Scheduled for the Fall 2020, Fisk University Galleries in Nashville, Tennessee will open Art from Africa of Our Time: African Modernism in America, 1947-1967, the first major exhibition to examine the New York-based Harmon Foundation’s promotion of modern African art during the age of decolonization, the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War. The exhibition, drawn primarily from Fisk University’s art collection, will secure Fisk’s place as a center for research on African modernism and engage students in all stages of its planning. The Fellowship will also activate the history exposed in the exhibition by inviting a Lagos, Nigeria-based contemporary artist to create a new work in response.
“The terrific range of project proposals we receive each year speaks to the mobile and porous disciplinary boundaries of contemporary art practice, and to the rich and inventive ways writers approach art today. They are alert to the urgent need to expand the conventions of art history and criticism with ideas from other discourses, such as black studies, transnational and diaspora studies, gender and women’s studies, and LGBT studies. The work of lesser known and overlooked artists and art communities continues to be mined, with writers articulating new ways to counter the striking imbalances of race, class and gender that continue to affect the arts and the culture industry.”
Pradeep Dalal, Program Director, The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant
