Rivers and Just Above Midtown, 2013, 2015
Text read at MOMA's Now Dig This! symposium — A meditation on why Rivers, First Draft might not have existed without the Just Above Midtown Gallery’s challenging and supportive environment.
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Email Q & A with Artforum Editor, 2009
O’Grady used the margin comments of her Artforum editor on “The Black and White Show” in part as an opportunity for background clarification on the situation of race in the 1980s art world.
Artforum International, 1998
Published letter re “Ronald Jones on 'Black Like Who?'” — Response to "Crimson Herring: Ronald Jones on 'Black Like Who?' [Harvard University symposium on stereotypes in art]," Artforum International, vol. xxxvi, no. 10, Summer 1998. Letter published as "Poison Ivy," in Artforum International, vol. xxxvii, no. 1, October 1998.
Sean Landers, SWM, 1994
One of three cover articles on Landers, Artforum, April 1994 — By mutual consent, this was O’Grady’s last article for Artforum. It was also not included in the Sean Landers gallery press kit.
Basquiat and the Black Art World, 1993
Artforum International — O’Grady’s column on the occasion of Basquiat’s first retrospective, at the Whitney Museum, was the first to examine Basquiat’s relation to the black art world. It discusses her personal relationship to Jean-Michel and analyzes the mainstream art world’s “primitivist” responses to his work.
WAC (Womens Action Coalition), 1992
Front-of-book feature, Artforum, October 1992 — O’Grady was one of less than a handful of women of color active in the Womens Action Coalition. WAC had been begun by women in the New York art world in response to Anita Hill’s denigration during the congressional hearing on Clarence Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
Black Women Film Directors, 1992
Film column, Artforum, January 1992 — Written during a tentative “break-through” year for black women film directors, the article was a search for answers to the question, “Why are there so few even now?” It found the situation for black women to be an exaggeration of that for women in general.
artforum.com, 2012
Lumi Tan, Critics' Picks — A brief, astute statement that indicates O'Grady's intentions in naming her Alexander Gray, NY solo show New Worlds.
Artforum, Summer 2012
Hannah Feldman on This Will Have Been, MCA Chicago — This generally laudatory review of a groundbreaking exhibit on art of the 1980s features special attention on O'Grady's piece in the exhibit, Art Is…, seen as encapsulating the problematic of curator Helen Molesworth's strategy.
Nick Mauss in Artforum, 2009
The Poem Will Resemble You — Mauss’s article for Artforum is, with Wilson’s INTAR catalogue essay, one of the most extended and incisive pieces on O’Grady’s oeuvre to date. It was one-half of a two-article feature that also included O’Grady’s artist portfolio for The Black and White Show.
Johanna Burton, 2008
Miscegenated Family Album, Artforum Magazine — In Artforum's first review of an O'Grady solo exhibit, Burton sensitively parses the "uneasy symmetry" of the Miscegenated Family Album installation at Alexander Gray Associates, NY.