Acclaimed photographer, writer, filmmaker, and composer Gordon Parks (1912-2006) fought poverty and racism with his camera. As Life magazine’s first African American staff photographer, Parks developed into one of America’s finest photojournalists. Parks’s photo-essays for the magazine covered subjects ranging from Paris fashion shows, to the Black Panthers, to slum-dwellers in Rio de Janeiro. A documentarian and resolute advocate for the civil rights movement, Parks’s photographs bore witness to the collective efforts of Black public figures, politicians, and ordinary Americans for civil rights. Like J.D. Ojerikere in Nigeria, Parks portrayed an America struggling with rapid political, social, and cultural change.
This exhibition, mounted in honor of Parks’s 100th birthday, includes eight of his most significant photographs, which were donated to MoAD by the photographer himself.
On view at MoAD from June 20 to September 29, 2013.
J.D. 'Okhai Ojeikere: Sartorial Moments and the Nearness of Yesterday
June 20, 2013 – September 29, 2013
Sartorial Moments and the Nearness of Yesterday is the second in MoAD’s Curator’s Choice Series. Curated by Olabisi Silva, Director of the Contemporary Centre for Art, Lagos, this first showing of the work of Nigerian national treasure J.D. Ojerikere on the West Coast, is about preserving cultural traditions in the face of Nigeria’s change from colonial rule to independence. Ojerikere’s photographs, which date from 1955 to 2008, document traditional dress and hairstyles along with the Western-style adaptations that enabled the youth of Lagos to feel themselves part of the modern world. Many, Ojerikere included, feared that these sartorial transformations (that is, the Western fashions) would diminish the importance of Nigerian traditions and culture among the youth. Yet, as Ojerikere’s photographs show, traditional styles continued to be ever-present sartorial expressions of what it means to be Nigerian.
Sartorial Moments is the first of several exhibitions at MoAD that will examine the effects of African and Caribbean independence movements on Africans both in Africa and in the global diaspora. The next exhibition in the series, opening in fall 2013, is Cultivating Crosscurrents: African and Black Diasporas in Dialogue, 1960-1975.
On view at MoAD from June 20 to September 29, 2013.
Image: J.D. 'Okhai Ojeikere, untitled, 2008, 50.8 x50.8 cm
Cultivating Crosscurrents: African and Black Diasporas in Dialogue, 1960-1984
October 11, 2013 – January 20, 2014
At the turn of the 20th century, writers, intellectuals, artists, and students of the African and Black diasporas initiated ongoing dialogues between Blacks in the Americas, Africa, and the Caribbean, thus creating multiple evolving ideologies of self-definition and self-determination that continue to flourish into the present day. The Pan-African and Négritude movements spearheaded by leaders, artists, and writers of the diaspora emphasized culture as a means for holistic empowerment, and invited African people to define culture on their own terms and to seek ways to profit from thinking and acting globally.
Cultivating Crosscurrents employs the concepts of transnationalism and diaspora to trace the evolution and mutual influences of various Black ideologies and movements. Precursors of self-determination and nationalism explored in the exhibition include Pan-Africanism, the Caribbean diaspora and Marcus Garvey, and Négritude, leading up to a central focus on the decades of the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, when African nations won independence and the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Arts movements emerged and cemented countless lasting impressions that continue to inform contemporary scholars and artists.
Cultivating Crosscurrents explores five core themes:
• Precursors to Independence
• Diasporic Exchanges: Intellectuals Talking and Writing across Continents
• The Politics of Liberation and Independence in the African Diaspora (“The Year of Africa”)
• Activism: Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (SNCC, The Black Panthers)
• Transformations: The Black Arts Movement and “I Am Black, Beautiful, and Somebody”
In addition to numerous noteworthy works of art, Cultivating Crosscurrents makes extensive use of other relevant material culture to provide additional perspectives to the exhibition's central narrative, including memorabilia, seminal publications, and documentary photographs.
Curator’s Choice: The Ruth Waddy Sketchbook
October 11, 2013 – January 20, 2014
The Waddy Sketchbook
Consisting of 130 drawings by various artists, this unique document began as a common 8x10” sketchbook gifted by the artist Evangeline Montgomery to the artist and writer, Ruth Waddy (1909–2003) on her birthday in 1968. Inside the book, Montgomery wrote, “Have your friends fill up this book.” And, that’s exactly what she did. A year after that, Waddy, working with the esteemed curator Dr. Samella Lewis, wrote “Black Artists on Art”. Based in Los Angeles, Waddy and Lewis pioneered the study of black artists on the West Coast. From the moment she received the book, Waddy carried it to meetings and conferences wherever she was sure to run into artists. By 1981, there were more than 120 drawings.
A new acquisition by Los Angeles County Museum of Art where it is currently being digitized. Visitors will be able to turn virtual pages as they view copies of the sketches on the gallery walls.
Acclaimed photographer, writer, filmmaker, and composer Gordon Parks (1912-2006) fought poverty and racism with his camera. As Life magazine’s first African American staff photographer, Parks developed into one of America’s finest photojournalists. Parks’s photo-essays for the magazine covered subjects ranging from Paris fashion shows, to the Black Panthers, to slum-dwellers in Rio de Janeiro. A documentarian and resolute advocate for the civil rights movement, Parks’s photographs bore witness to the collective efforts of Black public figures, politicians, and ordinary Americans for civil rights. Like J.D. Ojerikere in Nigeria, Parks portrayed an America struggling with rapid political, social, and cultural change.
Sartorial Moments and the Nearness of Yesterday is the second in MoAD’s Curator’s Choice Series. Curated by Olabisi Silva, Director of the Contemporary Centre for Art, Lagos, this first showing of the work of Nigerian national treasure J.D. Ojerikere on the West Coast, is about preserving cultural traditions in the face of Nigeria’s change from colonial rule to independence. Ojerikere’s photographs, which date from 1955 to 2008, document traditional dress and hairstyles along with the Western-style adaptations that enabled the youth of Lagos to feel themselves part of the modern world. Many, Ojerikere included, feared that these sartorial transformations (that is, the Western fashions) would diminish the importance of Nigerian traditions and culture among the youth. Yet, as Ojerikere’s photographs show, traditional styles continued to be ever-present sartorial expressions of what it means to be Nigerian.