Noah Davis at the Hammer Museum: Black Life, Archives, and Legacy
This week, NOMMO had the privilege of experiencing Noah Davis, the Hammer Museum’s first institutional survey dedicated to the late artist (1983–2015). For Tyree Boyd-Pates, NOMMO’s Chief Curator, a museum professional who has spent years leading and shaping exhibitions, walking through this expansive show felt both intimate and revelatory, a rare opportunity to see Davis’s creative life fully realized.
Featuring over 50 works produced between 2007 and 2015, the exhibition traces the breadth of Davis’s practice. His work reflects diverse influences: current events, everyday life, family histories, ancient Egyptian cosmologies, American media’s persistent racism, and the architecture and visual traditions of art history.
Davis drew inspiration from vernacular sources, flea market photographs, personal archives, and found images, transforming the overlooked into sites of imagination. His paintings hover between realism and dreamscape, joy and melancholy, capturing the contradictions inherent in Black lived experience.
Walking through the exhibition, I felt as if I were moving through Davis’s personal archive. Each piece is a testament to his deep care for Black life, memory, and kinship. Having previously visited The Underground Museum, a space Davis co-founded with his wife, Karon Davis, I recognized the continuation of a vision: art as a homeplace, a site of remembrance, and a vehicle for community.
What stands out most is Davis’s relationship to the archive. His visits to flea markets were more than aesthetic exercises; they were acts of reclamation. By collecting fragments of everyday life, he could reimagine and fill gaps in historical memory. This method reflects what scholar Saidiya Hartman calls “critical fabulation”, the imaginative reconstruction of Black histories that have been silenced or overlooked.
From a curatorial perspective, this exhibition demonstrates how archives, memory, and myth can coexist in ways that feel both personal and universal. It offers a blueprint for museums and cultural institutions striving to present Black art with nuance, care, and historical integrity. At the same time, it affirms NOMMO’s mission: to craft narratives and strategies that honor Black creativity, storytelling, and lived experience.
In presenting Noah Davis, the Hammer Museum not only celebrates an extraordinary artist but also amplifies the legacy of The Underground Museum and the vision Davis shared with Karon. Experiencing this exhibition is a poignant reminder that art, when grounded in care and curiosity, can encompass both the ordinary and the extraordinary, and that Black life, in all its complexity, deserves to be rendered visible and celebrated.
Exploring Black Life and African American Art at the Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles
During a recent visit, NOMMO explored the Marciano Art Foundation on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, CA. Once a grand Masonic Temple, this historic landmark now thrives as a vibrant museum, inviting the public to engage with its extensive collection and immersive exhibitions.
In alignment with NOMMO’s mission to illuminate African American art, history, and culture, the Marciano highlights works by celebrated artists such as David Hammons, Mark Bradford, Glenn Ligon, and Deana Lawson, whose portrayals of Black life demand recognition and reverence. The collection also includes works by artists like Kelley Walker, whose Black Star Press reflects on Black life and the civil rights movement, showing how media and representation continue to shape historical understanding.
Glenn Ligon — Stranger #78
At the Marciano, Glenn Ligon’s #78, made with coal dust, offers a powerful exploration of political differences and ideas of belonging, highlighting his use of this material as both a favorite and a metaphor. This series, inspired by James Baldwin’s 1953 essay “Stranger in the Village,” which he began in 1997, features stencil passages on canvas covered with coal dust and glue until the words nearly disappear. The dark surface makes the text almost unreadable, physically embodying Baldwin’s central question: Who, in the end, is the stranger? This work hits the viewer where they stand.
David Hammons — Untitled Works
David Hammons: Untitled, 2010. Acrylic on canvas and tarp, 103 x 80 inches.
On view at the Marciano, viewers can see that the enigmatic David Hammons commands a powerful presence within the galleries. Whether it's the monumental Untitled (2010), a canvas-and-tarp piece dominating a second-floor wall, or the striking Untitled (2007) fur coat embedded with acrylic and spray paint, Hammons’s works resist simple classification. They function on both personal and collective levels, encouraging viewers to reflect on the connections between the artist’s inner world and the real-life experiences of Black Americans.
David Hammons: Untitled, 2007. Fur coat with acrylic and spray paint.
Deana Lawson — Afriye
Deanna Lawson, Afriye: ,2023. pigment print.
Difficult to neatly classify, Deana Lawson’s work at the Marciano’s second-floor galleries straddles photographic tradition and social collaboration. Afriye (2023) places as much emphasis on Lawson’s intimate exchange with her subjects as on the resulting image. Its mirrored frame amplifies the gaze of the two figures while reflecting our image, making us participants in the act of looking.
This interplay recalls Diego Velázquez’s iconic Las Meninas (1656), which also stages a complex relationship between artist, subject, and audience through a mirror. By extending this self-reflexive gesture into a contemporary and deeply personal context, Lawson transforms Afriye into a temporal bridge—connecting private Black spaces to a broader lineage of image-making and creating a powerful arena for self-definition.
Mark Bradford — Building “The Big White Whale”
On display at the Marciano, Building “The Big White Whale” (2012), Mark Bradford employs his signature collage technique, layering found paper, string, paint, and urban ephemera to create a monumental surface that feels both architectural and oceanic.
The title alludes to Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, turning the “whale” into a metaphor for vast, often unseen systems, social, economic, and racial, that influence and shape our lives. From a distance, the piece appears as pure abstraction; up close, it reveals fragments of advertisements, merchant posters, and weathered street materials, illustrating the layered histories embedded in the urban landscape. Bradford’s work combines literary allusions, personal memories, and collective history into a single, compelling statement.
Artists Engaging Black Histories
Kelley Walker — Black Star Press
Kelly Walker, Black Star Press (2006). Digital print
While not a Black artist, Kelley Walker’s Black Star Press (2006) revisits Charles Moore’s 1962 photo essay documenting civil rights protests in Alabama. Walker digitally reprints these photographs and overlays them with silkscreened chocolate, creating painterly gestures that obscure and amplify the violence depicted. The work reflects on how media circulate images of Black struggle and how the meaning of those images evolves across time and context.
Field Note reflection —
The Marciano Art Foundation’s presentation of these works offers a rare, concentrated space in Los Angeles to engage deeply with contemporary Black art. These pieces do more than exist on walls; they challenge viewers, bridge histories, and expand the language of what Black art can be.
As NOMMO continues its mission to champion African American art history and culture, we see immense potential in partnering with the Marciano to amplify these narratives further, through expanded programming, interpretive resources, and community engagement that honors both the artists and the audiences they speak to.