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“Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America,” which recently opened at the New Museum, is a terrific art show. I might have expected that, given a starry roster that includes Kerry James Marshall, Glenn Ligon, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, and Theaster Gates among its total of thirty-seven contemporary Black artists. But theme exhibitions normally repel me, shoehorning independent talents into curatorial agendas. What a difference in this case! “Grief and Grievance” is a brainchild of the Nigerian curator Okwui Enwezor, who, notably with his curation of the German mega-show Documenta, in 2002, and the Venice Biennale, in 2015, pried the international art world open for new art from Africa and Asia. He died of cancer in March, 2019, at the age of fifty-five, while planning the present show. The New Museum’s artistic director, Massimiliano Gioni, aided by Ligon and the curators Naomi Beckwith and Mark Nash, completed the task, faithful to
Black Artists Take Over New Museum In Stellar Exhibition On Racist Violence In America View all 27
The grief part of this stunning new exhibition is what hits you first, the devastation and mourning of Black lives lost to racist violence in America. The grievance component is a bit more subtle: those imagined injustices, often politically orchestrated, of white America terrified of losing its power, frequently manifested in white nationalism. The two are intertwined, of course, both in the nation right now and in the works of the 37 Black artists at this exceptional show at the New Museum on Bowery, which opened last week and runs until early June.
Exhibition at The New Museum brings together works that address Black grief
Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, 2021. Exhibition view: New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni.
NEW YORK, NY
.- The New Museum is proud to present Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, an exhibition originally conceived by Okwui Enwezor (1963-2019) for the New Museum, and presented with curatorial support from advisors Naomi Beckwith Massimiliano Gioni, Glenn Ligon, and Mark Nash. On view from February 17 to June 6, 2021, Grief and Grievance is an intergenerational exhibition bringing together thirty seven artists working in a variety of mediums who have addressed the concept of mourning, commemoration, and loss as a direct response to the national emergency of racist violence experienced by Black communities across America. The exhibition further considers the intertwined phenomena of Black grief and a politically orchestrated white grievance, as each structur