Art Of Being A First - w/ Chaédria LaBouvier

Being the first anything is never an easy task. Especially if you’re young, gifted and black.

Meet Chaédria LaBouvier. She is a writer, a curator and Basquiat scholar. And she’s a first. At 34, Chaédria is the first Black woman to curate an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, the first Black curator of a solo exhibition and the first Black author of a Guggenheim catalogue. It’s astounding that a museum of the caliber of the Guggenheim has never, in its 80 year history, had a solo Black curator, ever; let alone a Black female solo curator. Enter Chaédria.

The exhibition, “Basquiat’s Defacement: The Untold Story” is arguably Basquiat’s most personal painting, one that has rarely been seen in public. Defacement is Basquiat’s reaction to a death of Michael Stewart, a contemporary artist, at the hands of the New York City Transit police in 1983. Stewart was beaten by the police, hogtied and put into a chokehold, handcuffed to his bed while comatose and died thirteen days later from cardiac arrest at Belluvue Hospital.
Originally painted on the wall of Keith Haring’s studio as Basquiat’s reaction within a week of Stewart’s death, this painting was Basquiat’s grief stricken artistic response to this horrific tragedy. Centered around The Death of Michael Stewart, this exhibition explores Basquiat’s examination of police brutality and black identity through various other paintings rarely exhibited in public.

Chaédria, like most female badasses of her generation didn’t follow a traditional path; she didn’t ascend through the traditional curatorial Art History ranks, and that’s ruffled more than a feathers. But Chaédria is no less a scholar; she comes with receipts: she holds a degree a B.A. in History and Art Studio from Williams College and an MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA. Chaédria is as well versed as anyone to examine Basquiat and police brutality. Chaédria is the founder of Mother’s Against Police Brutality and has been published in a number of leading publications including Harper’s Bazaar, New York Magazine, Dazed and Elle.com, focusing on politics, art, fashion and culture. Her most recent media coverage, however, was a feature on Chaédria in the New York Times’ Art section last week: Behind Basquiat’s ‘Defacement’: Reframing a Tragedy.”

I sit down with Chaédria to chat about her path to the present, how she slayed Goliath at the Guggenheim, detracting the naysayers, how she “died on the cross” for a Polaroid, and her “moral responsibility” to leave the ladder down for others as the first Black solo curator at the Guggenheim.