WALLACH ART GALLERY TO OPEN UPTOWN TRIENNIAL 2020
AT THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LENFEST CENTER FOR THE ARTS
NEW YORK, NY, September 23, 2020 – The Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University is pleased to open Uptown Triennial 2020, the second iteration in the series, presenting the work of contemporary artists in dialogue with the Harlem Renaissance—a defining moment in American modernism and African-American cultural history—during its centennial year. The exhibition opens to Columbia students, faculty, and staff on September 24, 2020 (reservations are required) and with a 3D virtual tour for the broader community. Full public access to the gallery is expected laterthis fall. Reservations to the exhibition, links to the 3D virtual tour and updates on gallery access are available at wallach.columbia.edu. The exhibition closes on December 13, 2020.
Uptown Triennial 2020 is organized by Wallach director and chief curator, Betti-Sue Hertz. “The exhibition features25 artists whose works project a confidence in Black identity that reflects a quest for making visible emerging subjectivities that mine popular and historical iconographies,” said Hertz.
Uptown Triennial 2020 includes works by artists Derrick Adams,Tariq Al-Sabir, Dawoud Bey, Sanford Biggers, Kabuya Pamela Bowens-Saffo, Jordan Casteel, Renee Cox, Gerald Cyrus, Priyanka Dasgupta & Chad Marshall,Damien Davis, Delano Dunn, Awol Erizku, Derek Fordjour, Hugh Hayden, Leslie Hewitt, Jennie C. Jones, Kahlil Joseph, Autumn Knight, Whitfield Lovell, Glendalys Medina, Rashaun Rucker, Xaviera Simmons, Dianne Smith, and LeRone Wilson. These 25 accomplished artists work in a wide range of media including painting, photography, video,sculpture, installation and performance.
Whitfield Lovell provides an installation of three paintings and sculptural items representing returning Black World War I soldiers. Large Installations by Xaviera Simmons and Derrick Adams focus on the great migration of Blacks seeking opportunities in the industrialized northern cities and the Green Book as a required resource for north/south car transport during Jim Crow, respectively. Hugh Hayden, a Columbia School of the Arts alumni, reimagines the cast iron skillet recasting the historical object with west African mask forms. Hayden says, “It’s an honor and quite surreal to be included amongst so many artists that I look up to, particularly given this time, as we collectively engage with notions of the Harlem Renaissance in our own works.”
Six historical works in Uptown Triennial 2020 offer touchstones from which to explore the far reaching arc of the Harlem Renaissance’s influence. A first edition of The New Negro: An Interpetation, the anthology compiled by Alain Locke and a cornerstone of the movement, is included in this exhibition. Uptown Triennial 2020 also presents original works by several of the Harlem Renaissance’s revered figures—Aaron Douglas, Augusta Savage, James Van DerZee, and James Weldon Johnson. A maquette of a theatrical stage set for Duke Ellington by Joseph Urban is also in the exhibition.
» CLICK HERE to view the Schedule and Artwork
