CVK
New York’s Whitney Museum has a new exhibit by Ellen Gallagher called “60 Ways of Looking at a Black Woman.” (Thanks for alerting us to it, Lee Swift!) Here’s what the New York Times had to say about Gallagher and her work:

“Ms. Gallagher was raised in Providence, R.I. Her mother was white, her father black. Her father. a professional boxer, was rarely around, she said, and died in 1998.”

“Growing up, Ms. Gallagher said, she learned to navigate the worlds of her mother’s blue collar Irish family, her father’s family of recent immigrants from the Cape Verde Islands and the homes of her friends, many of them African Americans.”

“From the start of her career, Ms.Gallagher has made paintings with lines or grids that she decorates and sometimes overruns with repeating images that refer to racial stereotypes: black-face comedians, afros, lips, nurses, and wigs. ”

“The grids recall work of Minimalist painters Like Agnes Martin, and the copied images recall Pop Art, particularly Andy Warhol.”

“Far from being preachy or regretful, her work is a meditation on 20th century black culture, an attempt to remember the good and bad by resuscitating images.”