MoMA’s 2024 Black Arts Council Benefit To Be Held on April 4, Honoring Sherrilyn Ifill and Glenn Ligon

The Black Arts Council Benefit at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, held on April 3, 2023. Photo: Austin Donohue

WHEN: Thursday, April 4, 2024 6:30 p.m. Cocktails 8:00 p.m. Dinner
WHERE: The Museum of Modern Art, 18 West 54th Street, New York

The Museum of Modern Art’s Black Arts Council will host its annual benefit on April 4, honoring scholar and civil rights lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill and artist Glenn Ligon. The Black Arts Council supports MoMA’s mission by centering Black perspectives on modern and contemporary art. The benefit will feature a special performance by singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Cautious Clay, with backing band the Community. Proceeds from this benefit support the continued impact and influence of the Black Arts Council through acquisitions, exhibitions, and educational programming that cultivates and engages a diverse museum audience.

Sherrilyn Ifill is a renowned scholar and civil rights lawyer who is widely recognized as an expert on race, civil rights, and the Supreme Court. Ifill is currently a Scholar in Residence at MoMA, where her research is focused on exploring artistic expressions of American identity that reflect the values and promises of the post–Civil War 14th Amendment to the Constitution. For a decade, Ifill led the nation’s premier civil rights legal organization, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF)—since stepping down from LDF in 2022, she has served as a senior fellow at the Ford Foundation, and is completing the manuscript for a book titled Is This America?, to be published in 2024. Ifill is currently a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, and later this year she will become the inaugural Vernon E. Jordan Distinguished Professor in Civil Rights at Howard Law School, where she will launch the 14th Amendment Center for Law and Democracy. Ifill was appointed to President Biden’s Supreme Court Commission in 2021, was named as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by TIME magazine, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019. She is also a recipient of the Radcliffe Medal, the Brandeis Medal, and the Thurgood Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Bar Association.

Glenn Ligon is an artist living and working in New York. Throughout his career, Ligon has pursued an incisive exploration of American history, literature, and society across bodies of work that build critically on the legacies of modern painting and conceptual art. He earned his BA from Wesleyan University (1982) and attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program (1985). In 2011, the Whitney Museum of American Art held a mid-career retrospective, Glenn Ligon: America, organized by Scott Rothkopf, that traveled nationally. Important solo exhibitions include Post-Noir, Carre d’Art, Nîmes (2022); Glenn Ligon: Call and Response, Camden Arts Centre, London (2014); and Glenn Ligon – Some Changes, The Power Plant Center for Contemporary Art, Toronto (traveled internationally) (2005). Select curatorial projects include Grief and Grievance, New Museum, New York (2021); Blue Black, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis (2017); and Glenn Ligon: Encounters and Collisions, Nottingham Contemporary and Tate Liverpool (2015). Ligon’s work has been shown in major international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (2015, 1997), Berlin Biennial (2014), Istanbul Biennial (2019, 2011), and Documenta XI (2002). A forthcoming solo exhibition and curatorial project titled, Glenn Ligon: All Over the Place, The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, Cambridge in Fall 2024. A book of selected writings and interviews by the artist titled, Glenn Ligon: Distinguishing Piss from Rain will be published later this year by Hauser & Wirth Publishers.

The evening will be highlighted by a special musical performance by Cautious Clay & the Community and a DJ set by rmzi. New York–based singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Cautious Clay has a unique sound that moves fluidly between pop, alternative R&B, and indie rock. On his deeply personal 2023 album KARPEH, Cautious Clay explores themes of growth, intimacy, and lineage by delving deeper than ever into his jazz influences. Across the album, he can be heard on vocals, flute, tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, guitar, synthesizer, and bass. He also invited a wide range of collaborators into the fold to perform on the album, including leading lights of the modern jazz world. Performing alongside Cautious Clay is the Community, featuring Brian Richburg Jr. (drums), Nir Felder (guitar), Joshua Crumbly (bass), and Mayteana Morales (percussion and vocals). Founded in 1993 as the Friends of Education, by Dr. Akosua Barthwell Evans, Agnes Gund, and David Rockefeller Jr., the Black Arts Council at MoMA funds acquisitions by Black artists, supports educational programs and exhibitions on Black art, and creates opportunities for Black artists and arts professionals at MoMA. Tables and tickets for this year’s benefit can be purchased online or by emailing blackartscouncil@moma.org.