Art in America, 2023. How Iconic Gallery Just Above Midtown Swapped Art History’s Lone Geniuses for Vibrant Community — Josie Roland Hodson reviews “Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces,” noting the range of featured artists which included frequent and better-known artists such as O’Grady alongside “those less familiar to the mainstream art press.”
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.
Lorraine O’Grady Has Always Been A Rebel—In this conversation for The New Yorker, Doreen St. Felix and O’Grady discuss the artist’s nonconformist attitudes which she cultivated in childhood, rebelling from a middle class, Black immigrant family. This spirit of rebellion foregrounded O’Grady’s interest in the avant-garde and her penchant for conceptualism.
Folasade Ologundudu interviews Linda Goode-Bryant on her gallery project, Just Above Midtown. The gallery space hosted exhibitions for emerging artists of color from 1974 to 1986. The two discuss MoMA’s acquisition of the JAM archive. Goode-Bryant expresses that while she feels validated for the work that she and her collaborators did, she is also considering the danger of ‘cultural co-option’ that may arise with archiving her project at a predominately white arts institution.
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?”
Risk Everything—Ahead of the “Both/And” retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, Catherinne Damman writes an insightful essay on the varied art and career of O’Grady. Of her many practices, Damman sees “risk as [O’Grady’s] primary medium,” foregoing easy stratifications in favor of deep inquiry and interrogation of the structures that bind.
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.”
Jillian Steinhauer reviews O'Grady's retrospective exhibition “Both/And” at the Brooklyn Museum. The article highlights O'Grady's pioneering work in performance art and her exploration of race, gender, and identity in her practice. Steinhauer describes O'Grady's personal history, including her West Indian heritage, her education, and her career as a writer before she turned to art, another aspect of her life that significantly informs her art practice.
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.
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.
For Those Who Will Know—In her introduction for O’Grady’s “Writing in Space,” the first collection of the artist’s writing, Aruna D’Souza illuminates the throughline of forward-thinking found in O’Grady’s groundbreaking art. Resisting the simple and rigid classifications that box in many women and Black artists, O’Grady has continuously complicated and challenged cultural notions of binarism. This provocation has taken form in all modes of her practices—from her seminal performance of alter ego Mlle Bourgeoise Noir to the recurrent diptychs bridging unexpected figures like Michael Jackson and Charles Baudelaire. D’Souza delineates how these works are foregrounded by O’Grady’s training as a writer.
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.
Tonya Nelson traces histories of political protests and activism from the civil rights movement to the more contemporary Black Lives Matter movement – problematizing the roots of Western individualism at large. Her critique reveals itself through her analyses of works by Lorraine O’Grady, Maren Hassinger, and Linda Goode-Bryant, all featured in the group exhibitions Soul of a Nation and We Wanted A Revolution.
Upon the opening of the group exhibition We Wanted A Revolution, Jessica Bell Brown celebrates the Black female artists-activists who made space to create their own art world in the 1970s and 80s, including Lorraine O’Grady, Linda Goode-Bryant, and Senga Nengudi. Brown reminds her audience that the work doesn’t stop at this exhibition; she strongly urges museums to acquire the exhibited pieces into their permanent collections.
Holland Cotter, Art & Design — Cotter's review of O'Grady's exhibit at Alexander Gray focuses on her use of collage in both "Cutting Out the New York Times" and "Rivers, First Draft" as a method of shaping her complex history.