Career
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Sims was on the education and curatorial staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1972 to 1999. [5] She said her mission "was to make sure that artists of color and overlooked white artists were represented in the museum's collection." [6] She participated in the organization of several exhibitions including Ellsworth Kelly (1979), John Marin: Selected Works from the Museum's Collection (1981), Henry Moore: 60 Years of His Art (1983), and Charles Burchfield (1984). In 1991, she curated Stuart Davis, American Painter, and she was the principal author of the catalogue. In 1995, Ms. Sims coordinated the Museum's venue of the exhibition I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin , organized by the Museum of the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, and curated Paul Cadmus: The Seven Deadly Sins and Selections from the Collection. In 1997, Dr. Sims curated the exhibition Richard Pousette-Dart, 1916–1992 and coordinated Francesco Clemente: Indian Watercolors organized by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. In 1999, she organized Hans Hofmann in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and coordinated the exhibition Barbara Chase-Riboud: Monument Drawings, organized by the St. John's Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Sims also organized several exhibitions from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in cooperation with the American Federation of Arts, for which she was also involved in writing catalogues: The Figure in Twentieth Century Art: Selections from the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1985), The Landscape in Twentieth Century Art: Selections from the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1991), American Still Life Painting (1995). For more than a decade, Sims also was responsible for the annual installation of the Museum's Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, including the 1999 installation, Abakanowicz on the Roof.
The Studio Museum in Harlem
From 2000 to 2007, Sims was executive director, then president, of The Studio Museum in Harlem and served as adjunct curator for the permanent collection. [6] She was the coordinating curator for the 2003 exhibition, Challenge of the Modern: African American Artists, 1925–1945, and Fred Brown: Icons and Heroes (2003), which she originally curated for the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.
In 2004, she was the curator for Curator's Eye, focusing on contemporary installation art in Jamaica, at the National Gallery, Kingston, Jamaica. She was also the curator for The Persistence of Geometry, selections from the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, which was shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland in 2006. That same year she co-curated Legacies: Contemporary Artists Reflect on Slavery at the New York Historical Society.
The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD)
Sims is the retired curator emerita [7] at the Museum of Arts and Design, where between 2007 and 2015, she served as the Charles Bronfman International Curator and then the William and Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator. At MAD, Sims co-curated "Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary" (2008) and "Dead or Alive: Artists Respond to Nature" (2010). She also conceived and co-curated "The Global Africa Project" (2010–11) and "Against the Grain: Wood in Contemporary Art, Craft and Design" which opened in March 2013. In 2014, she curated the exhibitions "Maryland to Murano: Neckpieces and Sculptures by Joyce J. Scott," and "New Territories: Laboratories for Design, Craft and Art in Latin America."
Bibliography
Sims, L. S. & Davis, S. (1991). Stuart Davis: American Painter. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), Sims, L. S., Rewald, S., Lieberman, W. S., & American Federation of Arts. (1996). Still Life: The Object in American Art, 1915-1995: Selections from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Rizzoli.
Sims, L. S., & Bearden, R. (1993). Romare Bearden. New York, N.Y.: Rizzoli Publications.
Sims, L. S., & Lam, W. (2002). Wifredo Lam and the International Avant-Garde, 1923-1982. Austin, Tex: University of Texas Press.
Sims, L.S. (editor). (2008). Fritz Scholder: Indian Not Indian. Washington, DC, and New York, NY: Smithsonian Institution and New York, N.Y.: Prestel.
Sims, L. S., Ramírez, M. C., Rangel, G., Rivas, J., Basha, R., Pope, N. L., Lopes, F., ... Museum of Arts and Design (New York, N.Y.). (2014). New Territories: Laboratories for Design, Craft and Art in Latin America.
Sims, L. S., Carr, D., & Museum of Fine Arts. (2015). Common Wealth: Art by African Americans in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Boston: MFA Publications.
Sims, L. S. and Sims, Patterson. (2018). Joyce J. Scott: Harriet Tubman and Other Truths. Hamilton, New Jersey: Grounds for Sculpture.
Wifredo Óscar de la Concepción Lam y Castilla, better known as Wifredo Lam, was a Cuban artist who sought to portray and revive the enduring Afro-Cuban spirit and culture. Inspired by and in contact with some of the most renowned artists of the 20th century, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Lam melded his influences and created a unique style, which was ultimately characterized by the prominence of hybrid figures. This distinctive visual style of his also influences many artists. Though he was predominantly a painter, he also worked with sculpture, ceramics and printmaking in his later life.
The Studio Museum in Harlem is an American art museum devoted to the work of artists of African descent. The museum's galleries are currently closed in preparation for a building project that will replace the current building, located at 144 West 125th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Lenox Avenue in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, with a new one on the same site. Founded in 1968, the museum collects, preserves and interprets art created by African Americans, members of the African diaspora, and artists from the African continent. Its scope includes exhibitions, artists-in-residence programs, educational and public programming, and a permanent collection.
The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), based in Manhattan, New York City, collects, displays, and interprets objects that document contemporary and historic innovation in craft, art, and design. In its exhibitions and educational programs, the museum celebrates the creative process through which materials are crafted into works that enhance contemporary life.
The Brooklyn Rail is a publication and platform for the arts, culture, humanities, and politics. The Rail is based in Brooklyn, New York. It features in-depth critical essays, fiction, poetry, as well as interviews with artists, critics, and curators, and reviews of art, music, dance, film, books, and theater.
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Thelma Golden is the Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City, United States. She is noted as one of the originators of the term post-blackness. From 2017 to 2020, ArtReview chose her annually as one of the 10 most influential people in the contemporary art world.
The University Museums at the University of Delaware is the collective name for the University of Delaware's collections of American art, minerals, and Pre-Columbian ceramics.
The Salón de Mayo was an art exhibition held in Havana, Cuba, in July 1967. It took its name from the Salon de Mai, an artists collective founded during the Nazi occupation of France. It was organized by Carlos Franqui with the assistance of such artists as Wifredo Lam, René Portocarrero, Alexander Calder, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso.
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Joyce J. Scott is an African-American artist, sculptor, quilter, performance artist, installation artist, print-maker, lecturer and educator. Named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016, and a Smithsonian Visionary Artist in 2019, Scott is best known for her figurative sculptures and jewelry using free form, off-loom beadweaving techniques, similar to a peyote stitch. Each piece is often constructed using thousands of glass seed beads or pony beads, and sometimes other found objects or materials such as glass, quilting and leather. In 2018, she was hailed for working in new medium — a mixture of soil, clay, straw, and cement — for a sculpture meant to disintegrate and return to the earth. Scott is influenced by a variety of diverse cultures, including Native American and African traditions, Mexican, Czech, and Russian beadwork, illustration and comic books, and pop culture.
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