Guggenheim Curator Will Stage Exhibition of Caribbean Diaspora

ACUBIEN Newsdesk

Published by New York Ties | By Zachary Small | 23 August 2024

“Green X Gold” Kingston Biennial coming to the National Gallery of Jamaica

The National Gallery of Jamaica has announced that the curator Ashley James will organize this year’s Kingston Biennial, a showcase of Caribbean and African diaspora artists that aims to link the regional art scene with international audiences.

“I have always seen myself as Jamaican American,” said James, 36, whose parents emigrated to New York from the country in the 1970s. “But it has never been in the context of my work — until now.”

The exhibition will be named “Green X Gold”—inspired by the colors of the Jamaican flag—and include more than two dozen artists who examine environmental concerns and how the tourism industry promotes an idealized version of the Caribbean to the outside world. Some artists featured in the show, which is scheduled to open on Dec. 15, will be Oneika Russell, Joiri Minaya, and Rodell Warner.

James became the first Black full-time curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan five years ago. Last year, she opened an exhibition called “Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility,” which filled the museum rotunda with artworks by people of color that examined the relationship between technology, surveillance, and race.

An opportunity to plan the Kingston Biennial came as she was putting the finishing touches on the Guggenheim exhibition.

“We were looking for someone to marry intellectual rigor with a presentation that would be accessible,” said O’Neil Lawrence, chief curator at the National Gallery of Jamaica, which says it is the largest and oldest public art museum in the English-speaking Caribbean.

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Jamaica-global style Celebration of Caribbean Diaspora artists

The Kingston Biennial started in 1977 as a celebration of local artists. The program has expanded over the past decade to welcome a more international crowd as some alumni from the exhibition — including Ebony G. Patterson, Renee Cox, and Leasho Johnson — have succeeded in the broader art world. This is only the second time a curator from outside the National Gallery of Jamaica will organize the show, which Lawrence said was part of an effort to bring the biennial into a global context.

James will have a budget of about $160,000 to organize the exhibition, which the Jamaican government supports. The biennial was originally supposed to open in the summer but was delayed because of a packed schedule for the gallery’s 50th anniversary and a lengthy government approval process over the show’s budget.

“I see myself as engaging in a conversation and building out from that,” James said about the biennial. “This is a region of the world that is ripe for the art world to take seriously.”

Zachary Small is a Times reporter writing about the art world’s relationship to money, politics, and technology. A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 24, 2024, Section C, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Guggenheim Curator Will Stage Exhibition of Caribbean Diaspora. See more on: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum