Welcome to the Art Angle, a podcast from Artnet News that delves into the places where the art world meets the real world, bringing each week’s biggest story down to earth. Join host Andrew Goldstein every week for an in-depth look at what matters most in museums, the art market, and much more with input from our own writers and editors as well as artists, curators, and other top experts in the field.
This month, as the world limps its way toward spring and, hopefully, a gradual return of normality, the Brooklyn Museum has opened a show called “Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And” that provides valuable fodder for thought in the year ahead.
As the title suggests, it’s a career retrospective of the venerated performance and experimental artist Lorraine O’Grady, who for more than 40 years has created poetic, hard-to-classify works that probe questions of inclusion and identity in a way that has had a deep, orienting impact on a whole rising generation. Admirers are quick to point to the power of her writing as well, perhaps particularly “Olympia’s Maid,” her classic 1992 essay considering the flattening of Black female sexuality in art history.
It so happens that Ben Davis, our chief art critic, has been one of these admirers for a long time, and he recently sat down with the artist in the run-up to her retrospective to discuss her career, how her upbringing in Boston’s Caribbean-American community shaped her art, what it was like to go viral when the Biden administration paid homage to her work in a post-election ad, and much more.
“Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And” is on view at the Brooklyn Museum through July 18, 2021
Listen to Other Episodes:
The Art Angle Podcast: What Will Be the Fate of the Benin Bronzes?
The Art Angle Podcast: The Haunting History of the Benin Bronzes
The Art Angle Podcast: The Surprising Lessons of FDR’s New Deal Art Programs
The Art Angle Podcast: 5 Steamy, Whirlwind Romances That Changed Art History
The Art Angle Podcast: MoMA Curator Paola Antonelli on Design for the Post-Pandemic World
The Art Angle Podcast: Artist Daniel Arsham on How He Built a Creative Empire
The Art Angle Podcast: 8 Predictions on How the Art World Will Shift in 2021
The Art Angle Podcast: Can Art Help End the Era of Mass Incarceration?