ECHO DELAY REVERB: American Art, Francophone Thought at the Palais de Tokyo traces how ideas associated with “French Theory”—from Barthes and Derrida to Foucault—have subtly shaped American art. Curated by Naomi Beckwith and collaborators, the exhibition shows how these concepts reverberated across studios and cultural spaces, appearing less as direct illustrations of theory and more as shifting echoes that artists absorbed, transformed, and set into motion.
The reopening of the Studio Museum in Harlem, after seven years of construction, arrives with dazzling alumni and collection exhibitions. Among the highlights is a 40-image photographic work, Art Is…, by the late, great Lorraine O’Grady. The series places viewers along Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard during the 1983 African American Day Parade, inviting us to witness the neighborhood’s vibrancy through O’Grady’s incisive lens.
The Palais de Tokyo’s Joie collective – Apprendre à flamboyer ! celebrates joy as a form of resistance and solidarity. Featuring artists like Lorraine O’Grady and Thomas Hirschhorn, the exhibition merges art and activism. O’Grady’s 1983 performance Art Is...—framing Harlem paradegoers as art—embodies this empowering call for collective engagement.
The Guardian, 2023. Veronica Esposito’s review of group exhibition, Inheritances, at the Whitney curated by Rujeko Hockley. Along with Ephraim Asili’s 2020 film ‘The Inheritance,” Hockley cites O’Gradys “Rivers, First Draft” as one of the major inspirations for the show as he sought to present challenging works of Black avant-garde art.
The Brooklyn Rail, 2022. Forecast Form — Gervais Marsh’s review of “Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora 1990s to Today” examines the metaphorical and literal fluidity of Black and Indigenous Caribbean diasporas. O’Grady’s The Fir-Palm and The Strange Taxi are highlighted as reminders of O’Grady’s Jamaican lineage.
Art in America, 2023. How Iconic Gallery Just Above Midtown Swapped Art History’s Lone Geniuses for Vibrant Community — Josie Roland Hodson reviews “Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces,” noting the range of featured artists which included frequent and better-known artists such as O’Grady alongside “those less familiar to the mainstream art press.”
Hyperallergic 2023. What Just Above Midtown Meant for Black Artists — Taylor Michael reviews “Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces at the Museum of Modern Art” which included stills from O’Grady’s Mlle Bourgeoise Noire as well as her most recent persona, The Knight.
Nancy Princenthal reviews Simone Leigh’s 2022 exhibit Sovereignty which includes her first debuted video, “Conspiracy” that features O’Grady.
In a review for the New York Times, Holland Cotter makes note of the similarities and differences between two concurrent exhibitions in New York City that highlight artists of Caribbean descent. “Juan Francisco Elso: Por América,” a solo exhibition at El Museo del Barrio is discussed alongside the group show “Sin Autorización: Contemporary Cuban Art.” Exhibited at Columbia University’s Wallach Art Gallery, “Sin Autorización” features Elso and O’Grady amongst other Afro-/Cuban artists.
Holland Cotter reviews Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces, which showcased the ground-breaking Black-owned gallery, JAM, that opened in 1974. In his review, Cotter recounts the gallery’s history and monumental works, including O’Grady’s seminal persona, Mlle Bourgeoise Noire which she debuted at JAM.
Aruna D’Souza offers historicizes the foundational years at Just Above Midtown, the gallery project of Linda Goode-Bryant, which platformed artists including David Hammons, Lorna Simpson, and Maren Hassinger early in their careers. D’Souza addresses the show’s goals to highlight the gallery’s history of the 1970s and 1980s, while also enlivening its archive as it remains active into the 2020s. For Goode-Bryant, the question of integrity arises: “Can JAM be JAM at MoMA?”
Curator and critic Jacopo Crivelli Visconti names Miscegenated Family Album, on view at Frieze New York in 2022, as “nothing less than one of the masterpieces of the 20th Century.”
In a review of We Wanted A Revolution, Garcia considers the art exhibition as a corrective method for recentering Black women “on the forefront of form and the avant-garde,” and in doing so, she calls for revisions to the art historical canon’s sole emphasis on European male avant-gardists. The article takes a firm stance that the patriarchy cannot be taken down without simultaneously dismantling systemic racism.
In a review of Soul of a Nation, Steven Thrasher praises O’Grady for “putting Harlem into focus,” suggesting that art can happen on the street – outside of the confines of the museum – embodied through her 1983 performance work “Art Is…”
Lovia Gyarkye considers how O’Grady’s performance persona Mlle Bourgeoise Noire,” featured in the We Wanted a Revolution exhibition, acted as a catalyst for a more inclusive feminist revolution. The article imagines the available potential in visibility, “if Black women were not just seen, but finally heard.”
Emily Colucci's review of "Blackness in Abstraction" highlights O'Grady's full-wall video "Landscape (Western Hemisphere)" as one of the exhibit's most successful pieces both for its embrace of multiple meanings of blackness and for its abstract evocation of landscape sounds and textures.
Cathy Lebowitz on "En Mas'" — Leibowitz discusses O'Grady's "Looking for a Headdress" video and installation as a mimicry of the relation of the diaspora to its originary culture and indicates that its informal density accomplishes a great deal efficiently.
Feature on "EN MAS': Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean" — Reviewer Rebecca Lee Reynolds displays keen appreciation of the format of O'Grady's "reaction video," her commission for "EN MAS," which opened at CAC New Orleans before its traveling tour to the National Galleries of the Cayman Isalnds and of The Bahamas, plus centers of the diaspora.
Animating the Archive: Black Performance Art's Radical Presence – Alexis Clements' review of "Radical Presence" at the Grey Art Gallery, NYU, discusses the ways in which O'Grady's photo-document installation of Mlle Bourgeoise Noire enables one to imagine at least in part what it might have been like to be present during the performance.
Hannah Feldman on This Will Have Been, MCA Chicago — This generally laudatory review of a groundbreaking exhibit on art of the 1980s features special attention on O'Grady's piece in the exhibit, Art Is…, seen as encapsulating the problematic of curator Helen Molesworth's strategy.
Malik Gaines — in frieze, “Looking Forward, Looking Back” — Gaines’s end-of-year review looks at Los Angeles and examines the blurring boundaries between art and entertainment. Its pointed commentary on The First and the Last of the Modernists’ image strategies was the most perceptive on the piece to date.
11 Hopped-Up Art World Anecdotes from “Max’s Kansas City” Book — When her rejected 1973 review of the night Bob Marley led in for Bruce Springsteen at Max’s was finally published, in an art book, it was a rare chance for two of O’Grady careers---rock critic and conceptual artist-- to meet, as in this artinfo.com piece.
A More Female and More Discreet Whitney Biennial. . . — Original Spanish, plus English translation, of article in Spain’s equivalent to the New York Times. The review contains a fuller-than-usual discussion of the significance of O’Grady’s installation.
Selected press on O’Grady in the Biennial — A compilation of 18 selected and conflicting mentions of Lorraine O’Grady’s piece in the 2010 Whitney Biennial press provides an opportunity to compare responses to The First and the Last of the Modernists and parse their differences.
Francesco Bonami, 2010 — Transcript excerpt of a two-minute section from the 8-minute interview in which Francesco Bonami, chief curator of the 2010 Whitney Biennial, speaks about O’Grady’s piece and the room it shared with Bruce High Quality Foundation.
‘Wack!’ The Art of Feminism as It First Took Shape — Opening of the first major museum show of feminist art at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Holland Cotter’s feature-length review was illustrated by four works, including Mlle Bourgeoise Noire.
Holland Cotter, Art in Review — A review of three simultaneous shows presented by the Daniel Reich Gallery, NY, which singles out O'Grady for special mention in the third, "Between the Lines," curated by artist Nick Mauss at the Chelsea Hotel.
Wellesley’s ‘Body’ also has a brain — Review of The Body As Measure, The Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, Sep 23 – Dec 18, 1994. Refers to O’Grady’s first exhibition of Miscegenated Family Album as “the most extraordinary work in the show.”
“Dialogues,” Just Above Midtown Gallery — Patricia S. Jones discusses a downtown gallery performance series at Just Above Midtown, NYC, Oct 1980 in a late 70s-early 80s annual journal. Article makes special note of O’Grady’s first performance of Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline.