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BIOGRAPHY
Algernon Miller is a father of Afrofuturist art. Educated at the School of Visual Arts (1965-67) and The New School (1967-68) during America’s cultural revolution, Miller’s Downtown art world included happenings and Pop, Fluxus and Warhol films, the Beat poets and jazz. Uptown, he absorbed African drumming, African-American dance, and Afrocentric fashion. At Slug’s Saloon on East 3rd Street, Miller was among the prominent artists, musicians, writers, and celebrities who gathered on Monday nights to hear the Afrofuturist jazz of Sun Ra. Inspired by Sun Ra’s cosmic grooves, Miller evolved what he calls a “transformationist” consciousness that synthesized Past, Present, and Future. His Present embraced cutting-edge technology and spirituality, and he envisaged an alternative future that transcended the alienation of race-based identity, while remaining “hooked into” his African heritage. These defining elements of Afrofuturism continue to resonate in his work.
Looking back, Miller recalls, “I was strongly drawn to Egyptian art and mythology, and these influences began to reflect in my work and dress. My Kemetic tai chi teacher gave me the name Kiop Ra, and today some people still call me Kiop. I studied the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Dogon culture, Isis Unveiled by H.P. Blavatsky, George Gurdjieff, Ancient Myths by Rudolph Steiner, and Godfrey Higgins’s Anacalypsis, among many more. I collected books on the arts of Africa, Asia, and the West. I read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Amiri Baraka (formerly known as LeRoi Jones), James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, Cheikh Anta Diop, W.E. Du Bois, and Buckminster Fuller’s Ideas and Integrities. Listening to John Coltrane or Sun Ra, with my books opened up around me, I absorbed from all these sources, and through a process like automatic drawing I materialized them into something new–in form, color, and numerically based codes.”
Miller has concentrated on transforming the non-material into the material, utilizing sacred geometry and numerology, sculptural and architectural form, text, and cross-continental exchange. He draws on African and African-American artistic heritage, such as beading and quilting. Yet, his use of new technologies, as in much Afrofuturism, traverses the so-called digital divide, which associates blackness with technological disadvantage. Along with many Afrofuturist thinkers, he is conscious of a long line of “Blacks in Science,” under-recognized black inventors and innovators, and he experiments with sound, kinetic energy, solar-power, 3D animation, and holography. His emphasis on light, both represented and used as an artistic medium, undermines historical associations of blackness with darkness, and reinforces Afrofuturist metaphysical concepts. On the other hand, his sculptures and his monumental architectural commissions are imposingly physical, despite employing metaphysical concepts. In recent work, he intends to reverse the excesses of materialism by returning material to source–that which sacred geometry represents as the invisible.
Lowery Stokes Sims observes, “No matter in what arena he chooses to participate, whether public art or gallery installations, Mr. Miller brings forth a special kind of inventiveness and depth of idea. In my opinion, his capacity for relative and culturally significant creativity is rather amazing.”
Miller’s major public commissions include his Tree of Hope (1972), on Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, and the Frederick Douglass Circle at the northwest corner of Central Park, which opened in 2010. His works are in several prominent collections, and have been featured at New York’s Museum of Arts & Design (MAD), the New Museum, the Whitney, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and in France at the Espace Lyonnais d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, among others.
CV
b. 1945, Harlem, New York City, USA
EDUCATION
1967-1968
The New School, John Meyers Scholarship
1965-1967
School of Visual Arts
HONORS, AWARDS AND GRANTS
2012
Artistic Genius and Contribution to 2012 Black History Month Luncheon” honoree, DDC’s Black History Month Committee
2003
Outstanding Achievement in Sculpture Awardee, Fine Arts World Academy, NYC, Building legacies, Honoring Keepers of the Culture in the 21st Century Grant Recipient
The New York Coalition of One Hundred Black Women Frederick Douglass Memorial Circle Design Competition Awardee, Department of Design
2002
Fund for Creative Communities Grant Recipient, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Construction, Department of Transportation and Studio Museum in Harlem, NYC
1991
Time To Get Paid! Project Grant, Creative Time. Citywide NYC
1982
Awards Exhibition Award for sculpture, Hudson River Museum, Bronx, NY
1976
Harlem State Office Building Sculpture Competition finalist, General Services Administration, NYC
1972
Tree of Hope Public Art Grant, Creative Artists Public Service Program (CAPS), NYC
SELECT EXHIBITIONS
Upcoming
2020 Biennale Internationale de Casablanca, Morocco. September 24 – November 1, 2020
2019
Algernon Miller: Time Being, Wilmer Jennings Gallery At Kenkeleba, New York
2017
Liquid State, Axis Gallery, New York
Harlem Postcards: Summer 2017, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY
2015
RESPOND, Smack Mellon Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2014
Sun Ra Space Place, Salon 94 Project Room, NY
i can do dat Contemporary Abstract Art, Rush Arts Gallery NYC
2013
Curate NYC, Rush Arts Gallery, NYC
2012
Roads To Equality, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY
2011
Observed, Imagined and Recreated, Longwood Gallery @ Hostos Bronx, NY
2010-2011
The Global Africa Project, Museum of Arts and Design NYC (catalog)
2010
Before They Were Parks, Arsenal Gallery, Central Park, NYC
2006-2008
Men On maps, Haven Arts, Bronx, NY
2006-2007
Longwood Arts Projects: Then and Now, Haven Arts, Bronx, NY
2006-2007
Legacies, New York Historical Society, NYC (catalog)
2006
The Art of the Word, Haven Arts, Bronx, NY
Survive, Alive, Thrive, Wave Hill Glyndor Gallery, Bronx, NY (catalog)
2005
Group Show, Haven Arts, Bronx, NY
2004
Group Show, Tribes Gallery, NYC
2003
Architectural exhibition, AIANY, NYC
2001
Group Show, Fire Patrol No. 5, NYC
2001
World Trade Exorcisms, Gallery X, NYC
1998
New Works, New Visions, Teller Borica Gallery, NYC
1997
Forest of Hope, Charles A. Dana Center, Central Park, NYC
1996
Reality Check: Cultural Questions and Political Commentaries, Sylvia White Gallery, NYC
Fibers and textures, New York Public Library, NYC
African American Abstractions, Kenkeleba Gallery, NYC (catalog)
1995
Oia Salon ’95, Tribeca Gallery 148, NYC
1994
Mass Exposure: Salon ’94, Art Initiatives, Tribeca Gallery 148, NYC
1991
Fux Day II, Gallerie Stendahal, NYC
1990-1991
Maps and Madness, Longwood Art Gallery, P.S. 39, Bronx, NY (catalog)
Maps and Madness, Marine Midland Bank, NY
1990
A Day Without Art: A National Day of Action and Mourning in Response to the AIDS Crisis , Longwood Art Gallery, P.S. 39, Bronx, New York
1988
Who’s Uptown, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, NYC (catalog)
1988
Experiencing the City, curated by Corolla van den Houten, One Penn Plaza, NYC
1985
Bye-Bye Mixage, Galerie- Lara Vincy, Paris, France
Forecast: Images of the Future, Kenkeleba Gallery, NYC (catalog)
Exuberant Abstraction, Peter Frank, Curator, 100 Church Street, NYC
1984
Activated Walls, Queens Museum, Flushing, New York (catalog)
1983
Sculpture As Ornament, Sculpture Center, NYC
Solo Exhibition, Gallery Yves Arman, Madison Avenue, NYC
Regentrified Jungle, Hamilton College Gallery, Hamilton, New York (catalog)
1982
Energie New York, Espace Lyonnais d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, France (catalog)
Awards Exhibition, Hudson River Museum, Bronx, New York
1981
Solo Exhibition, Gallery Yves Arman, Madison Avenue, NYC
From the File at V.A.R.S., Just Above Midtown, NYC
Artists Select Artists, The New Museum, NYC (catalog)
Decorative Sculpture, Sculpture Center, NYC
1980
Discovery/Rediscover, Sculpture Center, NYC
1979
New Artists: New Sensibilities, 22 Wooster Gallery, SoHo, NY
1978
Group Show, Cinque Gallery, NYC
1972
Fine Arts Federation of New York- Special Exhibition, Sculpture Center, NYC
1971
Contemporary Black Artists in America, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY (catalog)
1970
New York and Boston, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts (catalog)
COMMISSIONS
2003
Department of Design and Construction and Department of Transportation, NYC, “Frederick Douglass Memorial Circle” Site Design
1980
Grand Hyatt Hotel, NYC, “Untitled“, Indoor Installation in Presidential Suite
1978
Board of Education of New York, Public Art Commission, “The Learning Tree”, I.S. 324, Brooklyn, NY
SPECIAL PROJECTS/PROGRAMS AND ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE
1998
Architectural Design Workshop, Design Your Community and Park, Charles A. Dana Discovery Center, Central Park, NYC
1997
Central Park Conservancy Workshop, Hug a Tree, Charles A. Dana Discovery Center, Central Park NYC
Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Project Facilitator, Harlem Arts Corridor / Cultural Extension of the Museum Mile
1994
Artist-In-Residence; Community Workshop and Performance, Rebirth of the Hilltop, Tacoma Art Corp, Tacoma, WA
1993
Sculpture and Set Design: Jungle City, Bessie Schonberg Theatre, Downtown Theatre Workshop, NYC
1984
Performance: Action: Orlan-Corps, Guggenheim Museum, NYC
SELECT PRINT PUBLICATIONS AND REVIEWS
Global Africa, Studio, The Studio Museum Magazine, 2011
Global Africa Project, Museum of Arts and Design exhibition catalog, 2010-2011
In the Studio: Artist Algernon Miler, Views, Museum of Arts and Design, 2010
At Historical Society, Emancipation Remains a Work in Progress, The New York Times, 2006
Legacies, New York Historical Society exhibition catalog, NYC, 2006-2007
Survive, Alive, Thrive, Wave Hill Glyndor Gallery exhibition catalog, Bronx, NY, 2006
Closing the Circle (Frederick Douglass Memorial Circle), Metropolis, July 2003.
Algernon Miller, Harlem Torch: Small Business Resource Magazine of Harlem, 2002
One Man’s Vision (Harlem Arts Corridor), New York Times, 1996
The Negro Maze: De-Tom-O-Tron, Black Arts New York, 1994
Gallery Shows off a-Mazing exhibit, Daily News, 1994
Renee Phillips, Solo Show Review at Gallery Yves Arman
Deborah C. Phillips, New York Reviews, The News World East Side Weekly, 1981
Decorative Sculpture, Art News, 1981
Tree of Hope Review, Daily News, 1972
George Gent, Tree of Hope Review, New York Times 1972
John Perrault, Review, Village Voice, 1971
Photographers, Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers, CAPS Catalog, 1970
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
The Studio Museum, Harlem
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn
David Hammons
Yves Arman
Marcia Tucker [The New Museum]
Tony Goldman Estate
Kenkeleba House Gallery