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Gallery Experience: Angela Tate on Simone Leigh
March 1, 2024 | 12:00 pm–1:00 pm
FREE
Meet at the information desk in the lobby in advance of a noon start.
Angela Tate, curator of women’s history at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), will lead a special tour exploring Simone Leigh and Black women’s artistic internationalism, meaning the connection between Black women artists and their international representations across the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.
PLEASE NOTE: THIS GALLERY TALK WAS RESCHEDULED FROM JANUARY 19.
About the Speaker
Angela Tate is curator of women’s history at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Prior to joining the Smithsonian, she worked as curator and public historian in a variety of archives and museums, focused on telling inclusive and expansive stories of the American past. She is a PhD candidate in history at Northwestern University and was educated at California State University, San Bernardino, and Sacramento City College. Her dissertation follows the history of Black women in radio and their involvement in global civil rights movements, with an emphasis on the intersections among celebrity, activism, and feminism. This work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the New York Public Library, and the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute. Her work has appeared in Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture and several upcoming publications. Find more information at www.atpublichistory.com.
About the Exhibition
For over two decades, Simone Leigh has embraced a polyphonic artistic vocabulary that elaborates on Black feminist thought, an intellectual tradition that values and centers the experiences of Black women. Informed by a rigorous attention to a wide swath of historical periods, geographies, and artistic traditions of Africa and the African diaspora, Leigh often combines the female body with domestic vessels or architectural elements to point to unacknowledged acts of labor and care, particularly among and for Black women. For her presentation at the Hirshhorn, the artist has included three new bronze sculptures, Bisi, Herm, and Vessel (2023) in the galleries. Leigh’s monumental bronze Satellite (2022), which stood sentry outside the US Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, has been installed at the southern entrance to the Hirshhorn to signal the exhibition’s arrival.
If you have questions or a request for access services or accommodations that can make your experience more inclusive, please contact hirshhornexperience@si.edu. One to two weeks advance notice is recommended but not required.
