Brooklyn Museum’s ’23 exhibition schedule leaps across artistic categories

Picasso, The Great Migration, African fashion, zine art and more

December 7, 2022 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

The Brooklyn Museum. Photo: Richard Barnes

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PROSPECT HEIGHTS — The Brooklyn Museum’s upcoming 2023 exhibitions span a true multitude of topics and contemporary muses. From the history and dissection of social progress and equality – as well as a timely exhibition of the rich countercultural ‘zine’ art – to the display and analysis of African artistic techniques, the institution will be commemorating poignant art in the near and far past.

Next year’s presentations include a group show of contemporary artists reflecting on the complex and continuing legacy of the Great Migration; a landmark exhibition celebrating the creativity, ingenuity, and global impact of African fashions; a multidecade survey of visually captivating, experimental work by María Magdalena Campos-Pons; and the first major exhibition of zines by artists working in North America, bringing attention to this unexamined but vibrant aesthetic practice.

In addition, as part of a global initiative marking the fiftieth anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death, the Museum will partner with writer and comedian Hannah Gadsby to explore the artist’s legacy through a feminist lens.

“Next year, we’re showcasing exciting and relevant exhibitions that connect past to present,” says Anne Pasternak, Shelby White and Leon Levy Director.

“A display of recent video and photography work by Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, for example, marks the fiftieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade by investigating the history of reproductive injustice. And an installation from our Arts of Africa collection commemorates the centennial of a historic Brooklyn Museum exhibition—the first in the United States to display African works as art objects, not ethnographic material.”

Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter: Ain’t I a Woman. Photo courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum

Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter: Ain’t I a Woman

January 20–August 13, 2023

Overlook Gallery, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, 4th Floor

On the fiftieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Ain’t I a Woman examines the many ramifications of the 2022 decision to end federal abortion rights through two projects that link Black American women’s fight for bodily autonomy to the legacy of Roe. In the video projection Ain’t I a Woman and an installation from her recent photo-based series Consecration to Mary, contemporary artist and advocate Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter champions the power of storytelling, agency, and healing as she explores the violent histories that have long stripped Black women and girls of the right to make decisions about their own bodies. The presentation redresses mainstream feminism’s history of marginalizing specific groups by foregrounding Black incarcerated women, while expanding the conversation around reproductive justice to encompass human rights, empathy, and liberation.

This exhibition is organized by Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator, with Jaileen Pierre-Louis, CITI Intern, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration

March 3–June 25, 2023

Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art and Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 4th Floor

A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration invites twelve influential and emerging Black artists to reflect on the Great Migration (1915–70), considering the period’s continuing impact on their lives and on social and cultural life in the United States. The exhibition presents newly commissioned works ranging from large-scale installation, painting, and immersive film to photography, tapestry, and mixed media. Forming a dynamic array, these works draw from historical research, familial heritage, and lived experience. Highlights include Torkwase Dyson’s Way Over There Inside Me (A Festival of Inches), Allison Janae Hamilton’s A House Called Florida, Mark Bradford’s 500, Carrie Mae Weems’s Leave! Leave Now! and The North Star, and Robert Pruitt’s A Song for Travelers (all 2022).

Brooklyn, a locus of innumerable migration narratives, has an important place in the uniquely American experience of the Great Migration. Upholding the Brooklyn Museum’s commitment to Black culture and history, the exhibition will explore these legacies both through the artworks and by encouraging visitors to share their own migration tales in an oral history “pod” near the galleries.

This exhibition is co-organized by the Mississippi Museum of Art and the Baltimore Museum of Art and is co-curated by Ryan N. Dennis, Chief Curator and Artistic Director of the Center for Art and Public Exchange, Mississippi Museum of Art, and Jessica Bell Brown, Curator and Department Head for Contemporary Art, Baltimore Museum of Art. The Brooklyn Museum presentation is organized by Kimberli Gant, Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, with Indira A. Abiskaroon, Curatorial Assistant, Modern and Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum.

Exhibition for Picasso Celebration 1973–2023, title to be announced by the museum. Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Museum

Exhibition for Picasso Celebration 1973–2023, title to be announced

June 2–September 24, 2023

Robert E. Blum Galleries, 1st Floor

This exhibition, part of a global consortium of exhibitions and events marking the fiftieth anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death, reevaluates the artist’s practice and reception through a feminist lens. It is a collaborative curatorial project between the Brooklyn Museum and Hannah Gadsby, an Emmy and Peabody Award–winning Australian comedian, writer, and mild-mannered antagonist. The project will engage compelling questions that young, diverse museum audiences increasingly raise about the interconnected issues of misogyny, masculinity, creativity, and “genius,” particularly around a complex, mythologized figure like Picasso. The exhibition will also include works from the Museum’s Feminist Art collection, including selections by Cecily Brown, Ana Mendieta, May Stevens, and Kiki Smith.

This exhibition is curated by Hannah Gadsby; Catherine Morris, Senior Curator for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art; and Lisa Small, Senior Curator, European Art; with Talia Shiroma, Curatorial Assistant, Arts of the Americas and Europe, Brooklyn Museum. It is part of a global presentation of exhibitions and events marking the fiftieth anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death: Picasso Celebration 1973–2023.

Africa Fashion. Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Museum

Africa Fashion

June 23–October 22, 2023

Great Hall, 1st Floor

Africa Fashion is a landmark exhibition celebrating the creativity, ingenuity, and global impact of African fashions from the 1960s independence era to today, showcasing examples of fashion design, photography, textiles, music, and visual art. The Brooklyn Museum’s presentation will include works from our collections— namely, Arts of Africa; Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Near Eastern Art; Arts of the Islamic World; and Photography—with commentary from designers whose fashions and self-expression have been inspired by those objects. By looking to the past, the designers are reimagining textiles from various regions of Africa as well as garments that consider sustainability of both cultural heritage and the environment. The presentation will shift perspectives on fashion in Africa and by African makers by examining trends, tastes, and traditions. Globally impactful and full of brilliance, the fashion scene on the African continent is dynamically reconstructed in Africa Fashion.

Created by the V&A—touring the world. The Brooklyn Museum presentation is organized by Ernestine White-Mifetu, Sills Foundation Curator of African Art, and Annissa Malvoisin, Bard Graduate Center / Brooklyn Museum Postdoctoral Fellow in the Arts of Africa, with Catherine Futter, Director of Curatorial Affairs and Senior Curator of Decorative Arts, and Matthew Yokobosky, Senior Curator of Fashion and Material Culture.

María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold. Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Museum

María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold

September 15, 2023–January 14, 2024

Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, 4th Floor

María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold is a monographic exhibition of a visionary voice in photography, immersive installation, and performance. Spanning nearly four decades of visually engaging artworks, the exhibition explores Campos-Pons’s prescient and sensorial work—transporting viewers across geographies, mediums, and spiritual practices. In her explorations of migration, diaspora, and memory, Campos-Pons draws on feminism, photoconceptualism, and Yoruba-derived Santería symbolism to weave together personal narratives and global histories. The first multimedia survey of the artist’s work since 2007, Behold highlights the artist’s dedication to creating new modes of understanding, as well as her engagement with both historical and present-day challenges.

These themes are examined through Campos-Pons’s performance-based practice and work with communities in Cuba, Boston, and Nashville, where she currently resides. The touring exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated publication.

This exhibition is organized by the Brooklyn Museum and the J. Paul Getty Museum. It is curated by Carmen Hermo, Associate Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum; Jenée-Daria Strand, Assistant Curator, Public Art Fund; and Mazie Harris, Assistant Curator of Photographs, J. Paul Getty Museum.

Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines. Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Musuem

Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines

November 17, 2023–March 31, 2024

Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 4th Floor

Since the 1970s, zines—short for “fanzines,” or self-published booklets of texts and images, usually made with a copy machine—have given a voice and visibility to many outside of mainstream culture. Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines, the first major exhibition dedicated to such publications made by North America–based artists, foregrounds this unexamined aesthetic practice, which has thrived over the past five decades. This canon-expanding exhibition documents zines’ relationship to various subcultures and avant-garde practices, from punk and street culture to conceptual, queer, and feminist art. It also examines zines’ intersections with other mediums, including painting, drawing, collage, photography, performance, sculpture, video, and film. Featuring works by nearly one hundred artists, Copy Machine Manifestos demonstrates how zines have influenced a variety of artistic outputs since 1970. The touring exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated publication.

This exhibition is organized by Drew Sawyer, Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum Leonian Curator of Photography, Brooklyn Museum, and Branden W. Joseph, Frank Gallipoli Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, with Marcelo Yanez, Research Assistant, and Imani Williford, Curatorial Assistant, Photography, Fashion and Material Culture, Brooklyn Museum.