Young, Gifted, and Black

What’s new, now and next from contemporary Black artists

This book surveys the work of a new generation of Black artists, and also features the voices of a diverse group of curators who are on the cutting edge of contemporary art. As mission-driven collectors, Bernard I. Lumpkin and Carmine D. Boccuzzi have championed emerging artists of African descent through museum loans and institutional support. But there has never been an opportunity to consider their acclaimed collection as a whole until now.

Edited by writer Antwaun Sargent (author of The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion), Young, Gifted and Black draws from this collection to shed new light on works by contemporary artists of African descent. At a moment when debates about the politics of visibility within the art world have taken on renewed urgency, and establishment voices such as the New York Times are declaring that “it has become undeniable that African American artists are making much of the best American art today,” Young, Gifted and Black takes stock of how these new voices are impacting the way we think about identity, politics and art history itself.

Young, Gifted and Black contextualizes artworks with contributions from artists, curators and other experts. It features a wide-ranging interview with Bernard Lumpkin and Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem; and an in-depth essay by Antwaun Sargent situating Lumpkin in a long lineage of Black art patrons. A landmark publication, this book illustrates what it means (in the words of Nina Simone) to be young, gifted and Black in contemporary art.

Artists include: Mark Bradford, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, Adam Pendleton, Pope.L, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Henry Taylor, Mickalene Thomas, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Sadie Barnette, Kevin Beasley, Jordan Casteel, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Bethany Collins, Noah Davis, Cy Gavin, Allison Janae Hamilton, Tomashi Jackson, Samuel Levi Jones, Deana Lawson, Eric N. Mack, Arcmanoro Niles, Jennifer Packer, Christina Quarles, Jacolby Satterwhite, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Sable Elyse Smith, Chanel Thomas, Stacy Lynn Waddell, D’Angelo Lovell Williams, Brenna Youngblood, and more.

About the Authors

• Antwaun Sargent is an art critic and a writer.
• Matt Wycoff is an artist and independent curator.
• Thelma Golden is the Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem.
• Thomas J. Lax is Associate Curator of Performance and Media at MoMA.
• Adeze Wilford is a curatorial assistant at The Shed.
• Anthony Graham is an assistant curator at MOCA San Diego.
• Connie H. Choi is an associate curator of the permanent collection at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
• Graham C. Boettcher is the Director of the Birmingham Museum.
• Lauren Haynes is the curator of contemporary art at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
• Hallie Ringle is a curator of contemporary art at Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama.
• Jamilah James is the curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
• Jessica Bell Brown is the Associate Curator for Contemporary Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art.