Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And @Brooklyn Museum
By Loring Knoblauch / In Museums / April 29, 2021
JTF (just the facts): A retrospective exhibition of collages, photographs, videos, and supporting ephemera, hung primarily in a series of galleries on the fourth floor, but also in various other locations around the museum. The exhibition was curated by Catherine Morris and Aruna D’Souza, with Jenée-Daria Strand. A catalog has been published to accompany the exhibition.
The following works are included in the exhibition, organized by location in the museum:
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, 4th Floor
48 digital chromogenic prints from Kodachrome 35mm slides, 1982/2015
2 vitrines: artist statement, course description, readings, performance program, playlist, manuscript pages
3 vitrines: cut newspaper collages, 1977
14 gelatin silver prints, 1980-1983/2009
vitrine: contact sheets, calling card, letter, artist notes
1 costume made from 180 pairs of white gloves, 1980
40 chromogenic prints, 1983/2009
2 vitrines: notes, proposal, slides, notebook pages, statement, letter
4 letterpress on Japanese paper diptychs, 1977/2017
3 Artforum spreads, 2009
vitrine: announcement card, press release, price list, letters
6 letterpress on Japanese paper diptychs, 1977/2017; 1 single panel letterpress on Japanese paper, 1977/2017
2 vitrines: catalog, memo, notebook, contact sheet, notes, press release, letters
2 archival pigment print diptych, 1991/2019
3 archival pigment prints, 1991/2019
Elevator Lobby, 4th Floor
6 toner ink on adhesive label paper, 1977
Luce Center for American Art, 5th Floor
1 single channel video, black and white, sound, 18:04, 2010/2011
Beaux-Arts Court, 3rd Floor
6 Fujiflex prints, 2020
vitrine: studies, project descriptions, book lists
Egyptian Galleries, 3rd Floor
16 Cibachrome print diptychs, 1980/1994
Cafe Lobby, 1st Floor
1 toner ink on adhesive label paper, 1977 (displayed on 10 windows)
Comments/Context: While photography has been an important part of Lorraine O’ Grady’s artistic practice since the very beginning of her career, to label her a photographer would be an oversimplification of the facts. She is better thought of as a conceptual artist, or a performance/installation artist (who uses photography to document her efforts), or even a feminist artist, if we want to step back further from medium as a defining characteristic. What is clear is that across her four decades of art making, she has been first and foremost a sophisticated and incisive thinker, particularly about race and gender, who has then employed a range of different mediums to wrestle with facets of Blackness and her own place in the world as a Black woman. ( … )