An indigo-blue figure twists among vivid red and blue forms in Tunji Adeniyi-Jones’s Blue Dancer. Elsewhere, embroidery floss, basketball cards, glitter, velvet and feathers join oil and acrylic paint among the materials artists use to explore identity, history and the possibilities of contemporary art.
That range of approaches is central to Young, Gifted, and Black: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art, a traveling exhibition of 52 works by 49 artists opening Friday, Oct. 23, at the Lowe Art Museum in Coral Gables.
The University of Miami museum will hold an opening reception Thursday, Oct. 22, from 7 to 9 p.m. The exhibition continues through April 24, 2027, taking it through Miami’s winter art-fair season.
The show brings together established figures in contemporary art and younger artists whose work explores Black life and experience through painting, sculpture, photography and mixed media.
A collection with a purpose
The works come from the private collection assembled by Bernard I. Lumpkin and Carmine D. Boccuzzi, longtime supporters of contemporary artists of African descent.
The couple’s collecting has a particular purpose: to bring greater attention to artists whose work and perspectives have not always received broad institutional recognition.
“A collection should be a story. It should be an argument,” Lumpkin told Philadelphia public radio station WHYY in 2022, when the exhibition visited Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.
Lumpkin, a former MTV executive, and Boccuzzi had assembled nearly 500 works at the time, many by emerging artists active over the preceding 25 years.
The exhibition was organized by Lumpkin and co-curated by Antwaun Sargent and Matt Wycoff.
Sargent, a director at the international gallery Gagosian, wrote The New Black Vanguard (2019) and edited Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists (2020), a book examining the collection. Wycoff, who has worked as curator of the collection, also contributed to the publication.
Rather than presenting Black art as a single movement or style, the exhibition brings together artists working with different materials, histories and approaches to representation.
Two generations in conversation
Among the established artists represented are David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Lorna Simpson, Henry Taylor, Kara Walker and Nari Ward.
A younger generation includes Jordan Casteel, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Paul Mpagi Sepuya and Vaughn Spann.
The exhibition’s organizers describe a dialogue between generations, with younger artists responding to and extending the practices of those who helped establish greater visibility for Black artists in museums and galleries.
The works range from conventional painting and photography to compositions made with everyday and unexpected materials, including coffee, staples, embroidery floss and basketball cards.
Those choices can carry meanings beyond their physical properties, drawing on personal experience, popular culture, history and the ways images circulate through everyday life.
Adeniyi-Jones’s Blue Dancer (2017), an oil painting reproduced in promotional materials for the exhibition, offers an example of the show’s visual experimentation. Its dark-blue figure, flowing limbs and stylized foliage create a composition that moves between representation and abstraction.
The London-born artist, whose family is Nigerian, has described the figure as acrobatic and deliberately difficult to categorize. His work draws on West African traditions while incorporating influences from European painting and decorative patterns.
The exhibition also addresses questions of visibility: whose experiences are represented in art, who has historically gained access to major institutions and how artists reshape familiar ways of seeing.
The Lowe describes the presentation as an exploration of Black identity, power and history, with younger artists working in conversation with their predecessors.
A title with a history
The exhibition takes its name from To Be Young, Gifted and Black, the song Nina Simone created with lyricist Weldon Irvine in memory of her friend Lorraine Hansberry.
Hansberry, the playwright best known for A Raisin in the Sun, died in 1965 at age 34. The song’s title came from her autobiographical work.
Simone performed the song at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, and a version appeared on her 1970 live album Black Gold. It became an anthem associated with Black pride and the struggle for civil rights.
More than half a century later, the exhibition’s organizers have adopted that title to frame the work of artists examining both the history of Black representation and new possibilities for artistic expression.
A traveling exhibition reaches Coral Gables
Young, Gifted and Black began touring in 2019 and has appeared at university museums and galleries across the country.
Previous stops include Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois Chicago, Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, the University of Denver and the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
The Coral Gables presentation follows the Lowe’s recent exhibition El Pasado Mío/My Own Past: Afrodescendant Contributions to Cuban Art, which closed Sept. 12 after examining nearly two centuries of Afro-Cuban artistic production.
Together, the exhibitions reflect different approaches to examining the work of artists of African descent, from historical questions of recognition and cultural memory to contemporary experimentation.
The new show also arrives alongside the Lowe’s continuing interest in contemporary artists exploring identity and belonging. The Gazette recently reported on Miami-based Haitian artist Morel Doucet’s exhibition, The Things We Carry, which examines migration, memory and the meaning of home.
If you go…
Young, Gifted, and Black: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art opens to the public Friday, Oct. 23, at the Lowe Art Museum, 1301 Stanford Drive, on the University of Miami campus.
The opening reception takes place Thursday, Oct. 22, from 7 to 9 p.m. Tickets start at $15 and are available through the museum’s event ticketing page.
Regular museum admission is free, with advance ticket reservations recommended. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
A free guided tour of the exhibition, led by a Lowe educator, curator or docent, is scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 21, from 11 a.m. to noon. Registration is required.
The exhibition closes April 24, 2027.
Author: Coral Gables Gazette News Staff
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