Revisiting 35 Years of an Iconic Newark Artist-Led Space

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, "I See Red: Going Forward, Looking Back" (1996) (© Estate of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, courtesy the estate and Garth Greenan Gallery)

In the aftermath of the Newark Rebellion of 1967, which saw six days of police brutality at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, nontraditional arts spaces began to crop up around the city. Just over a decade after the 1972 opening of Newark's first Black-owned gallery, Aard Studio Gallery, and on the heels of the Blacks Art Movement, Guyanese artists Victor Davson and Carl E. Hazlewood founded their own nonprofit exhibition space, Aljira, in 1983. Taking its name from the Australian Aboriginal word for “dreamtime,” Aljira championed the work of socially engaged artists who critiqued gentrification in Newark, American imperialism, and racial capitalism.

Eight years after Aljira abruptly closed due to financial difficulties, the Newark Museum of Art will present a group exhibition tracing the artist-led space's 35-year history of showcasing works by underrepresented artists and nurturing the careers of major, globally recognized figures, including Dawoud Bey, Firelei Báez, and Jeffrey Gibson.

Opening October 15, Dreamtime in Newark: Aljira and the Making of Global Contemporary Art features 66 artworks by 43 artists whose practices were championed by Aljira through exhibitions, collaborations, or curatorial projects. Opening on October 15 and running through June 30, 2027, the exhibition will include works by Amiri Baraka, Emilio Cruz, Frank Bowling, Hew Locke, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, among many others, across the museum's 4,500-square-foot space.

"Bad Cow Comin' (Dear Guyana)" (1998) by Victor Davson, co-founder of Aljira (© Victor Davson, courtesy Newark Museum of Art)

In its early years, the nonprofit's exhibitions "were strategic in their resolve to call out inequities and institutional deficiencies," guest curator Alliyah Allen writes in the forthcoming exhibition catalog. The organization's early programming, which included the 1987 exhibition With and Without Acclaim: International Black and Hispanic Artists, platformed the work of underrepresented artists at a time when few other institutions did. Just a year after With and Without, the nonprofit moved into a smaller space closer to the Newark Museum of Art. There, Davson and Hazlewood began calling attention to displacement and gentrification in their new downtown neighborhood through a series of exhibitions examining "racial capitalism."

Derrick Adams, "Crossroads" (2012) (© Derrick Adams Studio, courtesy Newark Museum of Art)

In 1994, Davson and Hazlewood brought their curatorial vision to an international audience with the opening of Current Identities: Recent Painting in the United States, an exhibition featuring works by seven American artists, including Quick-to-See Smith and Cruz, at the International Biennial of Painting in Cuenca, Ecuador.

Succumbing to significant debt accrued after the 2008 recession, the nonprofit abruptly ceased operations in 2018. Since then, Davson and artist Cecily Cottingham have formed an archive project to preserve the organization's legacy.

"I remember meeting a diverse group of artists from Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens who were all traveling to participate in the program," artist Jeffrey Gibson, who participated in Aljira's Emerge program in the early 2000s, said in a statement to Hyperallergic.

"I know that starting it in Newark and finding a brick-and-mortar space was not easy," Gibson said. "But I think Aljira has had a huge impact on the greater New York area art scene."

Cicely Cottingham, "Tomorrow will come on its green footsteps (First Mountain) 2" (2020)(© Cicely Cottingham, courtesy the artist)