Artblog | reviews, features & interviews

January 14, 2022 by Beth Heinly

January 13, 2022 by Roberta

Black Quantum Futurism gets Creative Capital, Judilee Reed to US Artists, Wayne Thiebaud at Brandywine River Museum of Art, Moe Brooker passes, plus Opportunities and More

With energy and money, the new year charges in. Creative Capital awards $2.5 Million to 50, including Philadelphia’s Black Quantum Futurism (Rasheedah Phillips and Camae Ayewa). William Penn Foundation’s Judilee Reed becomes president and CEO of US Artists. With sadness we note the recent passing of beloved artist and educator, Moe Brooker.

January 11, 2022 by Kate Brock

Transparency, opacity and the limits of human understanding in Jennifer Packer’s “The Eye is not Satisfied with Seeing,” at the Whitney Museum

New Artblog Contributor Kate Brock reviews ‘Jennifer Packer: The Eye is Not Satisfied With Seeing,’ a retrospective of the painter’s radiant portraits, interiors, and funerary bouquets. “The lack of dimensional representation of Black people, especially Black women, in the history of painting… leaves the eye unsatisfied… Packer’s vision reveals the historic absences,” Kate says. Catch the show at the Whitney before it closes April 17, 2022.

January 10, 2022 by Deborah Krieger

Kelsey Halliday Johnson leads and advocates for the arts and social justice at SPACE in Portland, ME

Deborah Krieger interviews Kelsey Halliday Johnson, artist and current Executive Director of Portland, Maine’s SPACE (plus former Philly resident/ arts worker/ member of Philly’s DIY-alternative community). Kelsey is enthusiastically dedicated to her role at SPACE, a multi-disciplinary independent maker hub; in particular their grantmaking program, the Kindling Fund.

January 10, 2022 by Jacob C Hammes

Grand Ballroom of Doom

January 7, 2022 by Beth Heinly

The 3:00 Book

January 6, 2022 by Susan Isaacs

‘Afro-American Images 1971’ exhibit is restaged by Delaware Art Museum in a museum mea culpa

“To write about the Black presence at the Delaware Art Museum is to recall the absence of curators, exhibitions, and artists,” says art historian and artist Simone Austin in the catalog for the re-staging of the exhibition ‘Afro-American Images 1971,’ now at the Delaware Museum. Our contributor Susan Isaacs gives the story of the current exhibition and its historical predecessor, and says, “The show is very important.”

January 5, 2022 by Alex Smith

Impassioned creativity plus awareness of being watched, in ‘Dark Sousveillance’ at Vox Populi Gallery

Alex Smith reviews Logan Cryer’s latest curation ‘Dark Sousveillance,’ inspired by Simone Browne’s research on Blackness and surveillance. The group show features Black and predominantly queer artists, examining “wanting to be seen by each other, and wanting to hide from the violence of hypervisibility.” The exhibition is on view at Vox Populi, by appointment, thru Jan. 16, 2022.