With sadness, we share the passing of Orlonda Uffre.
Orlonda Uffre was a Bay Area curator, artist, and arts educator who played a leading role in Art of the African Diaspora at Richmond Art Center – curating the exhibition for many years and helping shape one of the region’s most vital annual showcases of art by Black artists. In 2005, she received the Jan Hart-Shuyers Artistic Achievement Award for her work in the exhibition, and from 2019 to 2023, she served on the program’s Steering Committee.
Orlonda’s creative practice was rooted in her identity, shaped by her upbringing in Brooklyn, New York, and her connection to the African and Caribbean Diaspora. She once wrote: “I believe it’s important to recognize and validate one’s own voice… The internal dialogue about what I’m expressing and how I’m doing it is influenced by my ideas about Black art in a multicultural world and multicultural art in a Euro-centric context.”
Orlonda began her artistic training at the High School of Art & Design in New York City and studied with Alvin Hollingsworth at the Art Students League. She earned her MFA from the California Institute of Integral Studies in 2009.
Her artwork was widely exhibited, including at SF City Hall, Joyce Gordon Gallery, SOMArts, and the National Steinbeck Center. She was honored by the US State Department’s Art in Embassies Program, which selected her paintings for the Ambassadorial Residence in Maputo, Mozambique.
Her artistic trajectory included founding the Women’s InterArt Center in New York and serving as the founding Artistic Director for Brava! for Women in the Arts in California. She was also an educator, teaching visual art at institutions such as Five Keys Charter School and Alameda Community Learning Center, and served as a consultant to the African American Museum & Library of Oakland Coalition.
We celebrate Orlonda’s art and her unwavering support for artists. She was brilliant, bold, and deeply committed. She will be missed.
(And she’d want you to know – it’s pronounced Or-LON-da!)
