This program takes place via Zoom. Space is limited; to register, click here.

Until it’s safe to travel together for our popular Art Travels day, overnight, national, and international trips, we’re thrilled to continue virtual trips for armchair travelers each first Thursday evening! This month, we travel to the New Museum in New York, NY.

The New Museum is the only museum devoted exclusively to contemporary art in Manhattan and one of the leading contemporary art museums in the world. Founded in 1977, the New Museum was conceived as a center for exhibitions, information, and documentation on artists whose work had not yet had wide public exposure or critical acceptance. At its inception, the Museum lay somewhere between a grassroots alternative space and a major museum devoted to proven historical values. Today, the New Museum is a major cultural destination. Its size, name, and mission of “New Art, New Ideas” distinguishes it as a responsive institution that fosters innovation, collaboration, and understanding.

For this virtual visit Andrew An Westover, PhD, Keith Haring Director of Education & Public Engagement, introduces the New Museum’s history, building, and mission. Then, Teaching Fellow troizel takes us on a virtual visit of Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, on view at the New Museum through June 6. Originally conceived by Okwui Enwezor (1963–2019) and presented with curatorial support from advisors Naomi Beckwith, Massimiliano Gioni, Glenn Ligon, and Mark Nash, Grief and Grievance is an intergenerational exhibition bringing together 37 artists working in a variety of media who have addressed the concept of mourning, commemoration, and loss as a direct response to the national emergency of racist violence experienced by Black communities across America. Works included in the exhibition represent cross-disciplinary approaches that incorporate methods of documentary film and photography, experimental filmmaking, performance, and social engagement alongside traditional artistic media like painting, drawing, and sculpture. The exhibition comprises diverse examples of artists exploring American history from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s to issues of police violence in the US in the 1990s and today. These works thoughtfully reflect upon what catalogue contributor Saidiya Hartman characterizes as “the afterlife of slavery,” as many of the participating artists reflect on the intersection of historical memory and the social and political realities of the present. Artists include Jean-Michel Basquiat, Dawoud Bey, Theaster Gates, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, Howardena Pindell, Lorna Simpson, Hank Willis Thomas, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, and many more.