NOELLE LORRAINE WILLIAMS

Newark, NJ

Noelle Lorraine Williams lives and works in Newark, NJ. She received her bachelors from the New School for Social Research and her masters from Rutgers University Newark. As a public humanities specialist, historian, artist, researcher and curator, her work examines the ways African Americans utilize culture to re-imagine liberation in the United States. She has exhibited and lectured in multiple venues including the Newark Museum, The African American Museum in Philadelphia, PA and the Jersey City Museum. Her work as an artist and curator has been reviewed in the New York Times, ArtNews, and other publications, including the Star-Ledger as a part of their profile on “The Newark School” and about her exhibition “Black Power! 19th Century Newark’s First African American Rebellion”. Her exhibition “Radical Women: Fighting for Power and the Vote in New Jersey!” was the recipient of the Giles R. Wright Award for contributions to African American History in NJ. She recently received the Creative Catalyst Grant from the City of Newark to produce two artistic interpretations of nineteenth century African American history.

Noelle is also a recipient of the 2021 Individual Artist Fellowship Award for Crafts from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She received a grant from the Audible’s Newark Artist Collaboration for a five-billboard outdoor art installation in a highly trafficked, commuter area of Downtown Newark. Recently, she served as lead researcher on a project proposal for a Newark African American site as part of the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, one of Northern New Jersey’s first federally funded sites. Along with Project for Empty Space, Noelle received the Abbey Mural Prize from the National Academy of Design for a mural on Black women suffragists.

Grimke, Weld and Beecher White Alliances and Newark’s White Activist Nigger Church (above)

This work is from the Monumental Spirit: Reimagined Sites of 19th Century Newark series from the Black Power! 19th Century project. In Downtown Newark, the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” led a congregation that hosted anti-slavery speakers, including the famous abolitionist, Theodore Weld. Weld is pictured with his wife Angelina Grimke and Beecher. Though attended mainly by Whites, the church was called “nigger church” for its antislavery activism.

Willie Cole

Newark, NJ

Willie Cole lives and works in New Jersey. Recently Cole’s work was exhibited at the Museum of Arts and Design (New York, NY), Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas City, MO) and Birmingham Museum of Art (Birmingham, AL). Selected public collections include Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Willie’s work has been the subject of several one-person museum exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1998), Bronx Museum of the Arts (2001), Miami Art Museum (2001), Tampa Museum of Art (2004), University of Wyoming Art Museum (2006), Montclair Art Museum (2006), College of Wooster Art Museum (2013-14).

In 2015, Willie’s work was included in “Represent: 200 Years of African American Art” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and “Wild Noise: Artwork from the Bronx Museum of the Arts” at El Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana. In 2016, his work was included in “Disguise: Masks and Global African Art” at the Brooklyn Museum. “Willie Cole: On-Site” opened at the David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland and traveled to the Museum of Art at the University of New Hampshire, and Arthur Ross Gallery, Philadelphia in 2016. The following year, Cole had solo exhibitions at the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame and at the College of Architecture and Design Gallery at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. In 2019, “Willie Cole: Beauties” opened at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, as well as “Willie Cole: Bella Figura” at Alexander and Bonin, New York.

Collage 4 (opposite page)

Willie Cole’s Collage 4, made after he began his sculptures using hairdryers, is one of five collages constructed of pieces of cutout photocopies of black and white photographs he took of all sides of the same model hairdryer. The figurative shapes came from his recollection of a reproduction Mayan sculpture seen outside of a Cancun restaurant.

Domestic Shield (opposite page)

Willie Cole’s iron scorched three-dimensional painting, Domestic Shield XV, recalls African body marking systems representative of distinct African ethnicities. Willie repurposes an ironing board into a configuration suggestive of a sterotypical African warrier’s shield so every house could protect and empower its domestic workers or female member “slaves”.

Artist Talks Weekend

Saturday 3/18/23 and

Sunday 3/19/23.

Artist Talks Weekend

NJ Historian and Author Rick Geffken speaks about his book, Stories of Slavery in New Jersey, and shows a powerpoint presentation.

Victory Hall Press

926 Newark Ave

Jersey City, NJ 07306

ISBN: 9798391459064

April 2023

Editing and Design:

Anne Trauben

James Pustorino

Made possible by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts,a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Supported by public funds from the Jersey City Arts and Culture Trust Fund.

This program is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts /Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, administered by the Hudson County Office of Cultural and Heritage Affairs, Thomas A. DeGise, County Executive, and the Board of Chosen Freeholders.