News Release - Huntington to Present "The Hilton Als Series: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye"

(Updated Sept. 16, 2019) The exhibition of paintings by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, on view Jan. 25–May 11, 2020, is second in a trilogy of shows on contemporary female artists curated by The New Yorker magazine critic Hilton Als

“Celia Paul” launched the series in 2019. The final installment will be “Njideka Akunyili Crosby” (Spring 2021)

Exhibitions originate at the Yale Center for British Art

SAN MARINO, Calif.—Recent paintings by contemporary British artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye will be on view Jan. 25–May 11, 2020, at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. "The Hilton Als Series: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye," is curated by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hilton Als, staff writer and theater critic for The New Yorker magazine, and associate professor of writing at Columbia University. This presentation is the second in a trilogy of exhibitions at The Huntington that originated at the Yale Center for British Art. The first exhibition, on view at The Huntington in early 2019, focused on the work of Celia Paul, and the final installment in 2021 will highlight the work of Los Angeles-based artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby.

“The uncanny mix of informality and mystery in Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s ‘non-portrait’ figural paintings creates a fascinating dialogue with The Huntington’s collection of highly formal, 18th-century British portraits of white, upper-class figures,” said Catherine Hess, chief curator of European art at The Huntington.  “The juxtaposition of her work will help expand the story that we tell around British art and the traditions of figural representation across centuries.”

The installation at The Huntington features five works selected by Als in collaboration with the artist and focuses on recent paintings that are portrait-like studies of fictional characters. Drawn from the world of found images and imagination, Yiadom-Boakye's figures seem familiar but also mysterious. She typically finishes each painting in a single day, infusing the works with freshness and spontaneity, as if they were painted from life.

"Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is among the most important artists working in Britain today," said Matthew Hargraves, chief curator of art collections at the Yale Center for British Art. "The selection of these works, all on loan from generous private collectors, offers an opportunity to see her powerful representations of imaginary people of color shown in action and contemplation.”

The paintings’ titles pull from the artist’s own poetry and contribute to the sense that these scenes are, in the end, unknowable. In both The Needs Beyond (2013) and Greenhouse Fantasies (2014), men look directly and enigmatically at the viewer. Viewers are left wondering who exactly these individuals are and what their stories may be.