THE HISTORICAL RECORD

The living archive.

Art leaves a record. Return to the exhibitions, artists and ideas that continue to shape the conversation.

A GROWING COLLECTION

Browse by the original source publication date. Historical selections are reviewed and added over time; coverage is not exhaustive.

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469 reviewed stories

CriticismDiaspora

Elizabeth Catlett retrospective joined artistic and political histories

Alexandra M. Thomas’s Hyperallergic review examined the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth Catlett retrospective through the artist’s commitments to Black and Mexican liberation. Prints, sculpture and public works connected her representations of women’s labour to her participation in Mexico’s Taller de Gráfica Popular. Thomas emphasised the transnational exchanges and community relationships that shaped Catlett’s practice, treating political organising as integral to her artistic achievement.

Hyperallergic4 Nov 2024

CriticismDiaspora

Nordic Utopia explored Black artists’ lives beyond Paris

Debra Brehmer’s Hyperallergic review of Nordic Utopia? at the Chazen Museum examined Black American artists who worked in Scandinavia. Paintings and objects associated with William H. Johnson, Herbert Gentry, Ronald Burns and Howard Smith complicated familiar accounts centred on Paris. Brehmer described the creative room afforded by migration while noting that the exhibition did not equate life abroad with an uncomplicated escape from racism.

Hyperallergic29 Oct 2024

OPENING THE JOURNAL

The living archive.

Elizabeth Catlett retrospective joined artistic and political histories

Nordic Utopia explored Black artists’ lives beyond Paris

The living archive.

Elizabeth Catlett retrospective joined artistic and political histories

Nordic Utopia explored Black artists’ lives beyond Paris

What Happens When Looted Artefacts Return Home?

Rita Mawuena Benissan reimagined Asante symbols in One Must Be Seated

Zeitz MOCAA traced the grain silo’s transformation into a museum

Nolan Oswald Dennis questioned systems of knowledge in UNDERSTUDIES

MADEYOULOOK brought land, sound and Indigenous knowledge to Venice

Kelli Morgan founded an archive for Detroit’s Black art histories

Points of Resonance connected African photographic practices in New York

MOCAD reconsidered Gallery 7’s legacy of Black abstraction

Tuan Andrew Nguyen connected Vietnamese, Senegalese and Moroccan histories

Esther Mahlangu’s retrospective placed community beside individual achievement

Georgina Maxim’s stitched works made repair deliberately provisional

Berni Searle’s On Site opened her artistic process to museum visitors

Lady Skollie’s GROOT GAT rebuilt stories around historical absence

Bamako’s 2024 photography biennial selected thirty artists

Zeitz MOCAA turned African stories into an illustrated children’s series

Igshaan Adams’s textile practice followed the traces of movement