Lorraine O’Grady’s Retrospective at Brooklyn Museum Honors Long Career
By Anni Irish, 2021
Lorraine O’Grady has spent the last four decades creating unparalleled art. And now her tremendous career has culminated in the first ever retrospective of the 86 year old artist’s work. “Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And” is currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum, is extremely overdue and could not come at a better time.
Born in 1934 in Boston, Massachusetts to Jamaican immigrant parents, O’Grady’s Afro-Caribbean heritage and personal history influences a lot of the art she creates. O’Grady attended Wellesley College and eventually found her way to New York City where she would become an integral part of its cultural milieu. An accomplished writer in her own right working as a music critic for The Village Voice and Rolling Stone, and even as an intelligence agent for the US government, and lecturer at the School of Visual Arts, these experiences laid the groundwork for the multimedia art practice she developed that influenced generations of artists.
After years of being entrenched in the art world she became increasingly aware of how insular it was and the larger issues of gender, racial, and class inequalities that have plagued it for decades. Now, nearly 40 years later, O’Grady accomplished what she set out to do and is finally getting the larger institutional recognition she deserves, with her work now being exposed to a more mainstream audience.
“Both/And” which spans multiple floors of the Brooklyn Museum is remarkable. It outlines O’Grady’s larger body of works which has been deeply invested in institutional critique as well as her larger efforts to challenge the art world, and center her experience as a Black woman. The pieces on display almost become absorbed into the permanent collection furthering the conversation O’Grady’s art has continued to have both inside and outside of the walls of the confines of art institutions. This exhibit is also part of the change that has been occurring within the art world when it comes to creating more inclusive practices and showcasing the work of artists who have been underrepresented.( … )