Episode No. 441 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features curator Sarah Eckhardt and author and art historian Anne Monahan.
Eckhardt is the curator of “Working Together: Louis Draper and the Kamoinge Workshop” at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. The VMFA is closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic; the exhibition is scheduled to be on view through June 14. From Richmond, the exhibition will travel to the Whitney Museum of American Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Cincinnati Art Museum. The exhibition is accompanied by a revelatory catalogue. Amazon offers it for just $32.
The VMFA has launched a terrific website with archival and other exhibition-related material.
“Working Together” features nearly 180 photographs by 15 of the early members of the Kamoinge Workshop, a collective of Black artists dedicated to photography during the 1960s and 1970s. The exhibition had its roots in the work and archive of Louis Draper, a Richmond-area native who moved to New York in 1957 and who built a community of photographers who came together as the Kamoinge Workshop. In 2015, the VMFA acquired Draper’s archive.
Besides Draper, the early Kamoinge members represented in this exhibition are Anthony Barboza, Adger Cowans, Danny Dawson, Roy DeCarava, Al Fennar, Ray Francis, Herman Howard, Jimmie Mannas, Herb Randall, Herb Robinson, Beuford Smith, Ming Smith, Shawn Walker and Calvin Wilson.
Anthony Barboza’s Essence magazine spread “Rappin'” may be viewed at Afrosartorialism.
On the second segment, art historian Anne Monahan discusses her new book “Horace Pippin, American Modern,” a Yale University Press-published monograph about the mid-century American modernist painter. Amazon offers it for $32.
Air date: April 16, 2020.
Newsweek, August 3, 1964.
Adger Cowans, Footsteps, 1960.
Louis Draper, Untitled, ca. 1960s.
Barnett Newman, Achilles, 1952.
Louis Draper, Congressional Gathering, 1959.
Louis Draper, Fannie Lou Hamer, Mississippi, 1971.
Anthony Barboza, Pensacola, Florida, 1966.
Anthony Barboza, NYC, ca. 1970s.
Ming Smith, America Seen through Stars and Stripes, New York City, New York, ca. 1976.
Anthony Barboza, NYC, ca. 1970s.
James Mannas, No Way Out, Harlem, NYC, 1964.
Anthony Barboza, Grace Jones, ca. 1970.
Adger Cowans, Egg Nude, 1958.
C. Daniel Dawson, Snow Study, 1970.
C. Daniel Dawson, Backscape #1, 1967.
Horace Pippin, The Barracks, 1945.
Horace Pippin, Cabin in the Cotton, ca. 1931-37.
Horace Pippin, The End of the War; Starting Home, 1930-33.
Horace Pippin, Supper Time, c. 1940.
Horace Pippin, Giving Thanks, 1942.
Horace Pippin, The Whipping, 1941.
Horace Pippin, The Knowledge of God, 1944.
Horace Pippin, The Holy Mountain, 1944.
Horace Pippin, Old Black Joe, 1943.
Horace Pippin, The Lady of the Lake, ca. 1936-39.
Horace Pippin, The Getaway, ca. 1938-39.
Winslow Homer, Fox Hunt, 1893.
John Vanderlyn, Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos, 1809-14.
Horace Pippin, Abraham Lincoln and His Father Building Their Cabin on Pigeon Creek, ca. 1934-37.
Horace Pippin, John Brown Reading His Bible, 1942.
Horace Pippin, The Trial of John Brown, 1942.
Horace Pippin, John Brown Going to His Hanging, 1942.
The Modern Art Notes Podcast 
What a relief! Finally… a great fine-art podcast. The host is perfect, smart, engaged and with a very pleasant and professional demeanor. Other podcasts should listen to how pleasant the host’s voice is, not the usual screeching nonsense trying to be clever
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