In conjunction with our upcoming special exhibit, Creating Community. Cinque Gallery Artists (May 3-July 4, 2021), The Art Students League public programming for spring 2021 presents the Cinque Gallery Interview Series.
Program Curator Nanette Carter interviews several of the artists who exhibited at Cinque gallery and who will also participate in the upcoming exhibition. The artists will share their personal connection to the Cinque gallery through anecdotal stories and experiences, as well as discuss the artwork included in the exhibition. The interviews address the artist’s present work and art practice.
The Cinque Gallery was founded in 1969 by artists and League alumni, Romare Bearden (1911–1988), Ernest Crichlow (1914–2005), and Norman Lewis (1909–1979) to exhibit the work of both new and established African–American artists, and to provide community educational programs. The gallery was named after Joseph Cinqué, the leader of the Amistad slave ship mutiny of the 1830s. For more than three decades, Cinque sponsored more than 300 exhibitions in a number of New York City venues. This ground-breaking exhibition will celebrate a diverse selection of late twentieth century and contemporary artists who participated from 1969 – 2004 in this pioneering artist collaborative enterprise. The Art Students League and The Romare Bearden Foundation have partnered to present this unprecedented tribute.
Artist Frank Wimberley
Over the course of a career that has lasted more than fifty years, Frank Wimberley has felt abstract painting to be a continuous adventure. Born in 1926, the artist is a well-known presence in the art scene on the East End of Long Island and an important figure in African-American art since the 1960s. Acclaimed for his dynamic, multi-layered, and sophisticated paintings, Wimberley is among the leading contemporary artists to continue in the Abstract Expressionist tradition. What has always excited him is to take the theme or feeling from the very first stroke he lays down and follow it to its particular conclusion, “very much like creating the controlled accident.” His improvisational method is akin to jazz, an important part of his life and a theme in his art. Despite the spontaneity of his process, Wimberley makes each decision deliberately, respectful of what emerges and where it is going; he enjoys the surprise of arriving at definitions that seem to come to life on their own. Similarly, his works engage the viewer in their strong physicality and unpredictability as well as in their insights into the ways that pictorial experiences are perceived and understood. Recently, Ron and Montique Ollie donated two of Wimberley’s works to the Saint Louis Museum of Art as part of a large donation of African-American art.
Frank Wimberley is included in the following museum and corporate collections: Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Brooklyn Union Gas Company, New York; Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, New York; Coca Cola Bottling Company, Philadelphia; David C. Driskell Art Center, University of Maryland, College Park; Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York; John and Vivian Hewitt Collection, Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts and Culture, Charlotte, North Carolina; James T. Lewis Gallery Morgan State, Baltimore, Maryland; John Hoskins Estate, Atlanta University, Georgia; Islip Art Museum, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York; PepsiCo, Purchase, New York; Pitney Bowes, Stamford, Connecticut; Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York; Time Warner, New York; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut. More about Frank HERE
Nanette Carter, Guest Program Curator
Nanette Carter majored in Studio Art and Art History at Oberlin College in Ohio and received her BA in 1976. During her junior year she studied abroad in Italy and traveled extensively in Europe.
When she returned Nanette studied at Pratt Institute of Art and received her MFA 1978. For the last 19 years she has taught at Pratt and today she is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Art and teaches Drawing/ Mixed Media courses. Over the years she has received many Awards, Grants, Residencies and Fellowships. Her first residency was with Cinque in 1984. Which lead to a sholo show in 1985. Later she was the first woman to be invited to be on the Cinque Artistic Board which consisted of all black artists.
Her works are in many Museums and Corporate Collections across the country. She has had solo shows in Cuba, Japan, Italy, Syria and across the United States and she is currently represented by Skoto Gallery in Chelsea and Ami Kanoko Gallery in Japan. More about Nanette HERE
Thank you to our institutional partner The Romare Bearden Foundation for their support.
Thank you to NYC Cultural Affairs for their support.