"Black Romantic," the Studio Museum's unblushingly unironic exhibition of what is repeatedly referred to in the catalog as "black art," is filled with conventional work yet is still fascinatingly provocative. At MOMA, the Met, or the Whitney, it would be labeled racist. If all the artists in it were white and depicting what they called "white subjects," it would be scary and unilluminating (which many would say is what the art world at its most unexamined already is). If it were at the Studio Museum 25 years ago, it would have been quaint or reactionary. But right here, right now, "Black Romantic" is, in spite of its failings,... More >>>