Grace Wales Bonner Curates 'Spirit Movers' Exhibition for MoMA's Artist's Choice Series

MoMA's new exhibition, Spirit Movers, curated by Grace Wales Bonner, celebrates artworks informed by the African diaspora.

Grace Wales Bonner photographed by Liz Johnson Artur.

Since Grace Wales Bonner founded her eponymous fashion brand in 2014, the London native has taken ample opportunity to pay homage to the Black experience and advance ideas centered around the Afro-Atlantic spirit. The designer's collections from seasons past have been shaped by her British and Jamaican heritage, featuring styles, prints, and colors that encourage cross-cultural conversations.

Clockwise from top left: “Message Number 7B, Ecclesiastes VII: 6,” 1959, by Mathias Goeritz; “Benjamin Patterson’s Variations for Double-Bass, performed during Kleines Sommerfest: Après John Cage, Galerie Parnass, Wuppertal, West Germany, June 9, 1962,” 1962; “Washington, D.C.,” 1957, by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Now, Wales Bonner is shifting her lens to the art world. She is the latest chosen curator for the Museum of Modern Art's Artist’s Choice exhibition—a series that began in 1989, in which a contemporary artist draws from the museum’s collection to organize a special installation. Spirit Movers is a selection of approximately 50 works featuring Black cultural practices inspired by forms, experiences, and sounds from the African Diaspora. Wales Bonner continues the Artist’s Choice series’ legacy of subverting the curatorial status quo; previous artists have included Yto Barrada, Charles White, Trisha Donnelly, Elizabeth Murray, and Vik Muniz.

cover of grace wale bonner's book featuring a young boy holding a ladder

a blurry photo of a man in black sunglasses looking down

Clockwise from top left: “Lady with a Long Neck,” 1992, by Moustapha Dimé; Cover of 'Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm—Visions of Sound and Spirit,' published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York; “Reggie Nicholson, Henry Threadgill Sextet, Village Vanguard, New York City,” 1988, by Anthony Barboza

The wide-ranging exhibition explores themes of musicality, storytelling, and the intersection of cultural narratives, and features such artists as Terry Adkins, Agnes Martin, and Betye Saar. Though the collection features a variety of mediums—a monumental wood carving or a sculptural composite of wind instruments, for example—each artwork finds unity in its soulful expression. Open through April 7, 2024, the exhibition sheds light on how the deep histories and varied cultural identities across the diasporic world have influenced modern Black expression.