A continent. A diaspora.
A conversation.
OPENING THE JOURNAL
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In December 2010, the National Gallery of Jamaica announced a tribute exhibition to painter and printmaker Albert Huie, who had died earlier that year. Scheduled to open on December 30, the presentation drew from the national collection and covered work from the late 1930s to the late 1990s. The accompanying public gathering was to include poetry, music and participation by his daughter, Christine Huie-Roy.
Marking its thirty-fifth anniversary in December 2009, the National Gallery of Jamaica reported that its collection had grown to more than 1,700 works. The Kingston institution had recently completed new Edna Manley galleries as part of a wider renewal of its permanent displays. Its anniversary statement outlined a collection spanning Taíno art to modern Jamaican practice, alongside exhibitions, educational programmes and plans to refurbish further galleries.
The Museum of Modern Art’s March 1971 announcement presents Richard Hunt’s first major museum retrospective, bringing together fifty sculptures alongside drawings and prints. The release traces his movement from found metal toward open, linear forms and larger architectural structures. Studies for public commissions show an expanding scale of practice. The document records an exhibition planned for New York before a further presentation in Chicago, where Hunt lived.
The Museum of Modern Art’s advance fact sheet presents Romare Bearden’s collage as an exploration of everyday Black life, from music and worship to family meals. Guest director Carroll Greene assembled fifty-six works, including enlarged collages and The Block, an eighteen-foot mural accompanied by sound. The historical announcement also records planned presentations in Washington and Berkeley.
The Museum of Modern Art’s announcement records a Harlem park mural developed from paintings by seven young artists. Betty Blayton Taylor selected their designs through the Children’s Art Carnival, and twenty youngsters worked with three teachers to paint the ninety-foot wall. The account describes paid youth participation and a mural intended to serve as a setting for outdoor plays. MoMA’s archive catalogues the document to 1971; an exact issue date is not established.
The Museum of Modern Art’s 1952 recent-acquisitions checklist includes Wilson Bigaud’s Murder in the Jungle and Enguerrand Gourgue’s Magic Table, both acquired through the Inter-American Fund. Their presence within an international display documents the museum’s engagement with modern Haitian painting. This is a contemporary acquisition record, rather than a later account of the artists’ reputations.
The Museum of Modern Art’s announcement of 18 October 1937 records an exhibition of William Edmondson’s limestone sculptures, including biblical figures, animals and portraits of community roles. The museum describes the Nashville artist’s move from tombstone carving into sculpture. The historical document also shows the racial and “primitive” categories through which the institution framed his work.
The Museum of Modern Art’s March 1935 announcement proposed an exhibition of 603 African objects from museum and private collections. Sculpture and masks were to appear alongside musical instruments and everyday objects such as spoons and headrests. The release related African artistic forms to modern European art. Read today, it documents both the planned exhibition and a period museum viewpoint that needs critical historical context.