local storiesJuly 25, 2022

Check Out Bridget R. Cooks’s Story

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bridget R. Cooks.

Hi Bridget, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I started my career in the arts in college through an internship at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. I enjoyed learning about art history in school and working with living artists in museums. While completing my doctorate in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester, I worked at the National African American Museum Project (which became the National Museum of African American of History and Culture), the National Gallery of Art, the Oakland Museum of California, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I worked primarily in education which taught me how to engage museum visitors in the galleries and to facilitate conversations in which we can all learn by looking together and listening to each other.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It was a struggle to work full-time and write a dissertation. There’s no doubt about it. In order to be successful, it’s important to truly love your topic and believe that you have something to contribute to the field. I have always focused on the art and careers of African American artists and their roads have never been smooth. Convincing people that the contributions of African Americans to the visual arts is worthy of recognition and study continues to be a challenge in the museum, academic, and publishing worlds.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
As a curator and scholar, my focus has been on African American artists, Black representation, and museum criticism. My essays have been published widely in academic journals, books, and exhibition catalogues such as the recent Supernatural America: The Paranormal in American Art, Bob Thompson: This House is Mine (opening at the Hammer Museum on October 9, 2022), and Faith Ringgold: American People. I especially enjoy writing about Black artists based in L.A. such as the great Betye Saar and the legendary Noah Purifoy. However, I’m best known for my book Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum that has become a crucial source of information for people interested in the history of Blackness in the mainstream art world.

Over the past several years, I’ve curated exhibitions such as Grafton Tyler Brown: Exploring California (Pasadena Museum of California Art, 2018), Ernie Barnes: A Retrospective (California African American Museum, 2019), The Black Index (four venues national tour 2021-2022), and my current exhibition Lava Thomas: Homecoming (Montgomery Museum of Fine Art and Spelman College Museum of Fine Arts, 2022). I am also Associate Director of the Langson Institute and Museum of California at UC Irvine and am debuting the group exhibition Dissolve on October 1, 2022.

I enjoy curating and incorporating programs from my roots in museum education. The Association of Art Museum Curators gave its 2022 Award for Excellence in Online Programming to The Black Index. That was a great honor to receive. Conversations with artists, scholars, designers, and original music and films were created to support the exhibition which are available on the exhibition website: theblackindex.art. It was a blessing to work with a range of Black creatives to produce smart and critical content especially during the first two years of the pandemic. I was also awarded funding from The Ford Foundation, California Humanities, the UCI Confronting Extremism Program at UC Irvine, the Getty Research Institute, The Reparations Project, and several private donors who believed in the project and wanted to be a part of it. That exhibition helped me and many others survive the multifaceted challenges we have faced.

Along with Amanda Tewes, Interviewer/Historian at UC Berkeley’s Oral History Center, I’ve been conducting oral histories with African American artists for the Getty Research Institute’s African American Art History Initiative. This has been a wonderful and gratifying experience to learn about artist’s lives over several hours. The oral histories are available on the GRI’s youtube channel for anyone to watch and the transcripts of these interviews are available online at the GRI and the Bancroft Library at Cal. My involvement with the initiative has allowed me to work with a network of people invested in the Black futures through the arts. It’s a wonderful project.

Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
I have been fortunate to meet people who have given me opportunities to succeed and fail in the arts. I don’t think of those situations in terms of luck, but I have had fortunate and unfortunate experiences. Some people have been generous and kind while others have been discouraging and cruel. It’s been important to focus on my purpose, a greater good, and to be resilient to fulfill the goals I have regardless of what “luck” I have.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Portrait of Bridget R. Cooks by Daniel Ramos (2021) Photo of Bridget R. Cooks and Lava Thomas outside the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art by Iris Moore (2022) MMFA Homepage Image Credits: Lava Thomas, Looking Back I (2015) and Lava Thomas, Mrs. Cora L. McHaney (2018). Photo of Exhibiting Blackness books cover: Peter Brenner UCI IMCA Image Credit: Sonia Romero, Inner Landscape (2011) and Erica Deeman, Gregory (2016) Cover of Grafton Tyler Brown Image Credit: Grafton Tyler Brown, Grand Canyon and Falls (detail), 1887. Photo John Wilson White Studio. Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art. Photo of The Black Index viewers in Art Galleries at Black Studies, University of Texas, Austin. Image Credit: Whitfield Lovell, The Card Pieces (2019-20). Photo by Bridget R. Cooks. The Black Index Image Credit: Dennis Delgado, Black Panther (2020) and Photo Credit: Dennis Delgado (2021) Crowd at KCRW Summer Nights at the California African American Museum Celebrating Ernie Barnes: A Retrospective (2019). Photo by Bridget R. Cooks Ernie Barnes: A Retrospective Banner at the California African American Museum (2019). Photo by Bridget R. Cooks

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