Description

The Brooklyn Museum requests $25,000 from the Henry Luce Foundation to support Nona Faustine’s (b. 1977) first museum solo exhibition, Nona Faustine: White Shoes , in which the artist traces the legacies of enslavement in New York City, bringing an expansive yet underrecognized history into conversation with the city today. Faustine is a Brooklyn-based photographer whose conceptual practice employs tropes of street photography to link today’s New York to its unseen history. Using her own body as a countersubject within her tracings of contemporary New York, Faustine presents a portrait of the city whose financial and cultural ascent remains undergirded by its little-discussed history as a slave-trading capital in the United States. Scheduled to open in March 2024 in Brooklyn Museum’s Center for Feminist Art, the exhibition includes 44 photographs, accompanied by texts written by the artist. Funding will support all aspects of the exhibition, especially the development of a didactic panel that maps the locations of Faustine’s photographs across the city.
This grant aligns with the AAP strategic goal 1a: To advance innovative museum projects that prioritize representation and equity through the preservation, study, and presentation of work by under-represented artists of color, collaborations with diverse external partners, and outreach to underserved communities.