoMA:
The Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired more than 430 works by black artists since 2010, according to Ann Temkin, the chief curator of painting and sculpture.
“They’re part of a very rich and textured history that we weren’t really committed to exploring,” Temkin said. Now museums have to “literally pay for the fact that we weren’t as actively engaged in this a decade ago.”
This week, MoMA got a big break. Chris Ofili’s “The Holy Virgin Mary” — an elephant dung-adorned canvas depicting a black Madonna — entered the museum’s permanent collection, thanks to a gift from Cohen, a MoMA trustee.
The painting –made famous in 1999 when then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani tried to have it banished from an exhibit — fetched $4.6 million in 2015, an auction record for the British artist.
In December, MoMA also received “Tomorrow Is Another Day” — a 2016 painting by Los Angeles artist Mark Bradford — as a gift from Griffin, the founder of Citadel LLC.
Some additional acquisitions were detailed in a second article:
- “No Title (The Ugly American),” 1962/1964, a painting by Herve Telemaque. It was a gift of trustees Marie-Josee and Henry Kravis in honor of Jerry Speyer.
- “Sweet Thang (Lynn Jenkins),” 1970, a painting by Barkley Hendricks, depicting a black woman on a sofa blowing bubble gum. MoMA’s first work by the artist, who died last year, was a gift from trustees Glenn Dubin, Tony Tamer and Ronnie Heyman.
- “Leaning,” 1980, by Maren Hassinger, a sculptural installation made of 31 wire and rope units. Exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85″ last year, it was acquired by the Modern Women’s Fund and Heyman.
Wall Street Rush to Scoop up Black Art Sends Prices Sky High (Bloomberg)
Steve Cohen Donates Dung-Adorned Art That Giuliani Tried to Ban (Bloomberg)
