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.
Senga Nengudi
519
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.
The New York Times, 2022
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.
hybridity Tania Bruguera The Fir-Palm Sin Autorización: Contemporary Cuban Art Ana Mendieta Wallach Art Gallery Senga Nengudi Tiona Nekkia McClodden the Caribbean Belkis Ayón colonialism María Magdalena Campos-Pons Afro-Caribbean Luis Camnitzer Cuban artists Queens Museum El Museo del Barrio Afro-Atlantic
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, 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.
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 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