AFAR Summer 2024 North America Issue
ADORE A-LIST 2024
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & CHIEF CURATOR OF NEW ORLEANS AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM, FOUNDER OF AFROFUTURE SOCIETY
FOX 8 NEWS
March 2024
FOX 8 NEWS: GIA HAMILTON & THE NEW ORLEANS AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM
Rollingout
Jan 2024
Museum curator gives a quick history lesson: The historic Black New Orleans neighborhood you had no clue about
VERITE NEWS NEW ORLEANS OCT 2023
Porch Poppin' Extra: The Revival New Orleans African American Museum
BLACK TECH NOLA OCT 2023
BLACK WOMEN: THE VOICE OF THE CULTURE
FOUNDATIONS FOR LOUISIANA
AUG 2023
BLACK PHILANTHROPY MONTH: LOVE IN ACTION
SHOPPE BLACK
September 2023
SHOPPE BLACK
August 2023
"Black collectors play a pivotal role in the art world by affirming our presence and influence, not just as spectators, but as custodians of our own history and culture.
It is a vital role, one that creates upward mobility for artists, opens doors for greater opportunities, and works to close the wealth gap among contemporary Black artists."
GIA HAMILTON, CEO OF NEW ORLEANS AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM
New Orleans CityBusiness
everychildthrives.com
February ‘21
Reckoning & Release: A Community Conversation About Healing
Racial healing starts with an honest and open dialogue about how people experience our society differently. This intergenerational community conversation about healing talks about systemic issues and disparities of racial, economic, climate and health justice across generations. The event is part of I am New Orleans, a year-long, community-led effort to stimulate conversation and action around issues of racial equity to help create a child-centered city. Learn more at www.IAmNewOrleansVoices.com.
Moderated by media personality Kelder Summers, our panelists include: - Kalamu Ya Salaam, New Orleans author and cultural anthropologist -
Gia Hamilton, executive director and chief curator at the New Orleans African American Museum of Art, Culture and History
Brideisha Harness-Parker, founder of the New Orleans Youth Coalition -
Morgan Walker, president and organizer of Morgan Walker Productions and Bike N Vote NOLA
Additionally, our event will feature a youth panel, moderated by Whitney Mitchell, digital strategist and social media content creator.
Our youth panel features:
Akilah Toney, published writer, poet, dancer, photographer and youth advocate
Anne-Marie Boseman, visual artist majoring in computer science at Dillard University
Carter Mayberry, mixed-media artist focused on styling, creative direction and digital content creation
Empress Wilson, writer, poet, dancer, artist and activist
myNewOrleans.com
February ‘21
Philanthropic Faces: Gia M. Hamilton
“The New Orleans African American Museum was closed for seven years, from 2012 until it reopened under my leadership in 2019.
Putting forth the type of energy required to start up a business that has a history is the biggest accomplishment, along with the incredible Board of Directors who have worked to transform the governance of NOAAM.
NOAAM’s ability to stay consistent about its values through the many challenges since reopening is also admirable.
NOAAM works to convert community members into museumgoers, which means we employ a strategy that supports all the members of a neighborhood and community through our programming. By centering our decisionmaking in being artist-driven and centered around what people need and want, we’re able to create opportunities for learning, exchange and reciprocity.
Our model is called Decolonize the Museum, which looks at partnerships, exhibition making, acquisitions and collecting from an equity lens.
Because NOAAM understands the importance of culture and the creation of spaces that foster imagination as epicenters for the future, we present and unpack complex historical narratives and give opportunity to plan and visualize the future and its possibilities.”
NY Times
UK Times
December ‘21
New Orleans museum struggles to cope after hurricanes and pandemic
A few blocks from the dark Backstreet building, Gia Hamilton, a New Orleans native and executive director of the nearby African American New Orleans Museum, heard the news and began exploring the options. While a few large cultural entities have offered to buy part of the collection from Ms Francis-Dilling, Ms Hamilton rejects what she calls a ‘colonizing’ tradition of museum collection, preferring to keep an independent view of ‘who owns it. the collection and where it came from. “
Shortly before Christmas, Ms. Hamilton offered the Backstreet a one-year lease on a house at the back of the African American Museum campus. While Ms Francis-Dilling is still trying to raise funds to make the deal possible, she hopes to reopen in the new space early next year.
“I just want to make my dad proud,” she said softly. “That’s all we talked about is keeping the museum going.”
Nell Nolan: Tribute to Coltrane at Loyola, Queenly Conjure at the CAC
This was one of the attractions at the CAC most recently, when the arts center presented “A Day of Healing,” in an effort to provide communal healing after the aftermath of Hurricane Ida. It was “an acute trauma healing laboratory hosted by Gia M. Hamilton’s Gris Gris Lab, An Afrofuturist Apothecary.” Led by local creative and healer Gia M. Hamilton, local practitioners — including Corine “Dr. C’MA” Brown (who has a doctorate in social work) and Reina Besant of the above Queenly Conjure — offered a variety of healing services in a section of the CAC, including “acupuncture, reiki, herbalism, massage, meditation, yoga and herbal teas.” Relaxation and just feeling better were obviously to the fore.
Behind Every Beautiful Thing: Encountering Bodies, Wrestling the Human Condition
Join us in celebrating the opening of our 2021 Gulf South Open Call exhibition with an evening of festivities including music by DJ Felice Gee and cash bars. At 7 pm, join us for a Grounding Ritual and Activation with Soundscape by Funké led by local healer and creative Gia Hamilton.
Created by "Gris Gris Mama" Gia M. Hamilton and located inside the CAC's Oval Gallery, the Gris Gris lab is an Afrofuturist Apothecary designed to ground, shift energy, and prepare the viewer to enter the portal and the exhibition. Activations and performances will take place in this space throughout the summer of 2021.
nola.com
nola.com
March 21
New Orleans Healing Center lecture series opens with focus on cultural legacy of museum creator Ronald Lewis
"Art Influenced By Black Lives Matters," will feature Gia Hamilton, executive director of the New Orleans African American Museum, with moderator Leona Strassberg Steiner, at 6 p.m. Sept. 9. Hamilton's past exhibitions have addressed spirituality, political issues, a troubled past, and how people can connect around commonalities and explore our differences.
Prizm Preview 2020
4WWL News
Summer 20
City Council sets up task force to look at renaming New Orleans streets
Tuesday, city council members officially created the street renaming commission, which will now determine whether certain streets warrant a name change because of ties to white supremacy or segregationists. Commission members are Mark Raymond Junior, Paul Sterbcow, Karl Connor, Gia Hamilton, Kevin Jackson, Richard Westmoreland, Bobbie Hill, Galethea Baham, and Kimberly Jones Williams.
nola.com
Summer 20
Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer also pledged the commission would make all its recommendations, and the research backing them, available online as the body does its work.
The street-renaming commission was approved by the City Council earlier this month amid protests over police brutality and racism in New Orleans and across the country.
“I think it’s a done deal that things are changing,” Palmer said. All that remains to be determined is what streets will be part of the effort and who will be honored in place of those whose names are taken down, she said.
Palmer’s appointee is Gia Hamilton, executive director of the New Orleans African American Museum of Art, History and Culture.
Travel Noire
Fall 19
How To Spend 3 Days In Black-Owned New Orleans
“Once you’re done with your meal, head on over to the New Orleans African American Museum located in the historic Tremé neighborhood, the oldest-surviving black community in the United States.
Executive Director and Chief Curator, Gia M Hamilton, to lead New Orleans African American Museum of Art, History and Culture (NOAAM) in historic Treme, New Orleans.
“Reopening this critical space in Treme is a labor of love, a purpose project, and part of legacy work that will require community, funding, and support from those who care about Black people, our contributions, and our narrative. I am no savior, but I was raised to be a woman of my word. I promise to work with integrity and transparency as we bring beautiful, thought-provoking work and amazing creatives to this space.” says Ms. Hamilton.
Sugarcane Magazine
Summer 19
Whitewall Magazine
August 2019
“My vision is to connect the dots between generations and to act as an exhibition space for arts and culture, support new projects as an incubator space and residency, as well as foster international relationships that connect narratives of the city of New Orleans and its black population. African American museums are essential to American history and writing our future as citizens, and I hope to showcase the importance of our city, the immense contributions of African Americans to what we now experience as New Orleans culture, and to support artists, artisans, creatives, scholars, curators, and cultural practitioners through a variety of programs and opportunities.”
The Impact Issue
Summer 19
Spring 19
Queen Diamond of Democratic Republic of Congo visits NOAAM
Pin-Up Magazine
Spring 19
“The luminaries who contributed included architects Marshall Brown as well as Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano of LOT-EK, curator Gia Hamilton, filmmaker dream hampton, The Roots founding member Black Thought, and scholar and musician Beth Coleman, among many others. It was also a true festival. On and around the courtyard’s stage, there were performances by the children of Make Music NOLA and by the Washitaw Nation, who marched in their vibrant feathered costumes and got the whole yard moving. Stilt walkers (commissioned by Tulsa-based artist Crystal Z. Campbell) roamed about, performing in conversation with the Bell Artspace’s 19th-century architecture.”
WGNO
Spring 19
Welcome back New Orleans African American Museum
After a 6-year closure, the African American Museum in Treme is back to tell the story of the contributions of blacks to our city, state and our culture.
Museum director Gia Hamilton says this is a fresh start for a once troubled institution.
ArtForum
Spring 19
Prospect New Orleans Appoints Eight Curators to Artistic Directors Council
The council will advise on artist selections, public programing, and publication projects for Prospect.5 and will comprise Rita Gonzalez, curator of contemporary art at LACMA; Deana Haggag, president of United States Artists, Chicago; Gia Hamilton, executive director and chief curator at the New Orleans African American Museum; Eungie Joo, curator of contemporary art at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Thomas J. Lax, associate curator of media and performance art at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Courtney J. Martin, deputy director and chief curator at the Dia Art Foundation, New York; Valerie Cassel Oliver, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; and Franklin Sirmans, director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami.
Cultured Mag
Winter 18
The Shapeshifting Alchemist
“In order to really have a clear vision, you have to let go of certain things. You have to have a paradigm shift. Part of this whole methodology is about how do we collectively let go of things that aren’t working so that we can make space for things that might work.”
Motherboard
Vice
12.5.18
We Asked 105 Experts What Scares and Inspires Them Most About the Future
Fear: Black Mirror delves into the unintended consequences of technology; what worries me is life imitating art and art imitating life. Even with our intellectual capacity to envision conflicts and moral and ethical dilemmas, we continue to make short-sighted decisions about power, resources, and energy that are inequitable and unsustainable. When we act with intellect without empathy, innovation without self awareness, power without discernment or wisdom, then we let ourselves be slaves to our egos.
Hope: Our ability to imagine a new future, to conceptualize and explore new truths. Artists are trained to visualize original ideas, create discourse that can lead us with creativity. It is our time to examine our economic, political, and religious systems; do these systems work for all people? If not, how do we use an intersectional praxis to create solutions that are harmonious, thoughtful, and filled with empathy and connection?
—Gia M. Hamilton, founder of Afrofuture Society and author of Modern Matriarch, USA
New Orleans Tribune
2.17
An Interview with Gia Hamilton
“My anthropological lens colors everything, for instance I am constantly observing the culture of organizations, corporations and informal groups and it informs our entry point in a more focused way. This way of approaching the programming allows me to be thoughtful because I acknowledge all the moving pieces around me, so there is a much more integrative and interdependent approach to working.”
Hyperallergic
9.16
Black Women Artists Bear Witness in Red
“An undulant corpus of red women crosses the Bowery and flows toward the New Museum, breaks into an arc and then a circle. They are chanting “say her name” — the repetition is like a mantra.”
ArtForum
October 2014
BRIGHT PROSPECTS
Linda Yablonsky at the opening of Prospect 3 in New Orleans
“THERE’S ALWAYS A GOOD REASON to be in New Orleans. Last weekend, the draw was “Prospect 3: Notes for Now,” or P.3, the resonant third edition of the international biennial that Dan Cameron created in 2007, two years after Hurricane Katrina doused city and spirit. Under artistic director Franklin Sirmans, P.3 opened with work by fifty-eight artists from the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East planted in eighteen venues around town. On Thursday, October 23, a few visiting dealers and collectors joined a veritable congress of American museum curators to track them down…”
Alliance of Artist Communities
8.20.14
This is Personal | Gia Hamilton, Joan Mitchell Center (New Orleans, LA)
“I am thinking about the term social practice. It is the newest buzzword to describe the way in which performing artists have created work for a very long time, but more specifically I am thinking about how we as stewards at the residency create a platform and systems for social practice artists to connect in the city of New Orleans and everywhere that the Foundation has a presence.
I am very interested in how we diversify both the audiences and artists that we host at the Center and how we engage with our local community here. It is a lot of responsibility to be a good neighbor, leader, connector, and conductor of resources.”