Rivers and Just Above Midtown, 2013, 2015
Text read at MOMA's Now Dig This! symposium — A meditation on why Rivers, First Draft might not have existed without the Just Above Midtown Gallery’s challenging and supportive environment.
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My 1980s, Art Journal 2012
Artist feature, CAA Art Journal, Summer 2012 — Based on her lecture in conjunction with the exhibit This Will Have Been: Art, Love and Politics in the 1980s, the article puts several early works in historical context and explains O'Grady's reverse trajectory from "post-black" to "black."
Mlle Bourgeoise Noire 1980-81, Synopsis 2007
Posted to the moca.org WACK site — O’Grady posted this brief synopsis of the performance and its background on the WACK! exhibit’s excellent website. Significantly, she also posted 13 largely unknown photos-with-captions documenting the performance, which historically had been victim to two iconic images. Lacking a full context, they had become empty signifiers.
Mlle Bourgeoise Noire and Feminism, 2007
WACK! audio statement, published in Art Lies #54, Summer 2007 — For WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, the first major museum exhibit of feminist art, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in L.A., O’Grady was asked to record an audio statement for the cell-phone tour to explain how her piece related to the show’s theme.
Mlle Bourgeoise Noire and Feminism #2, 2007
WACK! gallery talk, published in Art Lies #54, Summer 2007 — As part of her gallery talk for WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution at MOCA, LA, O’Grady read this statement inspired by Marsha Meskimmon’s important catalogue essay, in which the theoretical underpinning for the show’s historic statement of including 50% non- U.S. artists had been laid out.
re Art Is. . ., to Moira Roth, 2007
Unpublished email exchange — During an e-mail exchange in which they were sharing ideas and work, O'Grady sent Roth a copy of Lucy Lippard's review of Art Is. . . . Roth's questions prompted O'Grady to elaborate on the making and meaning of the performance.
The 1980s: An Internet Conference, 2005
Moderated online by Maurice Berger — O’Grady’s replies to Berger’s questions, both reproduced here, were extensive. The conference, with 30 posters and hosted on the Georgia O’Keefe Museum website, provided an opportune moment to re-think her 80s work in its larger historical context.
Studies for Flowers of Evil and Good, 1998
Wall statement for exhibit at Thomas Erben Gallery, Soho — Written for the first exhibit of “Studies #3 and 4 for Flowers of Evil and Good” at Thomas Erben Gallery, NYC, this discussion of the father of modernism Charles Baudelaire and his Haitian common-law wife Jeanne Duval, as well as Picasso and O’Grady’s mother Lena, places their relationships in the postmodernist moment.
Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline, 1997
Art Journal, College Art Association — In this article for Art Journal, Winter 1997, the special issue on performance edited by Martha Wilson, O’Grady focuses first on Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline, then discusses its relationship to Miscegenated Family Album, alluding to the advantages and disadvantages of the move from performance to photo installation.
Thoughts on Diaspora and Hybridity, 1994
Unpublished lecture, Wellesley College — Written shortly after the “Postscript” to “Olympia’s Maid,” this lecture delivered to the Wellesley Round Table, a faculty symposium on Miscegenated Family Album, takes a retrospective look at O’Grady’s earlier life and work through the prism of cultural theory.
diaspora Ancient Egypt Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline sibling rivalry Olympia's Maid Wellesley College Gayatri Spivak artistic process post-modernism black female subjectivity performance art 1994 hybridity historiography The Dual Soul nature vs culture autobiography the Caribbean Miscegenated Family album race and class
Performance Statement #3, 1983
Unpublished statement, for Tony Whitfield — A letter to Tony Whitfield in preparation for Just Above Midtown’s Afro- Pop catalogue interview is O’Grady’s most self-conscious to that point. Experiencing a lack of clear precedents for her work, in it she attempts to theorize her relationship to performance art and the paucity of role models, and to face the question of the audience for black avant-garde art.
Performance Statement #2, 1982
Unpublished statement, for Judson Memorial Church, unsent — In writing a proposal to perform Rivers at Judson Memorial Church, a venue with important avant-garde history, O’Grady unexpectedly reached greater clarity on the spiritual aspects of her work, especially its forms.
Rivers, First Draft, 1982
Working script — O’Grady’s most autobiographical performance was a “three-ring” simultaneous narrative performed one time only in the Loch section of Central Park on August 18 for “Art Across the Park,” curated by Gilbert Coker and Horace Brockington. This script, redrafted until the day of performance, and a set of photo-documents are the only remains.
Performance Statement #1, 1981
Unpublished statement, for Lucy Lippard — O’Grady early on felt the need, and was asked, to explain herself —as in this reply to a request by Lucy Lippard on politics in art. Lippard, curating “ACTING OUT: The first political performance art series,” had invited her to perform. The letter dated 1.1.81 addressed practical and other issues and became her first statement on performance art.
Mlle Bourgeoise Noire at JAM, 1980
High Performance #13, Artist’s Chronicle — Her first submission to a performance art journal was a description of Mlle Bourgeoise Noire’s earliest appearance, a guerrilla action at Just Above Midtown, the country’s only black avant-garde art gallery.
The New York Times, 2024
Lorraine O’Grady (1934–2024), the conceptual and performance artist who transformed how audiences understand race, gender, and identity, died at 90. Beginning her art career at 45, she created groundbreaking works like Cutting Out The New York Times and championed Black female subjectivity, while her incisive writing and performances challenged systemic erasure and segregation in the art world.
Hyperallergic, 2024
Lorraine O’Grady (1934–2024), the trailblazing conceptual artist, used performance, collage, and writing to confront the art world’s racial and gender hierarchies. From her first collages in Cutting Out the New York Times to the fearless persona Mademoiselle Bourgeoise Noire, O’Grady challenged Black artists and institutions alike, blending wit, audacity, and Black feminist insight to transform how audiences see identity, creativity, and self-expression.
Los Angeles Times, 2024
Lorraine O’Grady (1934–2024), a one-of-a-kind conceptual artist, challenged racism, sexism, and cultural hierarchies through fearless performances, photography, and writing. After early careers as an economist and rock critic, she turned to art in her 40s, creating provocative works like Mlle Bourgeoise Noire. A true risk-taker, O’Grady redefined the boundaries of art and identity, leaving an indelible mark on contemporary culture.
CNN Style, 2024
Lorraine O’Grady (1934–2024), an indefatigable conceptual artist whose work critiqued definitions of identity, died in New York on Friday aged 90. O’Grady confronted the structures of race, gender, and class while celebrating self-definition, dialogue, and the humanity at art’s core.
ARTnews, 2024
Lorraine O’Grady (1934–2024), a pioneering conceptual and performance artist, used her work to challenge racism, sexism, and class hierarchies while centering Black women’s voices. Known for her powerful persona Mlle Bourgeoise Noire and her iconic performance Art Is . . ., O’Grady redefined how identity, language, and art intersect in the fight for visibility and change.
Artforum, 2024
Lorraine O’Grady (1934–2024) was a groundbreaking conceptual and performance artist whose work confronted race, gender, and power with incisive wit and emotion. From Mlle Bourgeoise Noire to Art Is . . ., her art and writing redefined Black female subjectivity and inspired generations to see themselves as part of art’s narrative.
Forbes, 2024
Forbes, 2024. Chad Scott reports on O’Grady’s “Both/And” exhibit at the Davis Museum of Wellesley College. As an alum of Wellesely, O’Grady’s exhibit and accompanying archival materials offers a unique experience for students to learn about the journey of a former student forging their own path in the art world.
Wellesley College Conceptualism hybridity both/and black avant-garde solo exhibition Rivers First Draft the knight Mlle Bourgeoise Noire Black artists Art Is... 2024 Miscegenated Family album Forbes Boston Davis Museum performance performance art Western modernity black female subjectivity race and class
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, 2024
The Momentary, 2024. To commemorate the acquisition of “Untitled: Mlle Bourgeoise Noire,” by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Larissa Ramey examines O’Grady’s presentations of Black womanhood and identity within her work which sheds light on the intricate intersection of race and gender in contemporary society.”
Winston-Salem Journal, 2022
Tom Patterson forms a based chronology of O'Grady's diverse range of careers. He notes her positions as an intelligence analyst for the federal government and a freelance writer for Rolling Stone, all of which she held before she was 40 years old. He studies her persona “Mlle Bourgeoise Noire” in her pivot to start an art practice in the latter half of her life.
The New York Times, 2022
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.
Hyperallergic, 2022
Ela Bittencourt delivers polished prose after visiting Body Is The Ground of My Experience on view at Alexander Gray Associates in 2022. Notably, she praises O’Grady’s hybrid mode of making critique into a pleasurable venture.
performance art colonialism art history critical race theory cultural criticism photomontage both/and diptych Body is the Ground of My Experience critique photography historiography retrospective Dracula and the Artist erasure/invisibility The Fir-Palm 2022 Dada risk Western binarism counterculture Olympia's Maid Fluxus black female subjectivity New Museum Black feminism
Triad City Beat, 2022
Sayaka Matsuoka reviews Both/And, noting that the retrospective not only presents O’Grady’s illustrious career, but shows her penchant for self-reflection and forward movement of her work.
Boston retrospective New Museum Weatherspoon Art Museum performance art Brooklyn Museum Landscape (Western Hemisphere) The Village Voice 1983 Rolling Stone becoming an artist process black avant-garde western cultural hegemony recuperation Rivers First Draft 2022 Announcement of a New Persona (Performances to Come!) photo-installation Jamaica Announcement of a New Persona Mlle Bourgeoise Noire colonialism Art Is... both/and
CCA Newsroom, 2021
The launch of The Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art’s “Lorraine O’Grady Film Club,” which began with Julie Dash’s short film Illusions.
Observer, 2021
Anni Irish offers an overview of O’Grady’s art practice in consideration of her retrospective, Both/And, focusing on key conceptual stakes, such as the artist’s interest in language as form.
Cutting Out CONYT Art Is... Wellesley College art institutions Miscegenated Family album Conceptualism School of Visual Arts Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline Jamaica cat o’nine tails art-world racism both/and Caribbean retrospective performance art Brooklyn Museum interdisciplinary The Village Voice hybridity other media Rolling Stone the Black and White Show becoming an artist Announcement of a New Persona (Performances to Come!) Just Above Midtown erasure/invisibility 2021 Mlle Bourgeoise Noire Cutting Out The New York Times
Art in America, 2021
Christina Sharpe writes a crucial essay upon the publishing of Lorraine O’Grady’s collected writings and interviews, entitled Writing in Space, suggesting that the artist’s “fierce intelligence, wit and humor, curiosity, anger” is the grist for social revolution.
diaspora Egypt coloniality writing in space Conceptualism literature Olympia's Maid Black feminism William Pope. L art-world racism both/and hybridity performance art Brooklyn Museum black avant-garde displacement formalism diptych becoming an artist 2021 political art abstraction practice Mlle Bourgeoise Noire western cultural hegemony anti-Blackness Art Is... poststructuralism conversation aesthetics museums
Artforum, 2021
O’Grady’s retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, Both/And, receives a sincere note of respect on Jack Bankowsky’s top ten exhibitions seen in 2021.
Duke Up, 2020
For Those Who Will Know—In her introduction for O’Grady’s “Writing in Space,” the first collection of the artist’s writing, Aruna D’Souza illuminates the throughline of forward-thinking found in O’Grady’s groundbreaking art. Resisting the simple and rigid classifications that box in many women and Black artists, O’Grady has continuously complicated and challenged cultural notions of binarism. This provocation has taken form in all modes of her practices—from her seminal performance of alter ego Mlle Bourgeoise Noir to the recurrent diptychs bridging unexpected figures like Michael Jackson and Charles Baudelaire. D’Souza delineates how these works are foregrounded by O’Grady’s training as a writer.
black female subjectivity Mlle Bourgeoise Noir writing in space western cultural hegemony Body Is the of My Experience Flowers of Evil and Good Cutting Out The New York Times hybridity Cutting Out CONTY The Clearing Village Voice the Black and White Show Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline Rolling Stone black avant-garde Olympia's Maid Aruna d’Souza cultural criticism performance art 2020 diptych Landscape (Western Hemisphere) Iowa Writers Workshop RIVERS archive First Draft Miscegenated Family album Linda Goode Bryant Black artists Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution histography diaspora black women artists
Wellesley Magazine, 2017
April Austin offers a detailed genealogy of O’Grady’s art career – specifically emphasizing the formative years spent at her alma mater, Wellesley College – on the occasion of O’Grady donating her archive to the College’s library.
Hyperallergic, 2017
Upon the opening of the group exhibition We Wanted A Revolution, Jessica Bell Brown celebrates the Black female artists-activists who made space to create their own art world in the 1970s and 80s, including Lorraine O’Grady, Linda Goode-Bryant, and Senga Nengudi. Brown reminds her audience that the work doesn’t stop at this exhibition; she strongly urges museums to acquire the exhibited pieces into their permanent collections.
performance art Maren Hassinger Kellie Jones Linda Goode Bryant 1960s Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980 Harlem Women’s Liberation Toni Morrison Studio Z 1970s Senga Nengudi AIR Gallery Just Above Midtown 2017 Black liberation black avant-garde black women artists Women Students and Artists for Black Liberation Mlle Bourgeoise Noire black writers protest 1980s Brooklyn Museum AfriCOBRA white feminism radicalism Combahee River Collective art-world racism We Wanted A Revolution Eileen Harris Norton
Frieze, 2016
Frieze, 2016. In an essay interrogating uses of racial representation and depiction in photography, Evan Moffitt highlights O’Grady’s “Art Is…” 1983 performance which used a literal frame to metaphorically reframe thoughts on what constitutes art and who is allowed to participate in its creation.
Stedelijk Studies #3, 2016
"Frame Me": Speaking Out of Turn and Lorraine O'Grady's Alien Avant-Garde — In the first major academic article on O'Grady, Stephanie Sparling Williams, using both the definition of "alien" as stranger and the Brechtian "alienation effect," provides a first line of theorization, stating: "As both alien and avant-garde, [it paves] the way for these two terms to be theorized in close proximity as a distinctive position from which to deploy strategic visibility and voice."
Alexander Gray Associates, 2015
Published by Alexander Gray Associates, the catalogue of Rivers, First Draft includes forty-eight images of the 1982 performance O’Grady created for the public art program, “Art Across the Park.” The catalogue provides an in-depth look at O’Grady's work, featuring visual documentation of her performance along with writings by the artist providing insight into her creative process and art practice.
Interview with Amanda Hunt, 2015
Studio Museum in Harlem Magazine, Summer/Fall issue — Hunt, the curator of O'Grady's solo exhibit of "Art Is..." at the SMH, discusses with her the images the artist still finds most intriguing, her process of gathering the images and more than a quarter of a century later organizing them into a new art work. Also touched on are the assembling of the performers and how they helped shape the piece.
Hyperallergic on Art Is…, 2015
Louis Bury on "Art Is..." — Bury's lengthy and magisterial review is a model of intellectual attention to what is being seen — both inside and outside the frame. Beginning with the freedom of the piece's title, it examines framing as form, content and metaphor, and illluminates police presence and the relation of viewer to viewed.
burnaway.org, 2015
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.
Wellesley Magazine, 2013
Lisa Scanlon on O'Grady's archive at Wellesley College — Associate editor Scanlon, writing on the newly opened Lorrraine O'Grady Papers, the College's first major alumnae archives, calls the collection a means to preserve the records of the artist's "permanent rebellion."
2012 Just Above Midtown art market autobiography Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution Mlle Bourgeoise Noire the Caribbean Miscegenated Family album video art diaspora sibling rivalry Olympia's Maid Wellesley College art-world racism performance art black female subjectivity Landscape (Western Hemisphere) BodyGround
Art Fag City, 2012
Alana Chloe Esposito, Unnatural Attitudes — A sensitive summary of O'Grady's biography and its effect on her art, Esposito's piece sees the work as emerging from the artist's pressure to understand and become herself.
BodyGround The First and the Last of the Modernists 2012 Just Above Midtown Charles Baudelaire and Jeanne Duval autobiography the Caribbean Mlle Bourgeoise Noire video art diaspora mother art-world racism The Whitney Museum performance art Girls Latin School Michael Jackson Landscape (Western Hemisphere) black female subjectivity
Judith Hoos-Fox, 2012
A Generous Medium: Photography at Wellesley, 1972-2012 — The curator of the Wellesley Davis Museum's 1994 exhibit Body As Measure, in which Miscegenated Family Album was first shown, looks back movingly on her encounter with the work in the artist's studio and on the complexities of purchasing work by an alumna.
Nick Mauss in Artforum, 2009
The Poem Will Resemble You — Mauss’s article for Artforum is, with Wilson’s INTAR catalogue essay, one of the most extended and incisive pieces on O’Grady’s oeuvre to date. It was one-half of a two-article feature that also included O’Grady’s artist portfolio for The Black and White Show.
PS1 newspaper interview, 2008
Abbreviated version of a WPS1 radio chat with curator Connie Butler. Published in the P.S.1 Newspaper Special Edition for “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution,” Winter/Spring, 2008, P.S.1–MOMA, Long Island City, NY.
WPS1 chat with Connie Butler, 2008
Recorded by Art Radio WPS1, available online at clocktower.org — Full transcript of a 45-minute conversation between Lorraine O’Grady and curator Connie Butler in WPS1 Art Radio’s broadcast studios two weeks before the WACK! opening at PS1–MOMA, Long Island City, NY.
Cady Noland, 2002
Artforum, Artists Curate, January – Cady Noland's "Back At You" portfolio brings together artists such as Chris Burden, Adrian Piper and Lorraine O'Grady whose work takes "considerable risks."
Email Q & A with Courtney Baker, 1998
Unpublished exchange — The most comprehensive and focused interview of O’Grady to date, this Q & A by a Duke University doctoral candidate benefited from the slowness of the email format, the African American feminist scholar’s deep familiarity with O’Grady’s work, and their personal friendship.
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Interview by Theo Davis, 1996
In Sojourner: The Women's Forum, November 1996 — Conducted in Cambridge during O’Grady’s one-year residency at the Bunting Institute at Harvard, the interview may have been affected by what she’d felt as adverse treatment there of her diptych The Clearing.
Miscegenated Family album sex and sexuality Surrealism Ancient Egypt The Clearing sibling rivalry Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline Girls Latin School Olympia's Maid religion and spirituality black female subjectivity Gayatri Spivak Bunting Institute art-world racism autobiography Lucy Lippard political art performance art Mlle Bourgeoise Noire 1996 Art Is... erasure/invisibility
Interview by Laura Cottingham, 1995
Hatch-Billops Collection, Artists and Influence 1996, vol. 15 — In-depth interview done for the excellent Artist and Influence series produced by Camille Billops and James Hatch for their archive of African American visual and theatre arts.
sibling rivalry white feminism Judith Wilson the Black and White Show Lucy Lippard tokenism Just Above Midtown performance art religion and spirituality black avant-garde Adrian Piper autobiography 1995 Mlle Bourgeoise Noire nature vs culture Miscegenated Family album the Caribbean rock criticism race and class The Clearing sex and sexuality Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline Ancient Egypt black female subjectivity Olympia's Maid
Calvin Reid, 1993
A West Indian Yankee in Queen Nefertiti’s Court — The first critical article on O'Grady's work as a whole, and still one of the best. Published in New Observations #97: COLOR. September/October 1993. Special issue, edited by ADRIAN PIPER.
Wellesley College The Clearing Girls Latin School Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline INTAR Gallery hybridity art-world racism Lilith Sends Out the Destroyers Just Above Midtown Lucy Lippard Gaze and Dream black avant-garde performance art autobiography Adrian Piper Mlle Bourgeoise Noire 1993 Art Is... the Caribbean diaspora Ancient Egypt writing in space mother black female subjectivity The Fir-Palm
Judith Wilson, 1991
Lorraine O’Grady: Critical Interventions — Catalogue essay for O'Grady's first solo exhibit: "Lorraine O'Grady," photomontages, INTAR Gallery, 420 W 42nd St, NYC, Jan 21-Feb 22, 1991. Includes authoritative account of artist's earlier career.
Lucy Lippard, 1988
Art Is . . . — Highlighted box review, taking a retrospective look at O’Grady’s 1983 performance Art Is.... In “Sniper’s Nest,” Z Magazine, July-August 1988, p 102
Interview by Linda Montano, 1986
Unedited transcript for Performance Artists Talking in the Eighties — Montano’s questions on “ritual” cast interesting light on the connection between O’Grady’s early life and her performances. The unedited transcript of the interview contains answers in greater depth on Mlle Bourgeoise Noire and Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline.
LIVE performance 5, 1980/81
“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.