The Art World Opens Up
There have been signs of a surge coming for years: Kara Walker’s moving meditation on sugar’s inextricable links to slavery, which drew crowds to Brooklyn’s old Domino Sugar factory in 2014; the history-making, back-to-back turns of two African-American artists, Mark Bradford and Martin Puryear, representing the United States at the Venice Biennale in 2017 and 2019, respectively; the burbling to the top of other women and artists of color never quite given their due, such as Howardena Pindell, Charles Gaines and Jack Whitten. But it was only in the past year that the art world’s commitment to diversity finally felt serious.
Leading galleries such as Hauser & Wirth, Pace and David Zwirner have been in an arms race to sign acclaimed artists of color and women for the past couple years, but that competition came to a head in 2019 with Nicole Eisenman, Glenn Ligon and Sam Gilliam—just a few of the big names to throw in with powerful dealers. At the same time, many of the most talked-about rising stars continued to push the art world beyond its comfort zone: Vaughn Spann, who was a highlight of a group show at Gagosian; Lauren Halsey, who brought a South Central vibe to Paris’s Fondation Louis Vuitton; and Jordan Casteel, who caught the eye of important collectors, such as J. Tomilson Hill, and followed her first major solo exhibition, at the Denver Art Museum in 2019, with a solo turn at the New Museum in New York.
Many of the fall art season’s most acclaimed exhibitions were devoted to African-American artists, including the multidisciplinary Pope.L, who was depicting a proud black youth riding a powerful steed—which now resides in the former Confederate capital of Richmond, Va., having made its debut in Times Square—and Wangechi Mutu’s commanding African women, posted along the façade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art like sentries.
