Black Art Has Its Moment During L.A. Art Week

Los Angeles Art Week has grown to become one of the country's leading cultural and commercial art events that features Black art.

Los Angeles Art Week has grown to become one of the country’s leading cultural and commercial art events that features fairs alongside blue-chip galleries and museum-level programming throughout the city. The week is an essential market for Black art. From Inglewood to West Hollywood, Black creatives are having a moment.

The arrival of collectors, curators, and cultural power brokers in LA is capitalizing on this momentum. Here are several Black exhibitions, fairs, and convenings that highlighted artists and their platforms.

Raymond Saunders Solo Exhibition at David Zwirner

The David Zwirner Gallery presents “Notes from LA,” a solo exhibition featuring the late Raymond Saunders, who was a pioneering Black American painter and educator. The exhibition presents Saunders’s mixed-media paintings with works on paper to deliver a concentrated study of the artist’s creative development. Through assemblage and conceptually driven works, Saunders helped define late 20th-century Black art on the West Coast. The show marks the first Los Angeles-focused Saunders exhibition in more than 10 years, and it is curated by Ebony L. Haynes. The exhibition will be open to the public at the gallery through April 25.

BUTTER LA Fine Art Fair

The BUTTER Fine Art Fair launched its first Los Angeles edition through BUTTER LA, which was established by Malina Simone Jeffers and Alan Bacon of GANGGANG. The event prioritizes Black visual artists who belong to the African diaspora. The fair runs to March 1 at Hollywood Park in Inglewood, and features artists at different career levels who keep full ownership of their sales revenue.

Black Diaspora Exhibition

The Black Diaspora exhibition “Here Then and Now” features historic and contemporary Black artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kehinde Wiley, and Julie Mehretu and is curated by Tanya Weddemire in partnership with Hamilton-Selway Fine Art. The exhibition takes place until March 15 and explores legacy and migration and collective memory and identity through both seminal and newer works. The exhibition seeks to trace Black artistic development across global and diasporic contexts while establishing Los Angeles as part of wider historical and social transformation dialogues.

‘BLK IRL’ ART GAL Virtual & Physical Exhibition

The group exhibition “BLK IRL” at ART GAL showcases the work of Skye Arthur, Bella Adeola, and Isaiah Salery among other creators. Through virtual reality, sound, film, and mixed media, the exhibition examines contemporary Black existence. The exhibition, on view though April 16, seeks to modernize Black lived experiences within digital and mixed media contemporary art discussions while providing audiences with new ways to experience Black stories.

Ebony G. Patterson Solo Booth at Frieze Los Angeles

The Moniquemeloche gallery presents a solo booth exhibition of Jamaican artist Ebony G. Patterson at Frieze Los Angeles through March 1. After receiving the MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Ebony G. Patterson has her first major solo show at the fair. This achievement represents a major career milestone for her and holds great significance for Black art worldwide.

Samella Lewis Retrospective

Samella Lewis, who founded the Museum of African American Art and curated “Black Art: An International Quarterly,” died in 2022. Louis Stern Fine Arts in Los Angeles presents a rare gallery exhibition called “The Work Is Never Finished” to celebrate this extraordinary woman. The exhibition features Lewis’ diverse artistic collection, which includes lithographs, drawings, and paintings that reflect her decades-long socio-political activism. The exhibition allows viewers to study Lewis’ artistic legacy while acknowledging her role as one of the first Black women to lead Los Angeles art history.