The Georgetown Voice, 2025
Georgetown University Art Galleries reopened on September 20 with two fall exhibitions: Notes on Form (Intimate Structures) by McArthur Binion and Miscegenated Family Album by Lorraine O’Grady.
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First Of The Month, 2023
First of the Month, 2023. This Met is Mine — In his thoughtful essay, Ben Khadim DeMott details his first encounter with O’Grady’s Miscegenated Family Album at the Booth collection at the University of Chicago which unearthed his own familial memories of trips to Met and viewing the Ancient Egyptian exhibit. Through research DeMott finds that “(Cross Generational) L: Nefertiti, the last image; R: Devonia\’s youngest Daughter, Kimberley,” is a part of the larger performance piece, “Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline.” He explores the cathartic potential of art as shown in O’Gradys works which serve first as a balm not an analytic correction of history.
Frieze, 2022
Curator and critic Jacopo Crivelli Visconti names Miscegenated Family Album, on view at Frieze New York in 2022, as “nothing less than one of the masterpieces of the 20th Century.”
ARTnews, 2021
Lorraine O’Grady and Andrea Fraser share strategies of institutional critique, and in doing so, the two make legible their differing orientations towards museums. For O’Grady, the museum was a place that refused and ignored her presence, while for Fraser, some decades later, the museum was a site that invited her political resistance.
Barbara London, 2021
Independent curator Barbara London interviews Lorraine O’Grady on her involvement at the gallery Just Above Midtown, speaking in detail about her work “Art Is…” and what comes next for the artist following her retrospective Both/And and the Covid-19 pandemic. London shares her enthusiasm for O’Grady’s new performance persona pictured in her work “Announcement Card (Seated Palmate).”
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The New York Times Style Magazine, 2021
Both Sides Now: In Conversation With Lorraine O’Grady—In an interview with Kate Guadagnino, O’grady discusses a typical day in her life as a working artist and her current interests.
diptych Conceptualism Mlle Bourgeoise Noire Jamaica Art Is... both/and Miscegenated Family album Brooklyn Museum Olympia's Maid Aruna d’Souza Boston Catherine Morris Lucy Lippard Iowa Writers Workshop New Museum criticism Cutting Out The New York Times Davis Museum Wellesley College Just Above Midtown Egypt
Collector Daily, 2021
Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And @Brooklyn Museum—Loring Knoblauch provides a comprehensive review of O’Grady’s Both/And retrospective offering a detailed listing of the artworks displayed, and the mapping of the show. Looking closely at each component presented at the Brooklyn Museum, Knoblauch finds that what emerges is the importance of conceptualism and idea-driven practices to O’Grady’s work.
Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline Aruna d’Souza Harlem Catherine Morris hybridity Body is the Ground of My Experience the knight Just Above Midtown black women artists Rivers First Draft the Caribbean diptych The Strange Taxi photo-installation Egypt Mlle Bourgeoise Noire Conceptualism Art Is... both/and Miscegenated Family album Brooklyn Museum black female subjectivity The Fir-Palm 2021
The New York Times Style Magazine, 2021
Kate Guadagnino sits down with O’Grady to learn about her day-to-day as a concept-based artist. She speaks honestly about her process of making art by returning to old projects with fresh eyes, sometimes years later, while also including more personal details like her favorite films and her life at Westbeth. The artist notes that “having come to art later in life, [...] I’m out there to make the best possible work and as close to a masterpiece as I can. [...] What I’m trying to do is get as much of myself expressed as possible because there is so little out there that allows for an understanding of the fullness of the Black mind or soul.”
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The Philadelphia Tribune, 2021
In a review of the retrospective Both/And, Siddhartha Mitter sings the praises of O’Grady’s deft political critique. Having developed a rapport with the artist through his repeated reviews of her work, he quotes the artist in conversation: “I am making incisions on the skin of culture” […] “it is work I’ll be doing for the rest of my life.”
Hyperallergic, 2021
In a review of Lorraine O’Grady’s solo exhibition “Both/And,” Hyperallergic’s Alexandra M. Thomas discusses the politics asserted by the artist within the museum. Thomas writes, ““Both/And” thinking posits a refusal of either/or framework that is endemic to the West. In disavowing [Western] binaristic thinking, we can instead dwell on the nuance of the world’s disarray and uncertainty.”
New York Times, 2021
Lorraine O’Grady, Still Cutting Into the Culture—Forty years after O’Grady debuted Mlle Bourgeoise Noire, declaring that Black art to take more risks, O’Grady receives her first retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum which features the launch of a new persona. In this profile, Siddhartha Mitter showcases how O’Grady has continuously pursued new ventures, pushing culture forward in her quests of discovery.
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Artforum, 2021
Upon the opening of O’Grady’s retrospective Both/And, Artforum devotes much of its March 2021 issue to her prolific art practice. Catherine Damman provides a decades-long overview of her career, Mira Dayal focuses on Miscegenated Family Album, and David Fiasco interviews the artist on new works in progress.
Harlem erasure Aruna d’Souza The Clearing Family Portrait 1 (Formal Body is the Ground of My Experience anti-Blackness Nefertiti/Devonia Evangeline Composed) western cultural hegemony Catherine Morris Olympia's Maid Cutting Out The New York Times hybridity modernity Boston Egypt the Black and White Show The Dinner Party art-world racism Jamaica Just Above Midtown Outlaw Aesthetics Caribbean both/and Mlle Bourgeoise Noire Leon-Gontran Damas displacement Announcement of a New Persona (Performances to Come!) Art Is... The New Museum New York Times 2021 Miscegenated Family album Hortense Spillers becoming an artist Cutting Out CONYT photography Nefertiti’s Sister Linda Goode Bryant language diaspora seriality
Art in America, 2021
Christina Sharpe writes a crucial essay upon the publishing of Lorraine O’Grady’s collected writings and interviews, entitled Writing in Space, suggesting that the artist’s “fierce intelligence, wit and humor, curiosity, anger” is the grist for social revolution.
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Boston Globe, 2021
In light of O’Grady’s retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, Murray Whyte argues for the artist’s embrace of cultural hybridity through an in-depth analysis of her art practice. Specifically, she considers how O’Grady’s insistence to be “both/and” – to contain multiple backgrounds at the same time, refusing a singular identity – could usher in the next generation of interdisciplinary, multicultural artists.
Art Is... Cutting Out The New York Times Hugh Hefner Miscegenated Family album Wellesley College Strange Taxi diaspora Egypt Concrete poetry Surrealism both/and Judy Chicago Olympia's Maid Brooklyn Museum Eurocentrism white feminism Rolling Stone refusal Boston 2021 hybridity art-world racism Cutting Out CONYT Just Above Midtown Caribbean School of Visual Arts Rivers First Draft Landscape (Western Hemisphere) Aruna d’Souza Mlle Bourgeoise Noire western cultural hegemony Joe Biden
Hyperallergic, 2018
Chase Quinn casts light on O’Grady’s performance personas in his review of the exhibition From Me to Them to Me Again. The writer considers the artist’s persona of Mlle Bourgeoise Noire to exemplify her career of fighting against art world racism and Western binarism at large.
race and politics Linda Goode Bryant Iowa Writers Workshop representation 2018 black women artists From Me to Them to Me Again western cultural hegemony Afro-Caribbean hybridity Cutting Out The New York Times Irish Just Above Midtown post-black Savannah College of Art and Design black avant-garde Egypt SCAD Mlle Bourgeoise Noire Cutting Out CONYT SCAD Museum Art Is... The New York Times Wellelsey College art-world racism segregation the news Landscape (Western Hemisphere)
The Drama Review, 2018
Drawing on the Black Feminist scholarship of Hortense Spillers, Beth Capper interprets O’Grady’s performances as representing life lived in the “interstice” between two worlds. The rigorously academic essay situates O’Grady’s work in a lineage of radical Black artists (David Hammons and Jean-Michel Basquiat, to name two) who deal with the limits of language and the politics of visual representation.
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Lorraine O’Grady and Juliana Huxtable, Part 1, 2016
A conversation between artists Lorraine O’Grady and Juliana Huxtable. The dialogue took place by phone from O’Grady and Huxtable’s respective studios in New York City. This is part one of a two-part discussion and the first time the artists have spoken.
Lorraine O’Grady and Juliana Huxtable, Part 2, 2016
Part two of a two-part discussion between artists Lorraine O’Grady and Juliana Huxtable. The dialogue took place by phone from O’Grady and Huxtable’s respective studios in New York City. This is part two of a two-part discussion and the first time the artists have spoken.
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