Tag: Lorna Simpson

One Fine Show: ‘Multiplicity’ at the Phillips Collection

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Lauren Halsey, Loda Land, 2020. Courtesy David Kordansky / Photo Jeff McLane / © Lauren Halsey

Welcome to One Fine Show, where Observer highlights a recently opened exhibition at a museum outside of New York City—a place we know and love that already receives plenty of attention.

Collage is a virile form first associated with modernism that has endured a number of ‘posts,’ the first being postmodernism and post-postmodernism. It remains relevant in our current age, even though we’re pretty much post-movements in general. Collage borders on post-art, though, dragging the world into the work, sometimes to the point that you wonder about the necessity of creation at all. Experience seems to offer so many readymades. As the jingle that obsesses Leopold Bloom goes: “What is life without/ Plumtree’s Potted Meat?/ Incomplete”

So widespread is collage that a soon-to-close show at the Phillips Collection, “Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage,” showcases the technique through a specific lens but still spans three floors in two buildings. It brings together more than fifty works to explore how the African American story is constructed from a great deal of diverse material. The show features pieces by forty-nine artists including Mark Bradford, Lauren Halsey, Rashid Johnson, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Tschabalala Self, Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas and Kara Walker.

SEE ALSO: Asia Week New York Is Back for Autumn With a Smaller Program of Exhibitions and Auctions

Halsey has to be one of the hottest names in the art world at the moment, fresh from last year’s commission on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and her columns at this year’s Venice Biennale, which borrowed from both the Hathoric discipline and Shrek. Her collages here ace the assignment, resembling at first glance the kind of magazine collages you might have made in elementary school, if you’d had a supernatural sense of color and theme. Loda Land (2020) probes the kind of visuals one encounters in South Central to weave a narrative about space, aliens and humanity, showing no more of her hand than the scissors she holds. A similar work, betta daze (loda land) (2021) introduces Hotep culture and pyramids to this conversation.

Born in 1943, Howardena Pindell might be slightly less buzzy but employs a similarly compelling interplay of colors between seemingly unrelated bits of subject matter, hers connected only slightly more by having been drawn. Shaped like brains, her pieces feel naturally occurring, though every inch of them has been made by hand. Lorna Simpson’s contributions merge the pop cultural and natural, with pin-up gals from the 1960s who are becoming star charts on a cheeky background that is probably legally distinct from Yves Klein’s blue.

Great work has been done with basketball art by Jeff Koons and Paul Pfeiffer, but in this show, Tay Butler manages to achieve what they do in Hyperinvisibility (2022) with far less technical support. In it, he cuts up a familiar image of Michael Jordan about to slam dunk and somehow turns all the little pieces so that the man has vanished. Perhaps this is why artists of all races and persuasions keep returning to collage. It is so simple and so effective no matter the era.

“Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage” is on view at the Phillips Collection through September 22.

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Dan Duray

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September 14, 2024
Theaster Gates Will Help Guide an Expanding Forman Arts Initiative

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Artist Theaster Gates is partnering with Forman Arts Initiative. Holger Hollemann/picture alliance via Getty Image

Theaster Gates, the American artist known for his wide-ranging social practice, sculptures and installations, will use his expertise in community cultural programming to help guide a new project from the Philadelphia-based Forman Arts Initiative (FAI) in a new multi-year partnership. The organization, founded in 2021 by art collectors Michael Forman and Jennifer Rice, has acquired nearly an entire block in Philadelphia’s East Kensington neighborhood that FAI plans to transform into an arts center complete with a gallery and an emphasis on community activation.

Gates will work FAI’s director Adjoa Jones de Almeida, the Brooklyn Museum’s former deputy director of learning and social education, to shape the renovation and programming of the new campus. Located across three buildings and two lots, the 100,000-square-foot site will open gradually over the next two years. “This collaboration with Adjoa—who also comes from an art and community engagement background—gives us both an opportunity to build on the lessons we’ve learned from our previous respective experiences, and to develop a unique model for what a community-grounded, globally-relevant art space can look like,” said Gates in a statement.

An interior view of one of the FAI campus buildings. Photo: Isabel Kokko/Courtesy Forman Arts Initiative

Gates has pursued similar projects in the past. Through his Rebuild Foundation, the artist has spent years acquiring abandoned properties across Chicago and turning them into creative community centers for an initiative known as the Dorchester Projects, often using scrap materials to create new artwork that generates additional funds for the project. In 2021, the Rebuild Foundation partnered up with Prada to create the Dorchester Industries Experimental Lab, a Chicago-based three-year incubator emphasizing designers of color. There’s also Gates’ 2016 acquisition of the city’s shuttered St. Laurence Elementary School, which is set to transform into an arts incubator complete with studios, classrooms and labs.

SEE ALSO: Matisse, Maillol and One Ebullient Evening: Inside MoMA’s 2024 Party in the Garden

This won’t be the first time the artist has worked with FAI, which helped fund his 2022 installation Monument in Waiting at Drexel University and counts works by the artist among its collection. “Since meeting Theaster over seven years ago, Michael and I have been continually impressed by his expansive exploration of history, especially Black and Brown history, through social practice, performance, land art, and exquisitely crafted sculptures,” said Rice in a statement.

What is FAI’s place in Philadelphia’s art scene?

FAI’s current initiatives include its grantmaking program Art Works in partnership with the Philadelphia Foundation, which will distribute $3 million in funding over five years to community artists and organizations across Greater Philadelphia. As of last year, the organization partnered up with Mural Works to establish Public Works, a residency program that places artists with government agencies to develop artwork. FAI’s star consultants include board members like artist Rashid Johnson and expert advisors like Adam Pendleton and Jessica Morgan of Dia Art Foundation.

Adjoa Jones de Almeida, Michael Forman and Jennifer Rice at an event celebrating the new campus. Photo: Isabel Kokko/Courtesy Forman Arts Initiative

FAI’s new campus will include a gallery space to showcase the private art collection of Forman and Rice. Artists including Cecily Brown, Cindy Sherman, Sam Gilliam, Mark Bradford, Alma Thomas, Romare Bearden, Gordon Parks, Kerry James Marshall and Lorna Simpson are represented in the holdings, alongside Philadelphia-based artists like Roberto Lugo and Alex da Corte. Operating as a nontraditional gallery, the artworks will be utilized in rotating exhibitions, public programs and partnerships with schools and youth development organizations.

Outdoor spaces and community engagement rooms at FAI’s new site will open later this year, followed by a larger programmatic space and gallery in 2026. Renovations will begin this summer, with campus design aided by architectural firms DIGSAU and Ian Smith Design Group. Meanwhile, the organization will speak with residents, leaders and activists across West Kensington and Philadelphia for input on how to utilize additional spaces to best meet the needs of local communities.

“Since its founding, collaboration and dialogue with Philadelphia’s diverse communities have been central to how FAI supports the city’s cultural landscape, and those are the principles that will guide the vision for what this campus will become,” said Jones de Almeida in a statement. “We understand that through this dynamic collaboration with Theaster along with the rich network of artists and communities already engaged with FAI, we have the potential to create something really unique for Philadelphia.”

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Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

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June 5, 2024
On Arts Philanthropy: Why Everyone Wants to Be Komal Shah

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Komal Shah in front of a painting by Elizabeth Murray. Photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

This February saw the death of Lord Jacob Rothschild, a philanthropist who did much for the arts in his lifetime and had recently spoken out about how disappointed he was to find that today’s wealthiest philanthropists are “not as interested in art as they once were.” His frustration is one shared by many organizations and artists alike who cannot understand why it is such an uphill struggle to convince, say, the Silicon Valley tech community, of the value the arts can have in a society.

One answer is to acknowledge, and perhaps even embrace, the fact that being involved with the arts can be a lot of fun, highly social and often, very glamorous. Lord Rothschild, for all the work he did for the arts, did not project fun and glamour. Hence the appeal of a new generation of philanthropic role models who are young, glamorous and even a little bit sexy. We’ve entered the era of philanthropists like Komal Shah, who are redefining what it means to support the arts.

For the past year, Komal Shah has been the collector du jour in art world circles. In 2023, the foundation she and her husband run launched a catalogue of their personal art collection titled “Making Their Mark: Art by Women in the Shah Garg Collection.” This was followed in November by an eponymous exhibition in New York, which is set to close at the end of March.

Shah has seemingly struck a chord in the art world. Not only do influential thinkers surround her—the catalogue was edited by curators Mark Godfrey (formerly of Tate Modern) and Katy Siegel (of SFMOMA), and Cecilia Alemani, Artistic Director of the 2022 Venice Biennale, curated the exhibition—but every media outlet from the New York Times to Harper’s Bazaar to the Financial Times has interviewed her and continues to court her to give keynote speeches. We are often asked by prospective clients who want to establish themselves as patrons of the arts, whether they, too, can be like Komal Shah. “What do I have to do? How much do I have to give? Who do I need to collaborate with?”

SEE ALSO: What’s Missing from the Art World? Giving Back

While it might seem superficial to some traditionalists that others would want to mirror Shah’s limelight, we believe there are two important lessons to be learned. First, whatever Shah is doing is encouraging others to take an interest in arts philanthropy, and that’s a good thing. Second, Shah’s rise did not just happen overnight.

It was over twelve years ago that Shah first became a trustee of the Asia Art Museum in San Francisco. Since then, she has gradually developed her giving and collecting, largely out of the public eye. In 2014, she joined the Director’s Circle at SFMoMA and helped fund acquisitions. After a few years, she became a trustee of SFMOMA and also the Tate Americas Foundation. She has provided exhibition support at the Hirshhorn Museum, backed Cecilia Alemani’s main exhibition at the 2022 Venice Biennale, and perhaps most interestingly, created the “Artists on the Future” annual conversation series at Stanford University featuring leading women in the arts like Lorna Simpson, Thelma Golden and Lynda Benglis. The point is that Shah had dedicating herself to the arts long before much of the world took notice—before magazines started asking for interviews, before the ‘Shah Garg Collection’ started to be mentioned on artist’s CVs and before she was included in ArtNews’ list of Top 200 Collectors.

Shah may have flown under the radar for so long because Silicon Valley, where she is based, has long been a blind spot for the art world. But beyond that, what the story shows is that it took over a decade of consistent engagement and dedication for others to see what she was doing and to want to emulate it.

There is a real need today for more positive role models for future philanthropists in the arts. Arguably, any nation that wants to give a real boost to its cultural landscape could do a lot worse than to assemble a council of experienced and dedicated philanthropists and development specialists to implement PR strategies to make arts philanthropy ‘cool’ again. Shah’s journey would be an ideal case study.

But although Lord Rothschild and Komal Shah seem about as far apart as two philanthropic icons can be, they both share important traits: passion, patience and persistence. You don’t simply wake up as Komal Shah; you grow, through years of commitment, into a role that shapes the future of the arts.

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Aurelie Cauchy and Leslie Ramos

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March 22, 2024