“Lorna Simpson: Source Notes” at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art highlights the evolution of the artist’s oeuvre over the past decade. During that time, Simpson, who first gained recognition for her Conceptual photography, began exploring different media, most notably painting. The exhibition’s title nods to a throughline that connects all the artist’s works: her use of found images, often sourced from vintage magazines.
Simpson’s 1986 photograph
Waterbearer itself served as a “source note” to the late author and activist bell hooks. In a special section in
Artforum’s September 1993 issue titled “State of the Art,” for which sixteen critics were asked to write about an artwork that “rearranged the landmarks of their cultural geographies and claimed a permanent place in their personal canons,”
hooks recalled encountering Simpson’s image in a 1987 issue of
B Culture, a newspaper devoted to Black art and culture published by Just Above Midtown gallery. “Carefully pressing my newspaper copy with a hot iron, to remove all creases, I taped this page on the wall in my study, awed by the grace and profound simplicity of the image,” she writes. “Here in this image the keeper of history, the griot, the one who bears water as life and blessing, is a black woman.”
—The editors
Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
