Abigail DeVille, Freedom Triumphant in War and Peace, 2021, and The Observatory, 2021. Installation view of Brand New Heavies, curated by Racquel Chevremont and Mickalene Thomas (Deux Femmes Noires), at Pioneer Works. Photo by Olympia Shannon / Dan Bradica Studio.
Currently on view at the Bronx Museum of the Arts is Abigail DeVille: Bronx Heavens, the artist’s first museum survey, examining the myths and realities of local familial and ancestral histories, and the convoluted notion of freedom in a country fraught with oppression and racism. The exhibition features DeVille’s work created over the past ten years, examining different aspects of the borough’s 120 year history as a haven for immigrant and migrant communities, including for several generations of DeVille’s family who have lived in the area and were part of the Great Migration.
Image via Marvel Zoom meeting with NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.
The Bronx Museum of the Arts, the city’s only free contemporary art museum, is pleased to reveal schematic designs for the renovation of its new multi-story entrance and lobby on the corner of Grand Concourse and 165th Street by Marvel, an award-winning architecture, landscape architecture, interiors and urban planning practice. Marking the Museum’s 50th anniversary, the $26 million renovation is supported by city funds––with additional support from the state––and is overseen by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) on behalf of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) and The Bronx Museum, and is slated for completion in 2025. Coinciding with this announcement, the Museum is pleased to share a refresh of its brand identity and website by New York based strategy and design studio Team. It is the first time the Museum’s identity has been redesigned in over two decades.
Image via Marvel Zoom meeting with NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.
On May 9, 2023, Marvel Designs presented updated plans to NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, uniting the three buildings that make up the Bronx Museum of the Arts Campus. The vote, 9 yay, 1 nay, allows the project to move forward. Here is what we might look forward to, with images below.
Image: Jamel Shabazz, Looking to the Future. Flatbush, Brooklyn, 1980
Starting at the young age of fifteen, Brooklyn born photographer Jamel Shabazz identified early on the core subject of his lifelong investigation: the men and women, young and old, who invest the streets of New York with a high degree of theater and style, mixing traditions and cultures. Despite following a celebrated tradition of street photography that includes Gordon Parks, Garry Winogrand, and Lee Friedlander, it is to his credit that Shabazz has been one of the first photographers to realize the joyous, infectious potential of youth culture in neighborhoods such as Red Hook, Brownsville, Flatbush, Fort Greene, Harlem, Manhattan’s Lower East Side and the Grand Concourse section of the Bronx.
Bronx Calling: The Fifth AIM Biennial installation image 2 by Argenis Apolinario Photography.
The Bronx Museum of the Arts is pleased to announceBronx Calling: The Fifth AIM Biennial, a meditation on the practice of everyday life in uncertain times. Featuring artworks by 68artists who took part in the 2018 and 2019 cycles of the Bronx Museum’s AIM Fellowship program, the fifth edition of Bronx Calling finds artists responding to the conditions of contemporary life in manifold ways. Whether in traditional or new media, many of the works are recent creations, the result of processing multiple crises—of health, grief, the environment, and identity. The Biennial is part of a series of exhibitions and public programs celebrating the Museum’s 50th anniversary and legacy as an institution dedicated to social justice. Bronx Calling: The Fifth AIM Biennial is curated by Ian Cofre and Eva Mayhabal Davis.
Chitra Ganesh, When A Girl Is Terrified She Might Run For Her Life, 2021.
Born in Flames: Feminist Futures is a constellation of imagined world-scapes projected by fourteen contemporary artists. Set within the space of an exhibition, the artwork presented is a projection of the artists’ larger visions about futurity. Each section of the show is a microcosmic speculation on what could have been, what is, or what is to come. These worlds are steeped in lessons of our complicated pasts, peppered with the ravages of oppression but also blooming joys. Their work critically examines current struggles for equity by exploring strategies for justice and equality through multifaceted futurisms.
Sanford Biggers, Khemetstry, 2017. Courtesy the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery
The Bronx Museum of the Arts is reopening on Wednesday, September 9th with Sanford Biggers: Codeswitch, a solo show featuring more than 50 quilt-based works by the artist, and José Parlá: It’s Yours, evoking the artist’s personal connection to the Bronx. Reserve your visit.
Shyu Ruey-Shiann, Dreambox, 2012. Wolf 125 motorcycle, motors, metal construction, steel, wire, sensor, transformer.
The Bronx Museum of the Arts opens its doors to Useless: Machines for Dreaming, Thinking and Seeing ~ an exhibition questioning notions of utility, rationality and progress.
