Group Show Reviews

20

Our Culture Mag, 2026

Destiny Is a Rose, on view at Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles through August 16, 2026, presents more than 80 works from the collection of Eileen Harris Norton, marking fifty years since her first acquisition in 1976. The exhibition celebrates her longstanding commitment to artists of color, women artists, and those connected to California, featuring works by Kerry James Marshall, Mark Bradford, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, and Lorraine O’Grady, among others.

Read MoreDownload PDF

Artnews, 2025

Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles will present Destiny Is a Rose: The Eileen Harris Norton Collection, an exhibition of around 80 works from the influential collector’s holdings. Opening during Frieze Los Angeles, the show features major works by artists including Kerry James Marshall, Lorraine O’Grady, Alma Thomas, and David Hammons, highlighting Harris Norton’s longstanding commitment to supporting artists and shaping the contemporary art landscape.

Read MoreDownload PDF

Observer, 2025

After eight years of renovation, the Studio Museum in Harlem reopens in a new 82,000-square-foot building designed by David Adjaye. Rooted in Harlem’s architectural fabric and filled with light, the museum expands its gallery space while reaffirming its historic role as a cultural anchor celebrating Black art, history, and community.

Read MoreDownload PDF

Art Basel Stories, 2025

Legacy Russell’s exhibition Code Switch: Distributing Blackness, Reprogramming Internet Art traces an overlooked lineage of Black technological innovation in experimental art, from Tom Lloyd’s programmed light installations in 1968 to contemporary digital practices. Referencing Lorraine O’Grady’s 1983 performance Art Is..., the project challenges historical exclusions and highlights the deep connections between Black art, technology, and the avant-garde across generations.

Read MoreDownload PDF

Travel and Leisure, 2025

After years of anticipation, the Studio Museum in Harlem will reopen on November 15 in a striking new seven-story building designed by Adjaye Associates. The inaugural exhibition honors the museum’s legacy, featuring the work of Tom Lloyd alongside highlights from its permanent collection, including works by Rashid Johnson, Lorraine O’Grady, and Faith Ringgold.

Read MoreDownload PDF

4Columns, 2025

ECHO DELAY REVERB: American Art, Francophone Thought at the Palais de Tokyo traces how ideas associated with “French Theory”—from Barthes and Derrida to Foucault—have subtly shaped American art. Curated by Naomi Beckwith and collaborators, the exhibition shows how these concepts reverberated across studios and cultural spaces, appearing less as direct illustrations of theory and more as shifting echoes that artists absorbed, transformed, and set into motion.

Read MoreDownload PDF

The New York Times, 2025

The reopening of the Studio Museum in Harlem, after seven years of construction, arrives with dazzling alumni and collection exhibitions. Among the highlights is a 40-image photographic work, Art Is…, by the late, great Lorraine O’Grady. The series places viewers along Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard during the 1983 African American Day Parade, inviting us to witness the neighborhood’s vibrancy through O’Grady’s incisive lens.

Read MoreDownload PDF

The Guardian, 2023

The Guardian, 2023. Veronica Esposito’s review of group exhibition, Inheritances, at the Whitney curated by Rujeko Hockley. Along with Ephraim Asili’s 2020 film ‘The Inheritance,” Hockley cites O’Gradys “Rivers, First Draft” as one of the major inspirations for the show as he sought to present challenging works of Black avant-garde art.

Read MoreDownload PDF

Hyperallergic, 2023

Hyperallergic 2023. What Just Above Midtown Meant for Black Artists — Taylor Michael reviews “Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces at the Museum of Modern Art” which included stills from O’Grady’s Mlle Bourgeoise Noire as well as her most recent persona, The Knight.

Read MoreDownload PDF

The New York Times, 2022

In a review for the New York Times, Holland Cotter makes note of the similarities and differences between two concurrent exhibitions in New York City that highlight artists of Caribbean descent. “Juan Francisco Elso: Por América,” a solo exhibition at El Museo del Barrio is discussed alongside the group show “Sin Autorización: Contemporary Cuban Art.” Exhibited at Columbia University’s Wallach Art Gallery, “Sin Autorización” features Elso and O’Grady amongst other Afro-/Cuban artists.

Read MoreDownload PDF

The New York Times, 2022

Holland Cotter reviews Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces, which showcased the ground-breaking Black-owned gallery, JAM, that opened in 1974. In his review, Cotter recounts the gallery’s history and monumental works, including O’Grady’s seminal persona, Mlle Bourgeoise Noire which she debuted at JAM.

Read MoreDownload PDF

New York Times, 2022

Aruna D’Souza offers historicizes the foundational years at Just Above Midtown, the gallery project of Linda Goode-Bryant, which platformed artists including David Hammons, Lorna Simpson, and Maren Hassinger early in their careers. D’Souza addresses the show’s goals to highlight the gallery’s history of the 1970s and 1980s, while also enlivening its archive as it remains active into the 2020s. For Goode-Bryant, the question of integrity arises: “Can JAM be JAM at MoMA?”

Read MoreDownload PDF

WBUR, 2018

In a review of We Wanted A Revolution, Garcia considers the art exhibition as a corrective method for recentering Black women “on the forefront of form and the avant-garde,” and in doing so, she calls for revisions to the art historical canon’s sole emphasis on European male avant-gardists. The article takes a firm stance that the patriarchy cannot be taken down without simultaneously dismantling systemic racism.

Read MoreDownload PDF

The Guardian, 2017

In a review of Soul of a Nation, Steven Thrasher praises O’Grady for “putting Harlem into focus,” suggesting that art can happen on the street – outside of the confines of the museum – embodied through her 1983 performance work “Art Is…”

Read MoreDownload PDF

The New Republic, 2017

Lovia Gyarkye considers how O’Grady’s performance persona 
Mlle Bourgeoise Noire,” featured in the We Wanted a Revolution exhibition, acted as a catalyst for a more inclusive feminist revolution. The article imagines the available potential in visibility, “if Black women were not just seen, but finally heard.”

Read MoreDownload PDF

ArtFCity, 2016

Emily Colucci's review of "Blackness in Abstraction" highlights O'Grady's full-wall video "Landscape (Western Hemisphere)" as one of the exhibit's most successful pieces both for its embrace of multiple meanings of blackness and for its abstract evocation of landscape sounds and textures.

Read MoreDownload PDF

18 Whitney Mentions, 2010

Selected press on O’Grady in the Biennial — A compilation of 18 selected and conflicting mentions of Lorraine O’Grady’s piece in the 2010 Whitney Biennial press provides an opportunity to compare responses to The First and the Last of the Modernists and parse their differences.

Read MoreDownload PDF