Acts of Art Community Conversation

Please join artists and friends of Acts of Art gallery in conversation on Saturday, November 9, from 2 to 5pm. Light reception to follow from 5-6:30pm. 

Confirmed participants include exhibition artists Ben Jones, Dindga McCannon, Ademola Olugebefola, Ann Tanksley, Lloyd Toone; and community activist and collector Fay Leeper. Moderated by Howard Singerman. 

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Founded by artists Nigel Jackson and Patricia Grey in 1969, Acts of Art was first located at 31 Bedford Street and later moved to 15 Charles Street in the West Village. In 1971, the gallery mounted  Rebuttal to the Whitney Museum Exhibition, the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition’s strategic response to the Whitney’s concurrent Contemporary Black Artists in America. That same year, the gallery hosted the inaugural exhibition of the Black women artists collective Where We At. Before Acts of Art closed in 1975, it presented one- and two-person exhibitions by twenty-six different artists, and numerous group exhibitions. Acts of Art in Greenwich Village centers Acts of Art and its director’s curatorial vision, tracing the gallery’s exhibition history as it intersects with other histories of Black art and artists in New York—and with formations like the BECC, Where We At, and the Weusi Artists. Installed in Hunter College’s Leubsdorf Gallery, the exhibition features artworks from the late 1960s and 1970s by fourteen artists with close ties to the gallery, a number of which were first shown at Acts of Art.A catalog with the gallery’s complete exhibition history and essays on key group exhibitions, including the first show of the Black women artists collective “Where We At,” will be published with Hirmer Publishers in 2025.

This exhibition is made possible by the The Leonard A. Lauder Exhibition and Catalogue Fund. The exhibition's catalog has been supported by a grant from the Wolf Kahn Foundation and the Emily Mason and Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation on behalf of artists Emily Mason and Wolf Kahn.