Birthe Piontek has been named as one of PDN Magazine’s PDN's 30, the top thirty rising photographers for 2008.  Piontek, whose portfolio is featured in the magazine and is a member of the tenth class of photographers selected since 1998, is known for her portraits and still lifes that capture the vulnerability and innocence of youth.

Each year, the magazine selects thirty new and emerging photographers to watch, providing a venue to “exhibit their images, to create a reliable resource for the photo community to seek out these talents, and to engage other aspiring photographers in thinking about what it takes to succeed in this profession.“  Piontek’s work has been featured in The Globe and Mail, The New York Times Magazine, Stern, and Die Zeit, and is currently featured in the Houston Center for Photography's award-winning publication, SPOT.


Carrie Mae Weems has been awarded the Skowhegan Medal in Photography from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.  Founded in 1946, Skowhegan is one of the foremost artists’ residency communities in the country.

Skowhegan honors artists, patrons and those who have demonstrated outstanding service to the arts.  Considered one of the most prestigious honors in the arts, Weems will receive the Skowhegan Medal at a ceremony on April 22.

In November, Weems was also named a recipient of the Anonymous Was A Woman Award.  Since 1995, ten women artists are selected each year to receive the $25,000 prize.  The “no strings” award enables women over 35, at a critical juncture in their lives or careers, to continue to grow and pursue their work.


Hank Willis Thomas will be participating in a panel discussion at the 19th Annual James A. Porter Colloquium on African American Art, April 17, 18 and 19, in Washington, D.C. He will also be a participant on the panel, Urban Artists and the Politics of Visibility: A Conversation with Angela Davis, at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn on Wednesday, April 23.

Thomas's work will be featured in the exhibition, Black Is, Black Ain’t, which will open on April 20 at The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago.  Taking its title from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, the exhibition explores a shift in the rhetoric of race from an earlier emphasis on inclusion to a present moment where racial identity is being simultaneously rejected and retained.  Through June 8.

Thomas’ complete, 82-piece series, Unbranded, will be featured in the new exhibition, After 1968: Contemporary Artists and the Civil Rights Legacy, which opens June 7 at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.  The show will examine the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement while exploring the continuing relevance of progressive social change, and will travel to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in November.


Selections from Carrie Mae Weems’ 1987 series Colored People are currently on exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  Color Chart celebrates the “lush beauty that results when contemporary artists assign color decisions to chance, readymade source, or arbitrary system.” The exhibition is on display through May 12.


Kianga Ford’s The Story of This Place: Charm City Remix, a fictional, site-specific narrative, recently launched at The Contemporary Museum in Baltimore.  The audio walking tour, which is centered in and around the historic Mt. Vernon neighborhood, features a new musical score by Erik Spangler and Brian Sacawa, and is influenced by the area’s history, architecture, social climate, and diverse demographics.  Ford has been an artist-in-residence at the museum for the past year.  Three additional installments will be added through April.

Ford's work will also be featured in Interruption of Hierarchies, a new exhibition opening April 16 at the Sesnon Gallery at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  Curated by the museum’s director, Shelby Graham, Interruption of Hierarchies explores the use of interruptions to probe and investigate established norms, by using humor, surprise, and unusual associations to overturn assumptions about the world and existing hierarchies.  The following month, she will participate in Intervene! Interrupt! Rethinking Art as Social Practice, a three-day conference hosted by UCSC, May 15–17.  The symposium will foster a lively exchange between scholars, innovative regional and international artists, and curators through panel presentations, performances and indoor and outdoor exhibitions.

Kianga Ford has been awarded a grant by Creative Capital.  A national organization that supports film/video and visual arts artists, Creative Capital announced the awards in January.  She received the grant for her work, Walking Home.

Fifty-two artists received initial awards of $10,000 for forty-one individual projects.  As they develop, the organization offers additional funding, and projects may receive up to $50,000 over the course of the multi-year grant.  Artists selected are also eligible to participate in the organization’s Artist Services Program. The program offers artists additional assistance in fund-raising, networking, marketing, and strategic planning.


In December, the gallery and the work of N. Dash were featured in the article, AIPAD and Photo Miami Draw Focused Crowds, as part of artinfo.com’s coverage of Art Basel Miami Beach. artinfo.com is the online edition of the magazine Art + Auction.