Covering the career of the legendary photographer Gordon Parks, and unveiling the incredible private collection of one of the most famous couples in the music industry, the exhibition “Gordon Parks: Selections from the Dean Collection” is this spring’s event.

Presented at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center, co-organized by the Gordon Parks Foundation in cooperation with consulting curator Dr. Maurice Berger.  The exhibition “Gordon Parks: Selections from the Dean Collection” features for the first time a range of works from the collection of Kasseem Dean and Alicia Keys, who own the largest private holdings of photographs by Gordon Parks.

“Gordon Parks was a major artist of the 20th century, whose work, with its journalistic precision and sublime artistry, shines a light on individuals and stories that were—and still are— too often hidden and overlooked.”— said, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research

Bestselling author of novels and memoirs, deceased on 7 March 2006.  Gordon Parks has directed television programs, Hollywood movies, and composed film scores. But arguably it was his photographs that made the greatest cultural impact. Born into poverty and segregation in Kansas in 1912, Parks was drawn to photography as a young man when he saw images of migrant workers published in a magazine. After buying a camera at a pawnshop, he taught himself how to use it and despite his lack of professional training, he found employment with the Farm Security Administration (FSA), which was then chronicling the nation’s social conditions.

Parks quickly developed a style that would make him one of the most celebrated photographers of his age, allowing him to break the color line in professional photography while creating remarkably expressive images that consistently explored the social and economic impact of racism. Using his camera as his “weapon of choice”as he called it, to combat injustice. Armed with astonishing talent, a keen eye, and a limitless capacity for empathy, he created images that alter the way we view one other and, ultimately, ourselves.

Dr. Maurice Berger, the consulting curator, writes in the exhibition’s introductory text: “’People need to see this type of greatness to inspire themselves,’ Kasseem Dean has said of Parks’ work. It is fitting that the Deans have embraced his photographs. In their own work—as musicians and producers—they exemplify the power of art to transform, motivate, and enlighten. Gordon Parks: Selections from the Dean Collection attests to the photographer’s transformative role in 20th-century art, as a master storyteller who helped change the world, one commanding image at a time.”

The Dean Collection’s holdings span Parks’ entire career—from his civil rights era images to fashion photography to portraits to lesser-known works. For several years, Keys and Dean have served as co-chairs of the annual Gordon Parks Foundation Awards Gala, and at last year’s event they announced this incredible acquisition of 80 works by Gordon Parks in their private collection.

Founded by Kasseem “Swizz Beatz” Dean and his wife Alicia Keys in 2014, “The Dean Collection” is a contemporary family collection and cultural platform that organizes artist support initiatives such as the No Commission art and music festival and TDC 20, both designed to fund artists’ practices and projects. The collection actively acquires, and commissions, work by contemporary visual artists such as Derrick Adams, Nina Chanel Abney, Jordan Casteel, Nick Cave, Arthur Jafa, KAWS, Deana Lawson, Ebony G. Patterson, Kehinde Wiley, and many others. The collection of the two celebrities has grown steadily and has become even more prestigious by becoming the largest privately-owned body of work by Gordon Parks.

The current exhibition thus presents for the first time, a wide range of the works acquired by the couple. Among the exhibits are several portraits of artists and prominent personalities, such as Langston Hughes and Alberto Giacometti, as well documentation of historic civil rights protests, including the 1963 March on Washington; intimate scenes from everyday life, images of the daily rituals and challenges of a Harlem family, snapshots of the life of a 12-year-old boy struggling to survive in a ramshackle favela in the hills outside Rio de Janeiro; or the fascinating visual retelling of Ralph Ellison’s epochal novel “Invisible Man”, as well as images of life in Jim Crow-era rural Alabama, fashion pictures, and documentary photographs, along with many lesser- known images.

 

“The Deans have been important champions of the work of Gordon Parks, and this exhibition is an opportunity to share his work with a broader audience through the outstanding platform offered byHarvard University,” said Peter W. Kunhardt Jr., Executive Director of the Gordon Parks Foundation.“The exhibition additionally builds on the Foundation’s strong history of collaborative programming with leading institutions in the mounting of exhibitions, conferral of scholarships, and mounting of public programs that engage the public with Parks’ legacy.”

With this new major exhibition, the Gordon Parks Foundation once again confirms its mission to permanently preserve Gordon Parks’ work, to make it available to the public through exhibitions, books, and electronic media, and support artistic and educational activities that advance what Parks described as “the common search for a better life and a better world.” With an exhibition space in Pleasantville, New York, The Gordon Parks Foundation presents focused presentations of Parks’ photography, as well as the work of other artists influenced by his legacy.

 
 
 

The exhibition “Gordon Parks: Selections from the Dean Collection” is on view through July 19, 2019

More details HERE

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The Armory Show is New York City’s premier art fair, and a leading cultural destination for discovering and collecting the world’s most important 20th- and 21st-century art. Staged on Manhattan’s Piers 90, 92, and 94, The Armory Show, supported by Lead Partner Athena Art Finance, will open to the public March 7–10, 2019 features presentations by leading international galleries, innovative artist commissions, and dynamic public programs. Since its founding in 1994, The Armory Show has served as a nexus for the international art world, inspiring dialogue, discovery, and patronage in the visual arts. 

“A TOP DRAW FOR HEAVY-HITTING COLLECTORS, GALLERISTS, CELEBRITIES AND ART LOVERS”

NEW YORK TIMES 

The Armory Show’s 2019 edition (that celebrates its 25th anniversary this edition) will present 194 galleries from 33 countries, bringing together an unparalleled presentation of international galleries in central Manhattan. This year will also welcome 59 new exhibitors. Here is a short selection of exciting works from Africa and its diaspora, that you can expect to see at the show. 

AJARB BERNARD ATEGWA represented by Jack Bell Gallery ( London, England)

Ategwa’s works are large format and mimic the scale of cityscapes and public space. His paintings work as sequences in a larger narrative describing the chaos of his hometown, in Cameroon, where he was born. Moving between the taxi stands, newsagents, bars, roadside markets and fleeting moments of respite, the artist offers snapshots of everyday life. His vivid colour palette and graphic style speak the language of advertising familiar to Douala’s inhabitants. With great skill the artist weaves together urban scenes, sounds and smells to create a rich sensory immersion.

Jody Paulsen represented by SMAC Gallery (Cape Town, South Africa)

Jody Paulsen was born in Cape Town, South Africa where he currently lives and works. Working in textile, particularly felt, Paulsen, explores themes related to his understanding within the context of contemporary, material culture. His work speaks of the process of production as he creates vast, elaborate tapestries and colourful collage works. Various shapes, colours, logos and fonts reference the current age of capitalism and experiences of global culture that shape concepts of gender, sexuality and identity.

Zak Ové represented by Lawrie Shabibi Gallery (Dubai, UAE)

Ové seeks to reignite and reinterpret lost culture and mythology using new-world materials whilst at the same time paying tribute to both spiritual and artistic African identity. Constantly finding unpredictable ways to express recognisable, traditional African forms his practice explores African identity, the African diaspora and African history.

Tiwani Contemporary (London, England) will present works from Virginia Chihota 

Introspective in nature, Virginia Chihota‘s work is deeply influenced by personal experiences – landmark and everyday. In a reflection on intimacy and the human figure, she has addressed themes such as childbearing, childrearing, marriage, kinship, bereavement and faith. Having trained as a printmaker, Chihota’s use of screen-printing is as confident as it is original. She mixes printing techniques with drawing to produce unique works of striking formal complexity. She was born in 1983 in Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe and she lives and works in Podgorica, Montenegro. 

Mariane Ibrahim Gallery presents a solo booth dedicated to Haitian-American female artist, Florine Démosthène

Florine Demosthene was born in the United States and raised between Port-au-Prince, Haiti and New York. Démosthène earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Parsons the New School for Design in New York and her Master of Fine Arts from Hunter College, City University of New York. Using non-traditional materials like glitter and mylar, her work evoke a strong animated struggle, a fight over existing power. The superpositions of her alter-egos, reflect the resilience of the pre-fabricated codes of aesthetics dictated by a set of behaviors. One cannot escape the commodification and fetishization of the black body. The Artist is exposing a new physical paradigm, using gender and social attributes to escape determinism.

Works by Kapwani Kiwanga presented by Galerie Jerome Poggi (Paris, France)

Kiwanga’s work traces the pervasive impact of power asymmetries by placing historic narratives in dialogue with contemporary realities, the archive, and tomorrow’s possibilities. Her work is research-driven, instigated by marginalised or forgotten histories, and articulated across a range of materials and mediums including sculpture, installation, photography, video, and performance. Kiwanga follows the lineage of surveillance and positions it in relation to blackness in America, from its roots in slavery to the role that technology performs today.

Works by Sadie Barnette presented by Charlie James  Gallery (Los Angeles, CA, USA)

Whether in the form of drawing, photography or large-scale installation, Sadie Barnette’s work relishes in the abstraction of city space and the transcendence of the mundane to the imaginative. She creates visual compositions that engage a hybrid aesthetic of minimalism and density, using text, glitter, family Polaroids, subculture codes and found objects. Recent works engage as primary source material the 500-page FBI surveillance file kept on her father, Rodney Barnette, who founded the Compton, California, chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968.

Works by Ibrahim El-Salahi presented by Vigo Gallery ( London, England) 

A leader of the Sudanese Khartoum School and the first African artist to have a retrospective at the Tate Modern in London, Ibrahim El Salahi combines European styles with traditional Sudanese themes in his art. El Salahi’s art encompasses and explores a range of compositional forms, including fragments of Arabic calligraphy, but perpetually evokes a transnational, African-influenced surrealism.

ACA Galleries ( New York  City, NY, USA) will present a selection of works by Faith Ringgold

The painted narrative quilts for which Ringgold is best known grew out of these early paintings, and denounce racism and discrimination with their subject matter. Combining quilt making, genre painting, and story telling through images and hand-written texts, the series “The American Collection” (1997) endeavors to rewrite African American art history, emphasizing the importance of family, roots, and artistic collaboration.

James Cohan Gallery (New York city, USA) will present a sculpture from Yinka Shonibare CBE

Over the past decades, Shonibare has become well known for his exploration of colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalization. Working in painting, sculpture, photography, film and installation, Shonibare’s work examines race, class and the construction of cultural identity through a sharp political commentary of the tangled interrelationship between Africa and Europe and their respective economic and political histories. 

Omar Ba represented by Templon Gallery (Paris, France)

Born in 1977 in Senegal, Omar Ba lives and works in Dakar and Geneva. His paintings, produced using a variety of techniques and materials, represent political and social motifs open to multiple interpretations. His artistic vocabulary raises historical and timeless questions while formulating a wholly contemporary artistic message.  Omar Ba’s iconography features personal metaphors, ancestral references and hybrid figures. 

Jack Shainman Gallery (New York City, USA) will present a photography from Gordon Parks

During the late 1940s through the 1960s, Parks produced some of his most renowned photographic essays on issues relating to civil rights. A stoic portrait of Red Jackson, from a 1948 series on the Harlem gang leader, reveals a man seemingly hemmed in by his options as he stares intently out a broken window; the darkness of the interior contrasts forebodingly with the light illuminating him from the street. By showing the individual faces and families behind essentializing headlines of violence and relentless poverty, Parks stressed similarity over difference. His legacy, and the legacy of those he captured, remains very much alive in today’s America.

Richard Taittinger Gallery and Galleria Continua will present a major installation of Pascale Martine Tayou

Pascale Marthine Tayou (b. 1966, Nkongsamba) is an internationally renowned artist whose work is characterized by its variability, since he confines himself in his artistic work neither to one medium nor to a particular set of issues. Already at the very outset of his career, Pascale Marthine Tayou added an “e” to his first and middle name to give them a feminine ending, thus distancing himself ironically from the importance of artistic authorship and male/female ascriptions. His works not only mediate in this sense between cultures, or set man and nature in ambivalent relations to each other, but are produced in the knowledge that they are social, cultural, or political constructions.

The curator’s statement “Plastic bags are helpful, as well as harmful—they carry goods, cross borders, and contribute to plastic pollution. Tayou’s large and visually impressive installation, Plastic Bags (2019), takes ubiquitous objects and uses them to create an artwork that offers a colorful commentary on consumerism and globalism.”

The Armory Show – March 7-10 2019

Piers 90, 92, and 94
New York City

Public Days 

Thursday, March 7, 12pm — 8pm
Friday, March 8, 12pm — 8pm
Saturday, March 9, 12pm — 7pm
Sunday, March 10, 12pm — 6pm

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