Art Notes: BRITISH SUBJECTS: IDENTITY AND SELF-FASHIONING 1967-2009 & BWAC's Fall Show

Above: White Wedding by John Kirby at the Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY


If you had a chance to visit the (recently ended) exhibition by Yinka Shonibare, MBE, at the Brooklyn Museum, you saw the work of an artist born in London to Nigerian parents. As a young child, his family moved to Lagos in Nigeria where he grew up speaking Yoruba at home but only English at his exclusive private school. As the child of successful parents, he spent summers at their Battersea home in London. When Shonibare was 16, he was sent to board in England for his final two years of school education. Consequently, Shonibare has called himself "truly bicultural.”

Exploring this theme further, the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York, is presenting an exhibition of British artists, including Shonibare, that explores and is entitled “British Subjects: Identity and Self-Fashioning” which runs through December 15. Cultural assimilation, national identity and challenge. We are accustomed to considering the fabulous melting pot of the American continent, this views cultural expression in the United Kingdom.

More on the show here, which includes the work above by John Kirby, entitled “White Wedding”.

For more details on this and the other exhibitions currently on display at the Neuberger, a delightful museum not far from NYC, click here:

Also, closer to home, BWAC’s fall show, Words of Color, is on display through October 25 in Red Hook. Details here.