Guggenheim Curator Will Stage Exhibition of Caribbean Diaspora

The National Gallery of Jamaica announced on Friday that the curator Ashley James would organize this year’s Kingston Biennial, a showcase of artists from the Caribbean and African diasporas that aims to link the regional art scene with international audiences.

“I have always seen myself as Jamaican American,” said James, 36, whose parents emigrated to New York from the country in the 1970s. “But it has never been in the context of my work — until now.”

The exhibition will be named “Green X Gold” — inspired by the colors of the Jamaican flag — and include more than two dozen artists looking at environmental concerns and how the tourism industry promotes an idealized version of the Caribbean to the outside world. Some artists featured in the show, which is scheduled to open on Dec. 15, will be Oneika Russell, Joiri Minaya and Rodell Warner.

Five years ago, James became the first Black full-time curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan. Last year, she opened an exhibition called “Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility,” which filled the museum rotunda with artworks by people of color that examined the relationship between technology, surveillance and race.

An opportunity to plan the Kingston Biennial came as she was putting the finishing touches on the Guggenheim exhibition.

“We were looking for someone to marry intellectual rigor with a presentation that would be accessible,” said O’Neil Lawrence, chief curator at the National Gallery of Jamaica, which says it is the largest and oldest public art museum in the English-speaking Caribbean.

The Kingston Biennial started under a different name in 1977 as a celebration of local artists. But the program has expanded over the past decade to welcome a more international crowd as some alumni from the exhibition — including Ebony G. Patterson, Renee Cox and Leasho Johnson — have found success in the broader art world. This is only the second time a curator from outside the National Gallery of Jamaica will organize the show, which Lawrence said was part of an effort to bring the biennial into a global context.

James will have a budget of about $160,000 to organize the exhibition, which is supported by the Jamaican government. The biennial was originally supposed to open in the summer but was delayed because of a packed schedule for the gallery’s 50th anniversary and a lengthy government approval process over the show’s budget.

“I see myself as engaging in a conversation and building out from that,” James said about the biennial. “This is a region of the world that is ripe for the art world to take seriously.”