Artwork above by Hale Woodruff - Torso. | | Black Zeitgeist: Atlanta, the Visual Arts, and the National Black Arts Festival Exhibition opens at Hammonds House Museum on July 18 | | |
Two of Fulton County's premier legacy organizations, Hammonds House Museum and the National Black Arts Festival, partner to present Black Zeitgeist: Atlanta, the Visual Arts, and the National Black Arts Festival. The exhibition reflects a confluence of visionary leadership, artistic excellence, and institutional power: the bold cultural agenda of Mayor Maynard Jackson, the strategic foresight of Fulton County Commission Chairman Michael Lomax, the founding of NBAF, and the influence of the Black Arts Movement and the Atlanta University Annuals. These efforts were amplified by the support of African American owned businesses like Atlanta Life Insurance Company, the advocacy of cultural leaders such as Jenelsie Walden Holloway, Alice Lovelace, and Dr. Richard A. Long, and the collecting vision of pioneers like Paul R. Jones. Together, they helped shape a dynamic arts ecosystem powered by the creativity and determination of Black artists and communities.
This exhibition will be on view from July 18 through December 14, 2025. There is an opening night reception on Friday, July 18 from 6:30-8:30 pm with the first opportunity to see the artwork. To RSVP, click HERE.
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Flourish Fine Art Accelerator presents Curator Confidential: Secrets on Exhibiting and Working with Art Organizations, an in-person panel discussion designed to provide emerging artists, curators, and collectors with rare, behind-the-scenes insight into how art institutions select artists and curate exhibitions.
The event will be held on Saturday, July 26, 2025, from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM at the Hyde Park Art Center (5020 S. Cornell Avenue, Chicago, IL 60615). Doors will open at 10:00 AM with complimentary breakfast and networking, followed by the panel discussion beginning promptly at 10:30 AM. Admission is free, but advance registration is required.
Registration Page: Please click HERE
This timely panel features a powerhouse lineup of curators and cultural leaders who will demystify the artist selection process and offer unfiltered advice on how to position your creative practice for visibility and long-term opportunities:
Featured Panelists Include:
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Mariela Acuña– Director of Exhibitions & Residency, Hyde Park Art Center
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Dr. Myrtis Bedolla – Owner & Founding Director, Galerie Myrtis
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Monique Brinkman-Hill – Executive Director, South Side Community Art Center
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Danny Dunson – Director of Curatorial Services & Community Partnerships, DuSable Museum
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Veronica Ocasio – Director of Education Programming, National Puerto Rican Museum
| | Story and photos by Harlem Henderson. | | |
A Poem for Deep Thinkers, featuring the work of Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist Rashid Johnson is currently on exhibition at New York City’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The show, curated by the museum’s Deputy Director Naomi Beckwith, and Andrea Karnes, includes nearly 90 of the artist’s works and runs until January 18th, 2026.
In this exhibition Johnson is not solely a creative seeking to conceive visuals challenging historic traditions. He is equally devoted to depictions of the Black experience, masterfully hybridizing site-specific installation, graffiti, film, and pictures through his unique approach of blending cultural ephemera. His use of Black line abstraction references heroes of old, and he erects sculptures hinting to ancestral memories through the medium of black soap.
The innovator exceeds his title as a visual artist by experimenting with the concept of death, a commonality integrally tied to the human experience, yet one whose frequency and indiscriminate immediacy is all too soon experienced within Black communities. Rather than viewing death as a definitive end, Johnson draws on Afrofuturist narratives—such as Sankofa, which favors historical reflection over escapism—to emphasize the cyclical and interconnected nature of time. In this view, the past is not separate from the present but deeply woven into it, offering contemporary individuals a source of power, meaning, and continuity.
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Brandon Carlton's the undercommons at Art + Public Life at Chicago
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Brandon Carlton’s the undercommons, the painter’s debut solo exhibition is currently on display at the university of Chicago’s Arts + Public Life, 301 E. Garfield Blvd. The artist’s work explores the layered realities of contemporary Black life through stylized figuration and evocative portraiture. Rooted in intimacy, distance, and the politics of presence, Carlton's paintings engage with the emotional and spatial dynamics of Black identity, portraying individuals in environments that are both constructed and elusive.
Inspired by The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, the exhibition takes its title and conceptual grounding from their vision of the undercommons—a space of resistance, fugitivity, and radical togetherness outside dominant social structures. Within Carlton’s compositions, figures occupy liminal realms—neither wholly constrained nor fully liberated—suggesting a constant negotiation between visibility and erasure, selfhood and collective memory.
Carlton’s aesthetic sensibility draws from the flat planes and bold palettes of Alex Katz and David Hockney, as well as the empathetic realism of Jordan Casteel’s portraits. Yet his work forges a unique language, one that layers gesture, surface, and space to articulate an alternate visual register of Black experience. Figures may gaze directly or turn away, situated in rooms that blur into abstraction, inviting viewers to reflect on the boundaries between public and private, legibility and obscurity.
Through the undercommons, Carlton not only reimagines how Black life is represented but also how it is lived—on its own terms, in spaces of care, resistance, and complexity. His paintings become portals into this fugitive sociality, where presence is redefined and historical memory pulses just beneath the surface.
The exhibition is on display through August 30th.
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