"When Ashley James joined the Guggenheim as a curator in 2019, she began thinking about the concept of being seen, a veritable mantra in the Trump years for people from marginalized communities. She thought specifically of Lorna Simpson’s 2018 exhibition 'Darkening,' in which the people in her paintings were clouded by deep, saturated blues. 'Freedom is such a lofty goal,' James tells me, 'but there is a certain lowercase-p power to be found in that evasion.'
Her new show, “Going Dark,” is composed of 28 artists, most of them Black, from across generations, including the established names Faith Ringgold, Kerry James Marshall, and Simpson and younger talents Sandra Mujinga and Sondra Perry. On the evening before the show opened on October 20, the artists and a select group of guests filed into the rotunda in shimmering cocktailwear for a private viewing..."
