Faith Ringgold

The provocative pioneer known for quilts chronicling scenes of Black history, hope and protest, is the focus of a sweeping show coming to the Glenstone museum in Maryland

In a 70-year career, Ringgold has shown the US its bloody, brutal side. And yet the artist started out wanting to paint landscapes … She talks about growing up during the Harlem Renaissance and her battles with the establishment

Betye Saar. Faith Ringgold. Mickalene Thomas. Julie Mehretu. Simone Leigh. Jordan Casteel. These are only a few of the Black women artists who have recently exhibited in the nation’s largest museums, like the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim, and the Getty. 

“Storytellers: Faith Ringgold + Aminah Robinson” showcases the work of two game-changing African-American artists at Ringling College. Ringgold is a painter, a sculptor, a quilt-maker, and an award-winning children’s author and illustrator. Robinson’s art includes drawings, cloth paintings, books and woodcuts. Curators Tim Jaeger and Mikaela Lamarche reflect Robinson and Ringgold’s multimedia approach by framing their art in a narrative context.

ENGLEWOOD, N.J. — Faith Ringgold has seen plenty of shake-ups and strange moments in her 89 well-traveled years. But the provocative Harlem-born artist — who has confronted race relations in this country from every angle, led protests to diversify museums decades ago, and even went to jail for an exhibition she organized — has had no reference point for the pandemic keeping her in lockdown and creatively paralyzed in her home in this leafy suburb for much of the spring.

A public art competition launched last week that asks New Yorkers to submit designs for the iconic flags that surround the Rink at Rockefeller Center. Led by the site’s developer Tishman Speyer, “The Flag Project” is looking for artwork that celebrates New York City, whether it be through graphic design, a drawing, or collage. Winning designs will be made into flags and flown from Rockefeller Center’s 192 flagpoles this August as part of a temporary exhibit.

The sweeping coronavirus pandemic has closed museums around the world for the near future, but the visual arts can still be enjoyed at least to an extent. One current exhibition, “Riffs and Relations” at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., is turning the spotlight on an expansive group of African-American artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.

On Saturday, The Phillips Collection in D.C. will debut Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition, a pioneering exhibition expanding the narrative of modern art in America by exploring the rich and complex history of 20th– and 21st–century African American artists and their responses to European modernism. Organized by guest curator Dr. Adrienne L. Childs and The Phillips Collection, Riffs and Relations will be on view exclusively at The Phillips Collection from February 29–May 24, 2020.

Elephant and Artsy have come together to present This Artwork Changed My Life, a creative collaboration that shares the stories of life-changing encounters with art. A new piece will be published every two weeks on both Elephant and Artsy. Together, our publications want to celebrate the personal and transformative power of art.

In the months leading up to the election, museums and galleries across America will host a number of impassioned and political exhibitions.