Within the past week here in Chicago there have been no less than two panel discussions on race and art production. More specifically these panel discussions (with vocal audience exchanges) looked at black art and black art production, or as yesterday's panel at the University of Chicago (in conjunction with the exhibition Black Is/Black Ain't) was entitled, "Post Black: There and Back Again." Thursday night's program at the Experimental Station, which was organized by Theaster Gates as part of the "Representations" series on culture, politics, and aesthetics, was entitled "Black Enough?"
Both of these gatherings were lively, engaging, and variously informative, and provided a much needed forum for the airing of ideas that usually take place away from the light of public discourse. Kind of like those statements we've seen coming out of the pulpit of Trinity United Methodist Church, also here in Chicago, that are unusual only for their public airing beyond the black social sphere. The expressions of Pfleger and Wright are actually quite typical grist at any black barber shop in America on a Saturday afternoon, and--contrary to the media's heated response to them--are not considered remarkable, inflammatory, or anything else other than routine highly performative and embellished expressions of current events as seen through a black lens. And white though he may be, Pfleger has long been a stalwart advocate and presence in the South Side Chicago black community, and is much a part of the social fabric there. The two panels were, of course, more academic than the pulpit segments aired endlessly in the media, but no less engaging for again bringing to light issues that don't receive a lot of public scrutiny or discourse.
Anyway, race has been very much in the air here in Chicago lately. And when the discussion turns to "what we need to do," being from New York I always think about the Studio Museum in Harlem. Because way back in the day, some forty years ago, some folks got together in NY and decided what needed to be done, and it has been getting done ever since. Why it hasn't been "getting done" the same way in other cities remains a question that folks in those cities might want to ask themselves.
A brief recap of the history of the Studio Museum in Harlem reveals what vision and the persistent hard work of intstitution building can do to alleviate the plight of exclusion.
• In 1967 the Studio Museum in Harlem was founded. The institution took its name and identity from a proposal that was written by the painter William T. Williams, whose idea it was to have a community museum for African Americans that also included studio space where members of the community could interact with black artists, and the artists would have the opportunity to more directly engage the community. Williams and fellow artist/sculptor Mel Edwards rolled up their sleeves, and with push brooms and much sweat cleared the light industrial loft space--then located over a Kentucky Fried Chicken-- in preparation for repurposing it into studios and exhibition space. The Junior Council of the Metropolitan Museum lent its backing to the fledging effort shortly thereafter. In 1969 the museum mounted an exhibition, "X to the Fourth Power" that featured to work of Williams, Mel Edwards, Sam Gilliam, and Steven Kelsey (a white artist). The museum has been continually exhibiting works by black artists ever since that time.
• The great Trinidadian painter (and poet) LeRoy Clark became the first artist-in-residence at the museum, then under the direction of Ed Spriggs, in 1971. He was joined by Lloyd Stevens and Valerie Maynard. Every year since then the museum has hosted three artists-in-residence, providing an annual stipend, and a well publicized and attended exhibition at the end of the residency period. Count three artists a year times thirty-seven years, and you begin to get some sense of the profound impact this institution has had in supporting and nurturing artists of color. A very brief list would include (from the early years to more recent times) Willie Birch and David Hammons, Terrie Adkins, Candida Alvarez, Maren Hassinger, Charles Burwell, Renee Green, Willie Cole, Alison Saar, Chakaia Booker, Nari Ward, Leonardo Drew, Kehinde Wiley, Julie Mehretu, Mickalene Thomas, Titus Kaphar, Demetrius Oliver, Wardell Milan, Wangechi Mutu, and numerous others. The museum has long understood the value of public relations, and the AIR exhibitions are usually reviewed (favorably) in the New York Times. The success that these SMH/AIR artists achieved can be traced directly to their nurturing and exposure at SMH, and of course their own talent.
• The museum moved to increasingly professionalize its operations under the direction of Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell (from 1977-1987) and began an extensive publishing program that continues to this day, with publications documentation its various exhibitions. These publication often created scholarship and documentation which previously had not existed for a number of African American artists, historical and contemporary. Barkley Hendricks, whose work I first saw at SMH in a early one person show there in the mid-1970s, is now experiencing a "revival," meaning the larger world is finally catching up to him belatedly, will have a traveling survey exhibition, "Birth of the Cool," at SMH next year, completing a circle some thirty-three years in the making. The show originated at Duke's Nasher Museum under the guidance of the Nasher's Trevor Schoonmaker, with catalogue contributions from black art historians/curators Rick Powell (Duke U's Dr. Richard J. Powell to you), Thelma Golden, and the Menil Collection's Franklin Sirmans.
• In the early 1980s the museum created an annual program, "The Fine Art of Collecting," with the expressed purpose of developing connoisseurship and a collecting base for the works of black artists. Beginning collectors were introduced over several weeks to the wide range of historical and contemporary African American art with which they could begin or augment their collections. This program--which continues still--has created a whole group of collectors who continue to be patrons and collecters of black artist's works.
• Through a succession of directors (Ed Spriggs, Courtney Callendar, Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell, Kinshasha Holman Conwill, Lowery Stokes Sims, and now Thelma Golden) the museum has also created and nurtured generations of black curators and museum educators as well. I can think of precious few African American curators over the age of thirty who did not initially or previously hone their craft at SMH. They continue to populate the wider field, bringing black artists with them.
• Over the years the museum has continued to build audiences for non-visual forms of black expression as well, with musical performances and poetry readings among them. I distinctly recall hearing the saxophoinst David Murray for the first time at SMH when he arrived in NY from California in the mid-1970s. Earlier still I had my first powerful experience hearing the poet Audre Lourde read her work at the museum, along with June Jordan and numerous others. Vocalist (and actress) Novella Nelson (with Leopoldo Fleming on percussion) held forth there as well in the early days. A full roster of these programs, and many more,continues.
• And yes, they've got a great Museum Store, where you can purchase numerous books, monographs, and catalogues on the works of African disaporal artists, including many of the Studio Museum's own fine roster of publications, early and recent. They also have decorative and wearable items as well, many made by independent black designers and artisans, from Harlem and elsewhere, thereby creating a market for their work as well.
Certainly there is much to be learned from the example of the Studio Museum in Harlem. That there isn't a single other African American museum in this country that has been able to successfully use it--and its various component pieces--as a model for creating, building, and sustaining similarly powerful and enduring institutions throughout the country should really give pause to those black artists living outside of New York. William T. Williams' initiative should show that--then and now--it's not about waiting for "somebody else" to do it.
Photograph: Laura Hooper
21 comments:
Can Columbia College do the same as the Studio Museum in Harlem here in Chicago? The local black institutions are too in lovs with tie local one hundred black artist. The Art Institute and MCA could do it but won't. It not that you don't have curators here Kate Ezra,Hamza,Meisha,Pinder,Darby,you have a lot of people just teaching.
Dawoud's post raises an interesting set of issues. But rather than ask whether we can replicate the success of the Studio Museum in other cities, it might be better to ask what format would most benefit artists and audiences today, in 2008. Should it be another culturally-specific institution with a fixed-space? Or are there other models -- perhaps non culturally-specific, perhaps based more on a kunsthalle or biennale model than on a collecting-institution model?
I certainly don't have the answers, but I suspect that it would require us to be as innovative and contemporary-minded in 2008 as Williams was in 1967 when the idea of a museum dedicated to black artists, with an active AIR program, and a location in a historically black neighborhood was a profoundly insightful and successful model. We owe it to ourselves to be as imaginative and forward-thinking as Williams was for his era, but we also ought to recognize the differences between 1967 and 2008.
As a quick follow-up, I want to clarify that by arguing for differences between 1967 and 2008 I do not mean to imply that we have somehow moved beyond race as a potent social and political issue. But I do think that the ways in which we address race deserves a different set of methodologies than those we employed in the 1960s and 70s, if only because the lived experience of race in the 21st century is different than back then. Different, but certainly still significant and deserving of national conversation and political action.
Seems like we just have to go do it! We have focused-on-black-art institutions that we can appeal to. They just have to be utilized differently. Coincidentally I am working on a post for my blog asking the question "what would happen if a local museum turned its spaces over to us?" I left it for a bit to make a tribute page to Murry DePillars, an AfriCobra member who helped put Chicago on the art map.
http://monroeanderson.typepad.com/
joyce_owens_on_art/
Scholarship comes out of the art. The artists stage the shows, then the curators, historians and critics can do their analyzes after the fact.
By the way, had Rev. Wright and Father Pfleger's sermons been on the linguistic level that we experienced at the two past panel discussions, most people would not have complained because they may not have understood much!
I agree, Greg, that a newly formed contemporary 21st century institution might look different from SMH. Still, aside from its race specificity, there are various institutional components that can be utilized...whole or in part. SMH has also been very adept at variously reinventing itself in the contemporary moment. One of its curators for example--Christine Kim--is Asian, which wouldn't have happened in the museum's earlier incarnation. Their reach has also become more global, though still largely black diasporic.
In my next post I'll talk about a few other institutions--artists run and founded--that are making a difference and have managed to survive for the long haul.
Now were talking! However, I see racial confusion down the road. There is White confusion and Black confusion. I will do what I can to prevent that confusion.
First Columbia College has already taken over large areas of the African American Arts. Dance Africa, Columbia’s African American playwriting award, Columbia’s community art and policy programs and Columbia's Center for Black Music. All of these programs were originally control by the African American Art Alliance but that organization never had the money or the power to push programming like Columbia college has. So, the idea of Columbia forming another Africana institution would not be off track. These programs attract students and funding for the school!
Secondly, black are confused about the relationship Africana art should have to the Art Museums, A wall or room of black art wouldn't by itself do much to further black interest. Museum are organized by styles and periods. Putting Motley and Kerry James Marshall in the same room doesn't make alot of sense. The artists selected by Art Museum must fit into a national network of like institutions. Art Museums (the MCA’s 12 by 12 not withstanding) has no room or interest in local artist or community artist. The Studio Museum of Harlem started out with community art goals but has morphed into America's most important Africana Art Museum tied into an international network of Art Museums, galleries , and university education programs. When I went to Artropolis a Studio Museum of Harlem representative, say the Museum was not looking at any new work till 2010!
When Columbia and Dawoud Bey create the international museum of Africana photography and art. The question would be: How would the exhibition, education, and research programming fit or expand the national standards of the industry. Also, how could such an institution create jobs for new MFA students, historians, and curators? In fact such an entity were work to break up a black hegemony by encouraging institutions to place Africana artist into their appropriate stylistic settings. Who knows even Paul Rogers might come back to town!
White confusion; the limits of Multiculturalism
Many colleges and art schools seems to feel that race specific programming, clubs, or even Alumni associations are an anachronism and should be discouraged.
The problem with this PostBlack idea is it fails to recognize the isomorphs between Racism and postmodernist liberty. The talented artists in Post Black movement seem to be of the opinion that if an artist can juxtaposition the signifiers of race in an unconventional configuration I am doing great things.In the laboratory of the exhibition hall is one thing. However, this is the same technique that Society uses to design difference and Society does racial design better. In books like How the Irish became White, Pinder's Racing-Art History and Jacob's To Serve the Devil. The porous borders of who and who isn't black vary with the interest of the state.. Jacob’s two volume set To Serve the Devil chronicles the history of America's dealing with all the groups of color. In the book segregation, degrees of citizenships, even racial intermarriage, are used as tools to rob, exploit, and steal the freedom, property, and identity of those called dark. Until the markee has the same power of the marker than the culturally specific entity has its place.
Oh, and Greg F. we already have a Kunsthalle it is called the Southside Community Art Center.
"Scholarship comes out of the art. The artists stage the shows, then the curators, historians and critics can do their analyzes after the fact." No that's backward if your goal is mainstream acceptance. The curators and historian pick the artist and bring them into national focus.
Nationally,there are too many art social clubs in the black community.
There is nothing specfic about blackness the borders of blackness are being fought all the time. Racial design is the work of the hegonomy. Read my other posts.
DanceAfrica Chicago was dropped by Columbia College after the 15th event, because it was a money drainer. (I was selected the signature artist, others were Kerry James Marshall and Dayo Laoye). I understand the DuSable Museum picked it up.
There is not one path to follow, even with art.
Artists produce the art, maybe find themselves working within a similar style that could become a movement, after identifying the marks and similar goals they share.
They create the collectives such as Polvo, Hairy Who, AfriCobra, Spiral, the Impressionists, and others, and the critics and scholars evaluate those artists within the group, and some of the individual artists and place them in historical context.
Of course curators, historians and influential critics put artists together in exhibitions, etc. but the art exists first somewhere!
Thinking out of the box means putting ideas, art works or concepts together in unusual ways. That's why Fred Wilson shook folks up. He did not do the usual.
The usual is not our answer.
Nathaniel, I am curious about how much the African American support group at the Art Institute raised with that Jeff Wall based event, and how the money is then spent. Do they acquire works by black artists, support education and outreach programming or what?
We do have a few black patrons--Marty Nesbitt, Les Coney, Jim Reynolds, and Eric McKissack come immediately to mind--who could hypothetically be part of an economic brain trust behind a newly formed institution. I'm not sure about your vision of Columbia College becoming the home for this, though.
A serious exploratory roundtable discussion might be worthwhile, and that is something I am sure Columbia could host.
What I had in mind for Columbia has nothing to do with holding a collection. I was thinking developing touring shows for lease to the appropriate institutions. Each show would have a catalog and a research project associated with it. This idea is very simple. I don't know about the Jeff Wall project. Those Texans ,except for Sirmans, don't talk to me. My friends are in Detriot,Alantla,and out East.
"There is not one path to follow, even with art.” Joyce Owens
Again I point to Kerry's interview on that Other Pod cast. According to him, there is not one path. There are at least four. Each path has it is own rules and methods. I do not talk too much about the Black Ethnic and Decor markets. Most African American artists that have been around a while know how to work those markets. My only grip is when people fool with the textbook and Art museum people and think the same methods that feed them in the Black Ethnic Markets are going to work in the academy. Those methods will not work and never will. Because if the literary gatekeepers of academy Most of the art movements were named and in some cases like the Postimpressionist were named and promoted by critics. Robert Fry not only coined the phrase Postimpressionist he organized the movement at least in England Look in the academy there is one rule. If the literary mediators do not make their money they will not let you make any money. Unless you get real lucky like Karla Walker or Jeff Koons and find a millionaire that likes you.
Fred Wilson, Kerry James Marshall, and all the black/ Asian / Latino /Gay others that emerged in the eighties and nineties owe their access to the art world to one executive of the College Art Association that decided that Multiculturalism should be the national standard for the Art World. I was introduced to this power broker because someone liked my Marshall essay. Now they are new powers in charge from other organizations that are hostile to the CAA multicultural agenda. However, there are still many ways a black artist can prosper within the System if you know how to play. But what ever market you choose to work in learn the Rules of the Game.
Concerning Dance Africa the weight and presence of Columbia College did make the Academic Atmosphere less hostile to scholars of Africana dance. More people attended Dance Africa than any other dance event in the United States outside of the Major ballet companies. That means more people attended Dance African than all I said All of the Modern and Postmodern dance companies in the United States. Yet, the dance magazines, dance critics, and governmental funders ignored this fact because African American Dance is not recognized by the canon. I was a board member of the African American Arts Alliance that had a dance month. Many of the Alliance member companies appeared in Dance Africa. One the promoters of Dance Africa was the late Sid Ordower of Jubilee Showcase. His show promoted my mother's music. So, I know of what I speak.
An Alliance member came to us crying. She had applied to the National Endowment of the Arts for a grant in Modern Art the endowment told her that her dance style was not Modern Dance and that she should apply for a folk art grant. The Folk art administrators told her that since there was not a multigenerational line of cultural or familiar transmission of her tradition she could not apply for a folk Art grant. Some blacks have received Folk Art funds for quilting and blues playing. However, black dance is regarded as vernacular culture not worth the academies time. After the Alliance raised hell for a couple of years, the Endowment invented something call Expansion Arts. Or rather, dodge the racism in the canon grants. Designed for vagabond esthetics No matter how many pretty awards universities and museums gave Ms.Dunham.
Are You Registered?
Join us for the Association of African American Museums 2008 conference,
August 27 – 30 right here in Chicago !
For more information visit www.blackmuseums.org.
DuSable Museum is proud to be the 2008 institutional host.
Thank you for the heads up about the upcoming African American Museum conference Mr. McLin. www.blackmuseums.org doesn't seem to link to anything however. I will look it up and see if I can find the information.
I DID find it. Here is the conference link for anyone who is interested: http://www.blackmuseums.org/prodev/conference.htm
I see that the poet, author, and founder of Third World Press Haki Madhubuti is delivering the keynote address at the African American Museum conference. Like I said, I'm still getting used to being in Chicago.
Man, I wish I could go to that conference. I think the DuSable Museum is an under-appreciated jewel in Chicago (especially since I am a fan of Eldzier Corter). This is a great post Daywoud, great discussion.
What would be a way to “package” a Studio Museum-like place as a “new presence,” to get the attention it would deserve (from a decidedly NON “post-White” artworld)? My description is not clear here, but I think you know my meaning.
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