All posts by admin

Care in the Craft: “Young Children” (nd) by Frank Otis Small

9 May 2018 Stories

By Natalie Willis. We have a long history of looking in The Bahamas, in the idea of being seen. We were the chain of limestone that 40,000 Lucayans and Arawaks saw as home as they weaved their way north through the islands. We were Christopher Columbus’ misplaced Indies, setting his eyes on a lucky second-best that he claimed for Spain – thus beginning the “New World” and our written history. There were the hungry eyes set on plantation profit – and the hungry eyes of those forced to do that work. Then there were the thousands of eyes afterwards, in and out of the space in blinks and in boats that came to see just what “paradise” looked like. Those eyes were turned on us.

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It’s not just black and white: It is also colour, light, shift, and feeling

8 May 2018 Stories

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett. The University of The Bahamas. In “Traversing the Picturesque: For Sentimental Value” chief curator, Holly Bynoe brings together a rich tapestry of works from the nineteenth and early twentieth century Bahamas that shift our feelings.  These works from diverse artists and styles reflect light and nature in different and nuanced ways.  Many of these artists would ‘escape’ the harsh New England, Canadian, European winters, or be inspired by films such as “James Bond 007: Thunderball” to travel to and create with the light of the tropics which had and still has incredible sentimental value. 

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Friday Night Live! Review: Art and entertainment collide to create a special night

7 May 2018 Highlights

By Malika Pryor Martin. The very first Friday Night Live! took place at the NAGB on April 27th and proved to be a hit with our New Providence community in spite of the rain. Activities and events included a drop-in workshop, special tours, drawing in the galleries, a special on memberships, delicious food provided by POW and Cassava Grille, and although unfulfilled (thank you, bad weather), a live performance by Willis and the Illest.

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Traversing the Picturesque: A thought

2 May 2018 Stories

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett. The 1920s through the 1960s were boom time for The Bahamas, especially for Nassau and other islands like Bimini, The Berry Islands and even Grand Bahama.  Along with The Bahamas experience was the Cuba experience and the Haiti experience—the Caribbean was an exotic picturesque place to go to and explore. Tourism was new, it was exciting and it was important.  The offering brought diverse populations into the various tropical spaces to see and live in this milieu.

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The NAGB’s second travelling exhibition closes in Eleuthera

1 May 2018 Highlights

By Malika Pryor-Martin. The NAGB travelling exhibition programme, which began in 2015 has just completed its fifth trip overall and has concluded the premiere of its second exhibition, “TRANS: A Migration of Identity”. With partner One Eleuthera Foundation, the NAGB presented the show for over four weeks at the South Eleuthera Mission in Rock Sound, closing on April 13th.

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My Mouth is a Heartbreak: Anina Major’s “Wisdom Teeth” (2017)

30 April 2018 Stories

By Natalie Willis. Anina Major’s “Wisdom Teeth” (2017) are beautiful, haunting ghosts of an imagined body – this body could be mine, yours, our ancestors, an imagined overarching representation of the body of the Caribbean personified. Teeth are universal (for most of us at least), but they are also still body parts that have distinct history and stories for many of us. As a nation built on slavery, on the backs of Blacks, with a majority-Black population despite the diversity of races and nations that build into the potcake of this peculiar place – sometimes the Black racialising of experiences is too much to move past. Funny how that happens, in places still dealing with the toxic, poisonous vestiges of slavery with racism at the bedrock of our foundations. All this to say, when we look at teeth, we can’t not look at teeth in relation to Black people.

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Graham Fagen

21 March 2018 Podcasts

On tonight’s, “Blank Canvas,” your regular host Amanda Coulson, Director of the NAGB speaks to visiting artist Graham Fagen, a Scottish artist living and working in Glasgow, Scotland. His art practice encompasses video, performance, sculpture, sound and text. His work reflects on how contemporary identity and its associated myths and fictions, can be expressed and understood and his portraits of real, imagined, historical and contemporary characters explore the idea of identity and performance in portraiture.

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Open call for works featuring your Potcakes

23 January 2018 Opportunities

The NAGB is celebrating the Chinese year of the Dog with a call for Potcakes. Would you like to share your experience of observing, owning or knowing a potcake? Bahamian artists are welcome to submit works in any medium: painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, photography, video, textile, installation and mixed media.

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