Patricia Failing’s article, “Remembering Henri Ghent (1926-2009)” will be the first career survey of Henri Ghent, a gay black curator, art critic, and founding director of the Brooklyn Museum’s Community Art Gallery. This article will examine Ghent’s curatorial and critical practice, as well as his indefatigable advocacy for black modernisms within the context of Afro-centrism and the Black Power movement of the late 1960s and 1970s.
Patricia Failing, Professor Emerita of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Washington, Seattle, is an independent scholar and critic. Her work frequently engages debates about authorship, museum ethics, cultural appropriation, and related legal and ethical issues in the visual arts. She has been an Art News contributing editor since 1980. She is currently developing a third exhibition for the Clyfford Still Museum, The Early Years: Clyfford Still in Canada, 1920-1933, scheduled to open in January 2020.