Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists
The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art
Edited with essay by Antwaun Sargent. Text by Graham C. Boettcher, Jessica Bell Brown, Connie H. Choi, Anthony Graham, Lauren Haynes, Jamillah James, Thomas J. Lax, Hallie Ringle, Adeze Wilford, Gordon Dearborn Wilkins, Matt Wycoff. Interview with Bernard Lumpkin by Thelma Golden.
What’s new, now and next from contemporary Black artists
A New York Times 2020 holiday gift guide pick
This book surveys the work of a new generation of Black artists, and also features the voices of a diverse group of curators who are on the cutting edge of contemporary art. As mission-driven collectors, Bernard I. Lumpkin and Carmine D. Boccuzzi have championed emerging artists of African descent through museum loans and institutional support. But there has never been an opportunity to consider their acclaimed collection as a whole until now.
Edited by writer Antwaun Sargent (author of The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion), Young, Gifted and Black draws from this collection to shed new light on works by contemporary artists of African descent. At a moment when debates about the politics of visibility within the art world have taken on renewed urgency, and establishment voices such as the New York Times are declaring that “it has become undeniable that African American artists are making much of the best American art today,” Young, Gifted and Black takes stock of how these new voices are impacting the way we think about identity, politics and art history itself.
Young, Gifted and Black contextualizes artworks with contributions from artists, curators and other experts. It features a wide-ranging interview with Bernard Lumpkin and Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem; and an in-depth essay by Antwaun Sargent situating Lumpkin in a long lineage of Black art patrons. A landmark publication, this book illustrates what it means (in the words of Nina Simone) to be young, gifted and Black in contemporary art.
Artists include: Mark Bradford, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, Adam Pendleton, Pope.L, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Henry Taylor, Mickalene Thomas, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Sadie Barnette, Kevin Beasley, Jordan Casteel, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Bethany Collins, Noah Davis, Cy Gavin, Allison Janae Hamilton, Tomashi Jackson, Samuel Levi Jones, Deana Lawson, Norman Lewis, Eric N. Mack, Arcmanoro Niles, Jennifer Packer, Christina Quarles, Jacolby Satterwhite, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Sable Elyse Smith, Chanel Thomas, Stacy Lynn Waddell, D’Angelo Lovell Williams, Brenna Youngblood, and more.
Antwaun Sargent is an art critic and a writer.
Matt Wycoff is an artist and independent curator.
Thelma Golden is the Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Thomas J. Lax is Associate Curator of Performance and Media at MoMA.
Adeze Wilford is a curatorial assistant at The Shed.
Anthony Graham is an assistant curator at MOCA San Diego.
Connie H. Choi is an associate curator of the permanent collection at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Graham C. Boettcher is the Director of the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama.
Lauren Haynes is the curator of contemporary art at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Hallie Ringle is a curator of contemporary art at Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama.
Jamilah James is the curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Jessica Bell Brown is the Associate Curator for Contemporary Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Artnet
Sarah Cascone
An impressive collection of African-American art, with works by both emerging and well-known artists
i-D
Wilbert L. Cooper
With early works by renowned artists like Kara Walker and Mickalene Thomas presented alongside more recent creations from emerging artists like Sable Elyse Smith and Arcmanoro Niles, the show creates a dialogue with itself. Taken together, one gets a survey of the ways in which two subsequent generations of black artists are exploring everything from language and social abstraction to landscapes and the colour black.
Dazed
Emily Dinsdale
There’s a renaissance of sorts happening in the contemporary art world right now, in which artists of African descent, particularly emerging artists, are enjoying unprecedented influence and visibility
Document Journal
Sara Rosen
A symphony of voices and visions from across generations all around the globe, creating a mellifluous confluence of style, media, and subject matter.
Culture Type
Victoria Valentine
Collectors Bernard I. Lumpkin and Carmine D. Boccuzzi have championed emerging artists of African descent through acquisitions, museum loans, and institutional support. This lavishly illustrated volume showcases their mission-driven collection and contextualizes works by more than 30 artists.
Hyperallergic
Seph Rodney
Young, Gifted and Black elaborates a kind of laundry list of luminaries [...] a roll call of two generations of Black artists who are preeminent across a range of media.
Artsy
For Bernard Lumpkin, collecting art has always been about family.
Galerie
Lucy Rees
These visionary artists are impacting the way we think about identity, politics, and art history today.
Hypebeast
Gabrielle Leung
The book surveys the work of a new generation of Black artists, and features the voices of collectors and curators who are doing the work to ensure Black art is made, seen and valued. Created at a moment when debates about the politics of visibility within the art world have taken on renewed urgency, the book highlights the ways in which contemporary artists of African descent are impacting the way we think about identity, politics and art history itself.
LA Weekly
Shana Nys Dambrot
This landmark publication explores the foundational and exceptional work of modern Black artists, as well as the salient role of the collectors who champion them.
Architectural Digest
Coco Romack
A trove of pivotal work by Black artists.
New York Magazine
Trupti Rami
A new book shows why Black artists drive the culture visually.
Artnet
Maria Vogel
Offers a model for how art can be acquired in ways that benefit the artists just as much as the collector.
British Vogue
Yaniya Lee
A new exhibition and accompanying book of Black contemporary art spotlights different generations of Black creatives and the Black collectors and curators that support them.
Art In America
This survey drawn from the Lumpkin-Boccuzzi family collection, brings together contemporary artists and preeminent voices in the Black community to consider how we approach racial identity and the broader scope of art history.
Vanity Fair
Danielle Walsh
Edited by writer Antwaun Sargent, this book is a sweeping survey of Bernard Lumpkin and Carmine Boccuzzi’s collection. Lumpkin and Boccuzzi collect works from contemporary African American artists and have been very outspoken about their vision of inclusivity in museums. With Young, Gifted and Black they hope to shed light on young contemporary artists of African American descent who are focused on interrogating history and identity.
NPR: WNYC
A new generation of Black artists and curators are making their mark on the art world while advocating for change within its institutions. The new book, Young Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists [...] includes work from a wide range of contemporary artists and credits the necessary work done to ensure Black art is made, seen, and valued.
Town & Country
Adam Rathe
This important new survey looks at some of the most cutting-edge and revered Black artists of our time.
Galerie
Lucy Rees
Encompasses up-and-coming talents such as Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Eric N. Mack, and Jordan Casteel, as well as established artists like Kerry James Marshall and Glenn Ligon. Edited by Antwaun Sargent, there are insightful contributions from leading curatorial voices like Thelma Golden, Lauren Haynes, and Jamilah James.
My Modern Met
Sara Barnes
Young, Gifted and Black is a survey of a new generation of Black artists that features mission-driven collectors Bernard I. Lumpkin and Carmine D. Boccuzzi. Edited by writer Antwaun Sargent, the book examines this collection to draw attention to these contemporary emerging artists of African descent.
New York Times
Noor Qasim
Collecting work by contemporary artists of African descent, “Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists,” edited by Antwaun Sargent, features names like Kerry James Marshall and David Hammons, as well as commentary by curators.
Essence
Marcellas Reynolds
What’s new, now and next from contemporary black artists? Edited by Antwaun Sargent (author of The New Black Vanguard), Young, Gifted, and Black draws from this collection to shed new light on contemporary artists of African descent.
S Magazine
David Saric
This expansive book chronicles emerging Black artists and the voices of a wide-ranging roster of contemporary curators shifting the perspectives in the art world. Artists include: Glenn Ligon, Bethany Collins, LaToya Ruby Frazier and a slew of others.
Boston Home
Andrea Timpano
Devoted art patrons Bernard Lumpkin and Carmine Boccuzzi have spent years cultivating their personal collection, treating their Manhattan home like a gallery of rotating works by contemporary Black artists. Now, the married pair gives these important pieces a new platform in this D.A.P. text, which—in tandem with a traveling exhibition of the same name—features art from the likes of Yale grad Kevin Beasley and RISD-trained Julie Mehretu.
PRIOR
David Prior
This survey of Bernard Lumpkin and Carmine Boccuzzi’s outstanding collection celebrates contemporary African-American artists. The curators have long been outspoken about their vision of inclusivity in museums, and this year their mission has taken on even greater urgency. What is clear from these pages is the energy and inspiration this generation of artists is bringing as they rewrite the future of the art establishment.
Globe and Mail
Nathalie Atkinson
Assembling both contemporary and next-gen African-American artists such as Kerry James Marshall and Bethany Collins from the collection of Bernard Lumpkin and Carmine Boccuzzi, this work addresses inclusivity in the art world and its institutions.
New York Times
Lauren Christensen
In Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists, the art critic Antwaun Sargent highlights hundreds of works by Black artists working predominantly in America today, from Kerry James Marshall and Tunji Adeniyi-Jones to Chiffon Thomas, Eric N. Mack and Wilmer Wilson IV.
Business Insider
Maliah West
[An] exploration of Blackness through art.
Memphis, TN: Clough-Hanson Gallery at Rhodes College, 09/08/23–12/09/23
Memphis, TN: Clough-Hanson Gallery at Rhodes College, 09/08/23–12/09/23
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Thursday, October 29 from 4:30–6PM PST, Manetti Shrem Museum of Art in Davis, California, presents the west coast virtual launch of Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists. Edited by writer Antwaun Sargent, the book accompanies the Young, Gifted and Black exhibition, which will travel to the Manetti Shrem Museum in 2022. Join museum Associate Curator Susie Kantor for a conversation with collector Bernard Lumpkin, writer Antwaun Sargent and Matt Wycoff, curator of the Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection. Register here for this Zoom virtual event. continue to blog
Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists opens this week at the Manetti Shrem Museum at UC Davis, and we are proud to have published the exhibition catalog—now in its third printing and going strong. Pictured here are spreads featuring work by Jordan Casteel, Sadie Barnette and Paul Mpagi Sepuya—all artists in their thirties. Other artists, spanning several generations, include Mark Bradford, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, Adam Pendleton, Pope.L, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Henry Taylor, Mickalene Thomas, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Christina Quarles and Jacolby Satterwhite, to name just a few. Drawn from the renowned collection of Bernard I. Lumpkin and Carmine D. Boccuzzi, this beautifully-produced book is also a call to action, documenting not just an exemplary collecting philosophy, but a full-fledged support system driven by passion, personal history and a commitment to promoting not just artists but writers and curators of color throughout their careers. Edited by Antwaun Sargent, it features writing by Graham C. Boettcher, Jessica Bell Brown, Connie H. Choi, Anthony Graham, Lauren Haynes, Jamillah James, Thomas J. Lax, Hallie Ringle, Adeze Wilford, Gordon Dearborn Wilkins and Matt Wycoff, curator of the traveling exhibition. Studio Museum Director and Chief Curator Thelma Golden contributes an interview with the driving force behind the collection, Bernard Lumpkin. continue to blog
How did the message of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. influence Bernard Lumpkin, whose collection forms the basis of the best-selling survey, Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists? The story goes back to Bernard's father, Oscar James Lumpkin Jr., pictured here with Bernard's mother, Sarah Benzaquen. Below is an excerpt from Bernard's Introduction. continue to blog
How did the message of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. influence Bernard Lumpkin, whose collection forms the basis of the best-selling survey, Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists? The story goes back to Bernard's father, Oscar James Lumpkin Jr., pictured here with Bernard's mother, Sarah Benzaquen. Below is an excerpt from Bernard's Introduction. continue to blog
Cy Gavin's 2016 oil painting "Underneath the George Washington Bridge" is reproduced from Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists, a Staff Pick every day, but especially during Black History Month. Gavin writes, "In 2010, when I moved to the city, the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy was at its most robust, accounting for a record 685,724 stops in 2011… After Floyd v. City of New York and a resulting NYPD mandate requiring officers to justify the reason for a stop, that number had dwindled by 2016 to only 12,404—the year I made this painting. In the context of a nationwide discourse on police brutality, stop-and-frisk makes simply walking the streets, parks, or really anywhere police convene feel dangerous—not only for the disproportionate risk that existing has assigned to me, but because of a heightened sense of embitterment from a police force so unflatteringly and publicly spanked in 2013. Blue Lives Matter rallies and an endless stream of inflammatory remarks from the city’s police commissioner at the time seemed only to bolster officers to strut even more menacingly around the streets. In the case of Washington Heights, however, cops skulked along in unmarked cars, often tricked out with chrome rims and booming sound systems or, less commonly, in repurposed yellow cabs, turning on their sirens and lights simply to shock residents into a moment of confused and repulsed acknowledgment. Inhabiting a city that playfully threatens to destroy you at a whim becomes exhausting. The privacy of this location under the bridge allowed me to draw, read, write, and think critically about the world without the crushing awareness of being relentlessly observed. Here, I found I could bring a notebook and plan actionable steps for the future—and I could more readily imagine a future…" continue to blog
We can think of no better image to express everything we've gone through in 2020—and all that we dream of in 2021—than D'Angelo Lovell Williams' "The Lovers" (2017). Reproduced from Young, Gifted and Black—named one of the Best Holiday Gift Books of the Year by Vogue, Essence, New York Magazine's The Strategist and The New York Times, among many others—this image seems to simultaneously presage all of the pain and longing of the pandemic, the unstoppable rise of Black Lives Matter, and the overthrow of a corrupt government that asked us to wear blinders and accept lies. Originally intended to appropriate and subvert the iconic 1928 Magritte painting of the same name, "The Lovers" was, in fact, made as a "blunt expression of black gay love," according to the artist. Viewed now, in light of the astonishing year that we have all endured together, it truly is "about so much more than we can express in a lifetime." continue to blog
"A mother who had no mother" (2018) by Chiffon Thomas—one of Forbes magazine's 30 Under 30, 2020—is reproduced from Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists. "Thomas exploits embroidery’s elemental nature with visceral works resistant to reductive, chauvinistic typologies that have relegated the medium to the art-historical margins," Gordon Dearborn Wilkins writes in the book. "Drawing on an archive, both material and immaterial, of family snapshots, memories, and cultural references, the artist tells a richly autobiographical story of their family and of their upbringing as a queer African American in 1990s and early 2000s Chicago. Thomas channels memories of family members engaged in largely quotidian activities into sketches that are then broken down and transformed into highly textured, sinewy expanses of embroidery thread, acrylic paint and manufactured textiles. Thomas’s hybrid works, like the arresting 'A mother who had no mother,' reject the imposition of the frame as gathered fabric cascades off Thomas’s canvas of choice—commercially available window screens… Monuments to everyday domestic dramas, Thomas’s embroidered works serve as vessels of personal and collective memory, each thread a tangible link to the past and an assertion of the medium’s radical potential to subvert and surprise." See more Holiday Gift Books for Art Lovers here! continue to blog
Vaughn Spann's "Staring back at you, rooted and unwavering" (2018) is reproduced from Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists, one of our top Holiday Gift Books for Art Lovers 2020, back in stock at last after the first printing sold out immediately upon initial release. Based on the renowned collection of Bernard I. Lumpkin and Carmine D. Boccuzzi, this is a book for all serious home, academic and museum art libraries, presenting more than forty of the most interesting and influential rising Black artists today, alongside a host of artists from previous generations who helped pave the way. "The majority of the four hundred plus artworks in the Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection provide a diverse reflection of the past decade in black artistic production," editor Antwaun Sargent writes. "The paintings, sculptures, videos, photographs, and drawings speak broadly to the notion of community as the site of multiple narratives, identities, and histories that, while rooted in the specific experiences of blackness, address the universal. By illuminating concerns and celebrations that abound inside the work, the art exposes the inner life of black communities—which has historically been erased and is still rarely acknowledged—in dynamic and empathetic ways." continue to blog
Paul Mpagi Sepuya's "Darkroom Mirror Study (0X5A1531)" (2017) is reproduced from Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists, our best-selling new release this month. The artist writes: "The suggestive and overlapping meanings in the term darkroom—both the historical origin of the photographer’s craft as well as the privileged yet marginalized site of queer and colored sexuality and socialization—lie at the center of this body of work… Within my photographs, I inhabit the obscuring fabric, or as my stand-in, a reflected glimpse of the camera or tripod. My hands touch, manipulate, and adjust. I move from in front of the camera, to behind it, to reflected in the mirror. In 'Darkroom Mirror Study (0X5A1531)', the cloth, my body, and the black figure of the camera tripod throw into relief the latent bodily accumulations on the mirror’s surface. I inhabit an ambiguous place within these images. My role as photographer is one of negotiation—oscillating between the precision of the photographic apparatus and the loss of rationality within erotic excess." continue to blog
Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art
Published by D.A.P.. Edited with essay by Antwaun Sargent. Text by Graham C. Boettcher, Jessica Bell Brown, Connie H. Choi, Anthony Graham, Lauren Haynes, Jamillah James, Thomas J. Lax, Hallie Ringle, Adeze Wilford, Gordon Dearborn Wilkins, Matt Wycoff. Interview with Bernard Lumpkin by Thelma Golden.
What’s new, now and next from contemporary Black artists
A New York Times 2020 holiday gift guide pick
This book surveys the work of a new generation of Black artists, and also features the voices of a diverse group of curators who are on the cutting edge of contemporary art. As mission-driven collectors, Bernard I. Lumpkin and Carmine D. Boccuzzi have championed emerging artists of African descent through museum loans and institutional support. But there has never been an opportunity to consider their acclaimed collection as a whole until now.
Edited by writer Antwaun Sargent (author of The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion), Young, Gifted and Black draws from this collection to shed new light on works by contemporary artists of African descent. At a moment when debates about the politics of visibility within the art world have taken on renewed urgency, and establishment voices such as the New York Times are declaring that “it has become undeniable that African American artists are making much of the best American art today,” Young, Gifted and Black takes stock of how these new voices are impacting the way we think about identity, politics and art history itself.
Young, Gifted and Black contextualizes artworks with contributions from artists, curators and other experts. It features a wide-ranging interview with Bernard Lumpkin and Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem; and an in-depth essay by Antwaun Sargent situating Lumpkin in a long lineage of Black art patrons. A landmark publication, this book illustrates what it means (in the words of Nina Simone) to be young, gifted and Black in contemporary art.
Artists include: Mark Bradford, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, Adam Pendleton, Pope.L, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Henry Taylor, Mickalene Thomas, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Sadie Barnette, Kevin Beasley, Jordan Casteel, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Bethany Collins, Noah Davis, Cy Gavin, Allison Janae Hamilton, Tomashi Jackson, Samuel Levi Jones, Deana Lawson, Norman Lewis, Eric N. Mack, Arcmanoro Niles, Jennifer Packer, Christina Quarles, Jacolby Satterwhite, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Sable Elyse Smith, Chanel Thomas, Stacy Lynn Waddell, D’Angelo Lovell Williams, Brenna Youngblood, and more.
Antwaun Sargent is an art critic and a writer.
Matt Wycoff is an artist and independent curator.
Thelma Golden is the Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Thomas J. Lax is Associate Curator of Performance and Media at MoMA.
Adeze Wilford is a curatorial assistant at The Shed.
Anthony Graham is an assistant curator at MOCA San Diego.
Connie H. Choi is an associate curator of the permanent collection at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Graham C. Boettcher is the Director of the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama.
Lauren Haynes is the curator of contemporary art at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Hallie Ringle is a curator of contemporary art at Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama.
Jamilah James is the curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Jessica Bell Brown is the Associate Curator for Contemporary Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
