Nanette Carter

Your Concise New York Art Guide for May 2022

Your list of must-see, fun, insightful, and very New York art events this month, including Willie Cole, Hélio Oiticica, Nanette Carter, and more.

When: through May 27
Where: Berry Campbell (530 West 24th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)

Nanette Carter first encountered Mylar in architectural drawings in the mid-1980s. Since then, frosted Mylar sheets have become the artist’s medium of choice, as she constructs cantilevered collages by painting and printing directly onto irregular shapes cut from the material. This show of recent collages, including sweeping examples from the artist’s Destabilizing and Shifting Perspectives series, hammers home that Carter is not only a painter concerned with color, texture, and dynamism but also a builder with an interest in balance, weight, and gravity.

Center for the Arts Gallery
Towson University
7700 Osler Drive, Towson, Maryland
6:30 - 7:15 pm

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Forms Follow Function: The Art of Nanette Carter
The Hunterdon Art Musuem, Clinton, New Jersey
January 23 - April 24, 2022

Anonymous Was a Woman (AWAW), a New York–based organization that for two decades has sought to support women-identifying artists over forty, has announced the winners of its 2021 grants. Owing to a dramatic increase in funding provided by two anonymous donors, AWAW is able to provide a dozen more of the unrestricted $25,000 grants than originally expected; the $300,000 windfall will be divided among four artists annually for the next three years, meaning that the group is able to award grants to fourteen winners annually through 2023, rather than the typical ten. Artnews reports that one of the s donations was made through the newly established Meraki Artist Award, founded by an anonymous Boston-based philanthropist.

“I am delighted to congratulate this year’s award recipients—a group of extraordinary artists who represent a multitude of viewpoints, backgrounds, and formal practices,” said founder Susan Unterberg said. “When I started Anonymous Was A Woman, I did so to address a need that I felt personally as a woman artist in the middle of her career. I never dreamed that it could inspire other individuals to join us in advancing our mission.”

Artists were chosen from applicants anonymously recommended by a group of art historians curators, writers, and artists. Among the recipients this year are interdisciplinary artist and activist Coco Fusco, sculptor Anna Sew Hoy, Lakota painter Dyani White Hawk, and light artist Marian Zazeela, a cofounder with LaMonte Young of New York’s Dream House.

Anonymous Was a Woman was established in 1996 by Unterberg, an artist, who initially served as its sole funder; it  gained widespread attention in 2018 when she revealed herself as its founder. The organization’s grants are unique in that they are awarded to midcareer artists, many of whom are underrecognized. Though the sum awarded is modest, an AWAW grant can provide a career boost at a critical juncture. Many recipients of the award have gone on to gain greater recognition.

The full list of 2021 recipients is below.
Nanette Carter
Oletha DeVane
Adama Delphine Fawundu
Anita Fields
Coco Fusco
Renée Green
Judithe Hernández
Suzanne Jackson
Autumn Knight
Adia Millett
Anna Sew Hoy
Julie Tolentino
Dyani White Hawk
Marian Zazeela

The award will give out an additional $300,000 over the next three years thanks to an anonymous donation.

The Anonymous Was a Woman awards are back and better than ever, thanks to new donations—made anonymously, naturally—that will expand the number of annual honorees from 10 to 14 for the next three years. That increases the total amount of grant money to $350,000 each year, with each recipient receiving $25,000 in unrestricted funds.

Since 1996, the organization has presented grants to women-identifying artists over the age of 40, a segment that is frequently overlooked by both the market and museums. Founder Susan Unterberg, an artist herself, only revealed her identity in 2018. The additional funding comes from two donors, one of which is a Boston-based philanthropist who made the gift through a new initiative called the Meraki Artist Award, according to ARTnews.

The 2021 winners, who are between the ages of 41 and 81, are: Nanette Carter, Oletha DeVane, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Anita Fields, Coco Fusco, Renée Green, Judithe Hernández, Suzanne Jackson, Autumn Knight, Adia Millett, Anna Sew Hoy, Julie Tolentino, Dyani White Hawk, and Marian Zazeela.

“I am delighted to congratulate this year’s award recipients—a group of extraordinary artists who represent a multitude of viewpoints, backgrounds, and formal practices,” Unterberg said in a statement. “When I started Anonymous Was A Woman, I did so to address a need that I felt personally as a woman artist in the middle of her career. I never dreamed that it could inspire other individuals to join us in advancing our mission.” Continue Reading

The New York–based organization Anonymous Was a Woman has revealed the winners of its 2021 awards, each of which carries a $25,000 purse. For two decades, the awards have been given annually to women-identifying artists over the age of 40.

Now, for the first time, Anonymous Was a Woman is dramatically growing its program. Thanks to two anonymous donors, the organization will give out an additional $300,000 in funding to 12 artists. Through the donors’ gifts—one of which was made through the Meraki Artist Award, a new initiative from an anonymous Boston-based philanthropist—the awards program will be able to recognize four more artists annually for the next three years, bringing the total amount of people recognized to 14 instead of the typical 10.

The 2021 awardees range in age from 41 to 81, and include Nanette Carter, a New York–based educator and mixed media artist known for her abstract paintings on sheaths of frosted Mylar; Anita Fields, a ceramic and textile artist of Osage heritage; and Suzanne Jackson, a visual artist and poet, and director of the now-defunct Gallery 32, one of the first commercial spaces to promote emerging African American artists in Los Angeles in the late 1960s. Also awarded is performance artist, dancer, and activist Julie Tolentino, who last year received Queer|Art’s annual $10,000 award for Sustained Achievement.

“It is an unexpected honor to finally receive recognition for my work as a painter and sculptor,” Jackson told ARTnews. “I have known about the Anonymous Was A Woman award for years, though I never thought that I would be a recipient. I plan to use the award funds to continue my work exploring new aspects of integrating drawing, painting, and sculptured forms as related to various American relationships to our natural and urban environments.” Continue Reading

Exuberance: Dialogues in African-American Abstract Painting
Curated by Susan Zurbrigg and Beth Hinderlitter
Duke Hall Gallery of Fine Art, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia
October 26 - December 10, 2021

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The upcoming exhibition at Duke Hall Gallery of Fine Art, Exuberance: Dialogues in African American Abstract Painting, celebrates African American painters and challenges received narratives about abstract art and who makes it. Abstract paintings by African American artists have often been overlooked and omitted from the history of art presented by white scholars and white dominated art institutions, yet their works have contributed powerfully to the field of painting. This focused presentation of paintings will feature works from the 1950s to present day, forging cross-generational dialogues about racial identity, dynamics of color and pattern, as well as rhythm, movement, and breath.

Featured artists include Charles Burwell, Nanette Carter, Lisa Corinne Davis, Lamerol Gatewood, Rico Gatson, Felrath Hines, Norman Lewis, Erika Ranee, Ronald Walton, Benjamin Wigfall and Susan Zurbrigg. Lenders to the exhibition include the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, the Ackland Museum of Art at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Berry Campbell Gallery, Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Jenkins Johnson Gallery New York and San Francisco, Miles McEnery Gallery and Walton Gallery.

Public programming will include a discussion on November 10, 5p of the history and politics of African American painting led by Dr. Jordana Saggese, Associate Professor at the University of Maryland and award-winning author of Reading Basquiat: Exploring Ambivalence in American Art. Contributing artist Lisa Corinne Davis will offer an online artist talk on Nov. 16 at 5pm. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue, with scholarly essays and selected bibliography.

Exuberance is co-curated by Susan Zurbrigg and Beth Hinderliter. Susan Zurbrigg is a nationally exhibited artist, educator and activist. She is Assistant Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts at JMU as well as a Professor of Art. Dr. Beth Hinderliter is Director of the Duke Hall Gallery of Fine Art and an Associate Professor of Art History.  Her book, More Than Our Pain: Affect and Emotion in the Era of Black Lives Matter, was published by SUNY Press in 2021.

Contact Beth Hinderliter, director of the Duke Hall Gallery of Fine Art, at (540) 568-6407 or by email at hindersb@jmu.edu for more information or to schedule a group visit.

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Representation
New York gallery Berry Campbell announced its representation of Nanette Carter on May 12. Active since the mid-1970s, Carter “creates abstract collages expressive of her sensitivity to injustice and humanity in the context of contemporary life and her responses to the drama of nature.” Her work is currently featured in two group exhibitions: “Affinities for Abstraction: Women Artists on Eastern Long Island, 1950-2020” at Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, N.Y., and “Creating Community. Cinque Gallery Artists” at The Art Students League of New York. Cinque Gallery was founded by Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, and Ernest Crichlow in 1969 and operated until 2004. Carter was the first artist-in-residence at Cinque and she co-organized “Creating Community” alongside guest curator Susan Stedman. Since 2001, Carter has been a professor of art at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her first solo exhibition with Berry Campbell is scheduled for spring 2022.