tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18041331956731484972024-03-02T09:28:52.235-08:00WHAT'S GOING ON? - DAWOUD BEY'S BLOGDawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.comBlogger51125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-76842993185969645712012-11-21T04:35:00.000-08:002013-05-28T22:51:23.864-07:00<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #6aa84f; font-size: large;">Birmingham on My Mind</span><br />
<span style="color: #6aa84f; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9ih7Fb-AZ6DaSDUbKqwTOHsFfKgpNr6IrlAHvpIswktEqLx4AzsVv83Laeg7ClwT-whDqm4X0AA5q2QhzdU63dq0TieGbMuICCEconmhf2HfHCCBtw-Em9vgDgZrh-VwwmlYq0AN5ZAqL/s1600/movement.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9ih7Fb-AZ6DaSDUbKqwTOHsFfKgpNr6IrlAHvpIswktEqLx4AzsVv83Laeg7ClwT-whDqm4X0AA5q2QhzdU63dq0TieGbMuICCEconmhf2HfHCCBtw-Em9vgDgZrh-VwwmlYq0AN5ZAqL/s320/movement.jpg" width="253" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"></span>
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"></span>
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"><b><br /></b></span><br />
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="color: #6aa84f;"><b>September 15, 1963 - Fifty Years Later</b></span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifxffTfBRXeYF3-Mn0sCnimrSBeLHtG8rc2JAeYGQiZ_1yS7_rbU64kfoVT4JYDnXo4b03RexLoyrzzwk3vn_mlKY5ly7gFJnmlBBML7BhCXM6O1glV8JpnqcL1KAU3wkbGN_4DBwrLabf/s1600/baldwin6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifxffTfBRXeYF3-Mn0sCnimrSBeLHtG8rc2JAeYGQiZ_1yS7_rbU64kfoVT4JYDnXo4b03RexLoyrzzwk3vn_mlKY5ly7gFJnmlBBML7BhCXM6O1glV8JpnqcL1KAU3wkbGN_4DBwrLabf/s200/baldwin6.jpg" width="135" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>James Baldwin</b> <br />
New Orleans, 1963 </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
One night, many years ago, a book appeared in my suburban Jamaica, NY home. My parents had attended a lecture that James Baldwin had given at our church, Calvary Baptist Church, and had returned with the book in hand. While the church never struck me as a particularly activist one, our minister, Rev. Walter S. Pinn, had let it be known on more than one occasion that he had marched besides Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There was a small black and white photograph hanging in the church vestibule that proudly and permanently testified to that fact. Most likely my folks purchased the book after Baldwin's talk as part of SNCC's fundraising efforts. As was his wont, my dad didn't talk much about that evening when they came home--I only remember him saying he did not entirely agree with Baldwin, whom he said struck him as being too strident and "arrogant"--but he did make it a point to leave the book sitting out where I could "find" it. Entitled <i>The Movement: Documentary of A Struggle for Equality</i>, it was a collection of photographs depicting the Civil Rights Movement at a moment when the movement was indeed still a vivid and very present reality. Containing photographs by a number of photographers, including Danny Lyons, Charles Moore, and others, its text had been authored by the African American playwright and writer Lorraine Hansberry. The book was published by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SNCC), and contained Hansberry's short but evocative texts alongside the photographs. The photographs themselves ranged from scenes of demonstrations, sit-ins, along with photographs of everyday black life in America at that moment..which is to say that some of the pictures were quite gruesome.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWMWmE0w2CSo1qJoc4UptzlEhsHFMBVHD06dJk0HFu9eVBUioDqhv9JxcPhPZJqUYgzi-8tKoRb0W3uFYKRwVHzKa_Rcil6oUNlgIB3Ky3iB9W3ekZIZ01W2KyJoHno6atnK7MiwCNaP5C/s1600/baptist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWMWmE0w2CSo1qJoc4UptzlEhsHFMBVHD06dJk0HFu9eVBUioDqhv9JxcPhPZJqUYgzi-8tKoRb0W3uFYKRwVHzKa_Rcil6oUNlgIB3Ky3iB9W3ekZIZ01W2KyJoHno6atnK7MiwCNaP5C/s200/baptist.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>16th Street Baptist Church on the</b><br />
<b>morning of the bombing</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Along with photographs of menacing white racists taunting civil rights marchers there were other pictures that more starkly visualized the often horrific results of the ongoing attempts of America's black citizens to lift themselves out of a state of enforced apartheid, as well as the violence that befell them and their non-black sympathizers who dared to resist. The pictures came at me in a rush. While I had indeed begun to experience the sting of racism as a black student bussed into previously white schools as part of the first wave of Northern school integration, I had never experienced anything like the raw, naked racist violence that these pictures described. Fire hoses, dog, and tear gas set loose on black citizens, those same citizens publicly stalked and beaten with baseball bats, and set upon by white mobs for daring to sit at a lunch counter or ride a Greyhound bus. Pictures made at lynchings, in which the white participants posed as if at a family picnic while a black body swung from a tree, or smoldered in the embers after being burnt to death.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_x3Rs9Nmcp-ydkDD6n_Zh3EDFdibxE7-RE_496Ft7ILq1zesscCEAhZ1P9nffWPnOOtNZ0bmLH7NwWpS3Qc66z5g_r9zV-WgUZBrJ35AcyTGZejNbGcMcDEWWGA7FbvJbDu_b5-9mLDHE/s1600/IMG_3300.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_x3Rs9Nmcp-ydkDD6n_Zh3EDFdibxE7-RE_496Ft7ILq1zesscCEAhZ1P9nffWPnOOtNZ0bmLH7NwWpS3Qc66z5g_r9zV-WgUZBrJ35AcyTGZejNbGcMcDEWWGA7FbvJbDu_b5-9mLDHE/s320/IMG_3300.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Sarah Collins in the hospital</b><br />
<b>after the bombing</b><br />
Photograph by Frank Dandridge</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
By the time <i>The Movement</i> had appeared in print, blacks in the south had been living through an orgy of violence directed against them for two centuries. Blacks in Birmingham, AL had their homes so frequently dynamited by racists who resented their presence and home ownership, that the city had become known as Bombingham. On September 15, 1963 this dynamiting of black lives reached a crescendo with the bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church. The week before, Alabama governor George Wallace had stated that in order to stop integration Alabama needed, "a few first-class funerals." Four young girls were killed that Sunday morning. A bomb having been placed there earlier by Robert "Bomber Bob" Chambliss, Bobby Frank Cherry, Herman Frank Cash, and Thomas Blanton--Ku Klux Klan members all--exploded at 10:22 AM, taking the lives of Addie Mae Collins (14), Denise McNair (11), Carole Robertson (14), and Cynthia Wesley (14) who were attending Sunday school and preparing for church service. The bomb exploded with such force that one of the girls was immediately beheaded. Twelve year old Sarah Collins <i>[now Sarah Collins Rudolph]</i>, sister of Addie Mae, was blinded when flying glass pierced her eyes. She later lost one eye. It was a picture of a young Sarah Collins, lying in a hospital bed, her eyes covered with huge patches of cotton gauze, that was among the images in <i>The Movement</i> that grabbed my attention and permanently seared itself into my brain.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRBUjTyj3zBhYlP5CtzjsqcpFUKuyMcrSdU67-y-TJbGu8jnVG5H9t0S6jiwow-iFtGaJNYiTjk1Kc1zzu0a2K8OlkJjBaRNHZlBTI8PLx-z2XZCMFhwSgTW0rH_QtcszvfZQpKrM416dD/s1600/11145811-standard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRBUjTyj3zBhYlP5CtzjsqcpFUKuyMcrSdU67-y-TJbGu8jnVG5H9t0S6jiwow-iFtGaJNYiTjk1Kc1zzu0a2K8OlkJjBaRNHZlBTI8PLx-z2XZCMFhwSgTW0rH_QtcszvfZQpKrM416dD/s200/11145811-standard.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Odessa Woolfolk</b><br />
Courtesy The Birmingham News</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="text-align: left;">I was eleven years old when I saw that image of the immobilized little black girl laid out, helplessly scarred and traumatized, and that image has stayed with me all of these years. I realize now that I was at the time the same age as the youngest girl killed in that attack, Denise McNair. Deciding some seven years ago that I wanted to somehow work with this experience, to use it somehow, to confront it by putting myself in Birmingham, I contacted the curator at the Birmingham Museum of Art to see if I might shape a project, working with them on what would become a residency project that would honor the memory of those killed that day while also engaging the contemporary Birmingham community. During that initial visit I was able to attend a service at 16th Street Baptist Church and to have lunch with Odessa Woolfolk, the President and a founding board member of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which had opened in 1992. I had lunch with Ms. Woolfolk, who began to give me a deeper sense of the history as well as the various ways in which that history was still playing out in the Birmingham community. When I told her that I would be visiting the 16th Street Baptist Church that Sunday morning, she asked me with a knowing look, "Let me know what happens." I am pretty sure she knew what would happen, but she likely thought it best that I have the experience myself.</span><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAhXoTnmICxD03Ur5A_sWW_WWaVeDm3wqZ47zwhJR1LZCov3xi29jPE8mwTMo39Alj-bOydQjwkclnOI2Bbee0LxkXqzcThgolS0qMp07eRyQ7JGqmioXTIPql-qHNe_dW8bnkim9BzIbS/s1600/16th-street-martyrs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAhXoTnmICxD03Ur5A_sWW_WWaVeDm3wqZ47zwhJR1LZCov3xi29jPE8mwTMo39Alj-bOydQjwkclnOI2Bbee0LxkXqzcThgolS0qMp07eRyQ7JGqmioXTIPql-qHNe_dW8bnkim9BzIbS/s400/16th-street-martyrs.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From top left (clockwise)<br />
<b>Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, Denise McNair,<br />and Addie Mae Collins</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3aaUDSv7YoEfW2jhUDCLXp1G5AcVaA0RQg5PGdTwXyxmDc8JaBeuF-a4L11LFjXt7bjZVV416DVYpL6b7VrZC55GESqyohwjkl9WUEIjLd1Xf2u4tqaPOi55GQozmsCvOh3yYWNYVFLpc/s1600/16th-street-baptist-church.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3aaUDSv7YoEfW2jhUDCLXp1G5AcVaA0RQg5PGdTwXyxmDc8JaBeuF-a4L11LFjXt7bjZVV416DVYpL6b7VrZC55GESqyohwjkl9WUEIjLd1Xf2u4tqaPOi55GQozmsCvOh3yYWNYVFLpc/s320/16th-street-baptist-church.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>16th Street Baptist Church</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
My initial visit to 16th Street Baptist Church that Sunday morning began to give me a sense of the complexity of the situation I was actually entering into. I had approached Birmingham full of the known history. But history as it is lived is usually messier and certainly more nuanced than the mythic history afforded by historical hindsight. Mythos and reality may be, in some ways, related but they are generally never quite the same. This first occurred to me when, entering the church to attend the service, I noticed unsettlingly that they church was filled to only perhaps a quarter of its capacity...at best. I had expected a full and rousing congregation, but was met instead by an almost empty building that was in a sad and obvious state of disrepair. Greeting the minister and several of the deacons after service, I introduced myself and briefly described the work I hoped to do. As soon as I mentioned September 15, 1963 the minister stopped me in mid-sentence. His words echo in memory still. "Stop right there," he admonished me. "Here at 16th Street we're not about all of that business; we're about the business of Jesus Christ. If you're interested in that, we'd love to help you." Stunned though I was, I did my best to keep a straight and polite face. Who was I, after all, to tell them what their "business" should or should not be. Of course "all of that business" was basically <i>all </i> that I knew of 16th Street. Recalling her knowing look, I realized then that this response would not have surprised Odessa Woolfolk at all. I realized then that I had much to learn indeed about the place where I hoped to make my work. I left Birmingham after that first visit more perplexed than when I came. <i style="text-align: left;">[Note: 16th Street Baptist Church was designated a National Historic Landmark by the Department of the Interior in 2006, after my initial visit, and has since undergone a $3 million restoration of the building, reversing years of neglect, including water damage, and damage to the facade masonry.]</i><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfS_KHc1tgcHVZTBGktUaybrjYbin7kpsvAdFZluLd-HvVW2hiasv8H2Y5y-UU-m0MJAcpfbJ8L_o9Xc1TQONMDaqfBUdvO23debBnuSRkEyz9hb_hs2RmyYoxeDyXGh3J4-91U3wgF3hI/s1600/40993.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfS_KHc1tgcHVZTBGktUaybrjYbin7kpsvAdFZluLd-HvVW2hiasv8H2Y5y-UU-m0MJAcpfbJ8L_o9Xc1TQONMDaqfBUdvO23debBnuSRkEyz9hb_hs2RmyYoxeDyXGh3J4-91U3wgF3hI/s200/40993.jpg" width="131" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Taylor Branch</b><br />
<i>Parting The Waters</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Some time after that initial visit to Birmingham, I began working on a brief residency project in Baltimore with the Walters Museum. An invitation to dinner from one of the senior museum staff took a wonderful and surprising turn one evening when I found out that the friends who would be joining us, Christy and Taylor, were none other than Christina Macy and her husband the renowned writer and chronicler of the civil rights movement Taylor Branch, whose epic chronicle of the civil rights era had garnered him a Pulitzer Prize. Taylor (who was born in Atlanta, GA) and I had much to talk about, as I knew he had spent considerable time in Alabama, and Birmingham in particular over many years, researching what is now a trilogy of important books. When I told him I had ventured to 16th Street Baptist Church one morning, he raised his eyebrows and asked me knowingly just what had happened. He was not at all surprised, and indeed had I given his book another read before venturing to Birmingham, I might have been better prepared, as he writes at length about the complicated relationship of 16th Street to the history of the Movement. Though the church was the site of many of the mass meetings that Dr. King, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and other movement leaders called to organize their various marches and actions, the congregation of 16th Street Baptist Church was notably absent from those meetings. Those attending the mass meeting came largely from Bethel Baptist Church, 6th Avenue Baptist Church, and the smaller black churches throughout Birmingham. </div>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZCw47oG8dgtmCVITXlS_xND4TkJu7buQ2s33bj-emQudSGYVJdqxf9dqPirFim_F8VcGIxa_y-grAk9a5Tl3Fb7HTAseiwtlM0w6ZecgQ3CY5s4z_ZJ4KMfQRoO9Nv2nKlzRCYI4JPNH8/s1600/m-2250.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZCw47oG8dgtmCVITXlS_xND4TkJu7buQ2s33bj-emQudSGYVJdqxf9dqPirFim_F8VcGIxa_y-grAk9a5Tl3Fb7HTAseiwtlM0w6ZecgQ3CY5s4z_ZJ4KMfQRoO9Nv2nKlzRCYI4JPNH8/s200/m-2250.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.<br /> </b>Birmingham, AL 1963</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
When King visited 16th Street Baptist Church on one occasion in 1963 to ask for volunteers to join in a planned demonstration, not a single adult stood to volunteer, much to King's frustration. Instead the young people began to stand. The adults, many of whom worked for whites, simply could not afford the risk of such action. Doing so would likely have resulted in their being fired, their homes foreclosed on or bombed, or worse. Thus many of the black adults took a publicly disengaged and accommodationist stance. So it was the youth of Birmingham who eventually brought the city to its knees. 16th Street Baptist was the staging ground and meeting point for what became known as The Children's March, with even teachers turning their backs as students staged mass class walkouts in order to feign ignorance--and thus avoid complicity--for what was taking place. The bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church took place four months after these successful demonstrations in an attempt to stop the progress that was then being made. Four months after the adults of 16th Street Baptist Church had specifically <i>not</i> participated in public social protest, their church was dynamited and four of their girls were killed.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwvOzzeEyxkBBp8AMbVq-VO9zfGt9KXWSAP8Tr4ltWE7Tr1N5YSiplHlA98OXc75eSTr9flINuOSLfkh5do7TpN_B4mmWD4qgzZZYEkLHv-xsSjEo0p4qk7xMy1kYeSWwu56NH0McjOoj8/s1600/Virgil+Ware.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="138" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwvOzzeEyxkBBp8AMbVq-VO9zfGt9KXWSAP8Tr4ltWE7Tr1N5YSiplHlA98OXc75eSTr9flINuOSLfkh5do7TpN_B4mmWD4qgzZZYEkLHv-xsSjEo0p4qk7xMy1kYeSWwu56NH0McjOoj8/s200/Virgil+Ware.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Virgil Ware</b> 13 years old</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
On subsequent visits to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute I learned that on that same September day two boys, 13 year old Virgil Ware and 16 year old Johnny Robinson has also been killed in acts of racist violence. Virgil Ware was killed while riding on the handlebar of his brother James' bike, shot by two white teenagers coming from a white citizen's rally. The Ware brothers were unaware of the church bombing that had taken place that morning, and crossed paths with two white teenagers coming from a white citizen's rally. Johnny Robinson was shot and killed by a police officer who claimed he had been throwing rocks at passing cars in the disturbances that began to happen in the aftermath of the bombing that day. I decided immediately that these two young African American boys would also be the memorialized focus of my project. I would make portraits of African American girls, ages 11 and 14, and photographs of African American boys ages 13 and 16. Additionally, as a way of suggesting the lives that were cut short and never allowed to unfold, I would make portraits of adult men and women who were the ages that these young people would have been had they been allowed to live out their lives. Thus the portraits would both document black Birmingham's present while memorializing those lost in its past. These photographs would form the centerpiece of my project.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn5q-KbufPLWozOy-crlPBZ2rJrg7SJIT1UyqF2LH5Levx_xZCdjOUfXTm2_-stMGoOppbCOdpUb7kn70BjPdzgRsXIsUWMskE0JEncyirtxG0Fs9NtAigR-DB0_wU8sKC9rvxDrPJ5vzQ/s1600/get-attachment.aspx+copy+2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn5q-KbufPLWozOy-crlPBZ2rJrg7SJIT1UyqF2LH5Levx_xZCdjOUfXTm2_-stMGoOppbCOdpUb7kn70BjPdzgRsXIsUWMskE0JEncyirtxG0Fs9NtAigR-DB0_wU8sKC9rvxDrPJ5vzQ/s320/get-attachment.aspx+copy+2.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Filming in Birmingham, AL</b><br />
Photograph by Truman Grayson</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I also wanted to continue the work I had begun in video with my earlier <i>Four Stories </i>(2003) that examined the lives of four diverse Detriot teenagers, and decided to create a two channel video piece that would be an evocative meditation on that September morning. I wanted the piece to unfold in extreme slow motion, and invoke the journey that each of the four girls took the church on that "bright blue fall morning" as I seen it described in my readings about that day. Wanting the production values to be as high as I could make them, I began interviewing video and film makers in Birmingham, and decided to work with Six Foot Five, a crew of young filmmakers and editors. After several weeks of pre-production location scouting, most of the principle photography for the video is done, with one more day of filming and audio recording to be scheduled before going to post production editing. The video takes place in four different social spaces, a barbershop, a beauty salon, a classroom, and a lunch counter. Each of these locations have a particular, and in some cases very loaded, place in the social history of the city, with the barber shop and beauty parlor being more intimate and closed social spaces and the classroom and the lunch counter being scenes of highly public social interaction and potential racial conflict and segregation. The other channel of the video describes the languorous and peaceful ride to the church as the car (and the girls) move slowly towards the horrific moment that we know is coming.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFY1mc90qcHSwIwHUKKmfRexNPy_2PXrJtE5jL3Hdl1Iwv7q5Qa7VRGEZsfNsf_Bc1wwO56y_sY9CDBOXKPtJG1uKMZj3W8y4J4LO6CAPMNuy1kZoIgthQNZY15t59uUwN2OU8BlZBIgHX/s1600/get-attachment.aspx+copy+3.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFY1mc90qcHSwIwHUKKmfRexNPy_2PXrJtE5jL3Hdl1Iwv7q5Qa7VRGEZsfNsf_Bc1wwO56y_sY9CDBOXKPtJG1uKMZj3W8y4J4LO6CAPMNuy1kZoIgthQNZY15t59uUwN2OU8BlZBIgHX/s320/get-attachment.aspx+copy+3.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Photographing in the Birmingham Museum of Art</b><br />
Photograph by Truman Grayson</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I've also began photographing, making portraits of the first group of subjects, women, girls, and boys of the appropriate ages. I've yet to photograph any men unfortunately, and will need to redouble outreach efforts to locate them and gain their participation. The project has been one of relationship building as much as it has been about making the actual photographs and video work. It's been a process of relationship building for me of course, since while one side of my family is from the south--West Point, Mississippi--I am distinctly an outsider to the Birmingham, AL community. It has provided as well an opportunity for the Birmingham Museum of Art to deepen and extend its relationship with its African American community through a project that is very much <i>about</i> that community and its collective history. As such, the project continues my interest in institutional culture and re-shaping the relationships that museums have and <i>can</i> have with their respective communities.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR8nVD0VpT-YWIBR0fhrgOHSmGoIFetVDL9L9KzPV8og2DGEZhPjnFvN4qsSP5gcgl6aoqIO-XUR75eYHThZKcIAv65-xMnmEMAzctVRm2FT3P_U3Z1MW-_wSoppFhLQBeJoPlBnnqPmKz/s1600/In_Bethel2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR8nVD0VpT-YWIBR0fhrgOHSmGoIFetVDL9L9KzPV8og2DGEZhPjnFvN4qsSP5gcgl6aoqIO-XUR75eYHThZKcIAv65-xMnmEMAzctVRm2FT3P_U3Z1MW-_wSoppFhLQBeJoPlBnnqPmKz/s320/In_Bethel2.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Photographing in original Bethel Baptist Church Sanctuary</b><br />
Photograph by Truman Grayson</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I have begun the photographic work by turning one of the museum galleries into my temporary studio, using the museum--as I have in the past--as a space for making work as well a space for later exhibiting that work. It also provides yet another way for the people I am photographing to consider just what a museum is and to claim a more active place within that institutional space. It has been heart rending when photographing the people who come to my museum studio to think about them in relationship to the six people whose lives inform this work. To think of someone striking such a young life down with impunity is a renewed horror each time a young person sits in front of my camera. To see the older women, having lived rich full lives, reminds me constantly of the tragically abbreviated lives of those six young people. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
I'm going back to Birmingham to continue work for another two weeks in December, and to continue working on the video <i>9.15.63. </i>I'll be photographing in Bethel Baptist Church as well<i>. </i>The exhibition will open September 2013, the 50th anniversary of the bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church. I'll be posting periodically--in this blog and on Facebook--and invite you to come south to Birmingham next year to the completed work. The Birmingham Museum of Art will commence a series of performances and programming as the 50th year begins. Participating artists will include Theaster Gates, Jefferson Pinder, and others. I'm hoping to curate a small selection of related films as well. Watch for it.<br />
<br /></div>
Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-45300176307872651032012-04-04T15:53:00.024-07:002013-05-16T18:59:07.966-07:00Louis Reyes Rivera and Elizabeth Catlett<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0rR5Cyjq-OLkfGfoteq_p280dsGQwGEaKNHAkOKVrHjWxRBiElsxZm4fafQN263UbIQwdDHuS6y4mfNJUtIIF8D8AQuRVYF7UspkeWpIa5RwMHo5h6VEZ8T62Y174-IjyheQgF0Ll7NGF/s1600/Catlett.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7KR_-elWiUQvkz8gzvBv5ymXYqJ7KvB50EX3TZOlH_sLFiAxpB0AH62e4JkDCdBzibMdL9scHqhXYuhTNnzs7Ji1lHWAGY_wqBIDchuOhXzRv_7SO4dpo6tFSPIgeD2i_XkPOJHDOdvpv/s1600/CatlettSharecropper.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5727685451864881042" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7KR_-elWiUQvkz8gzvBv5ymXYqJ7KvB50EX3TZOlH_sLFiAxpB0AH62e4JkDCdBzibMdL9scHqhXYuhTNnzs7Ji1lHWAGY_wqBIDchuOhXzRv_7SO4dpo6tFSPIgeD2i_XkPOJHDOdvpv/s320/CatlettSharecropper.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 320px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 302px;" /></a><br /></span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #006600; font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;">On The Passing of Two Giants</span></b></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;">This has been a difficult month, what with the loss of poet and activist Louis Reyes Rivera, and even more recently the esteemed artist Elizabeth Catlett. Both Rivera and Catlett were artists who were unabashedly forthright in their adherence to the cause of social justice, and equally as forthright in their adherence to practicing at the highest level of of their respective art forms. </span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5727902436906930274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0rR5Cyjq-OLkfGfoteq_p280dsGQwGEaKNHAkOKVrHjWxRBiElsxZm4fafQN263UbIQwdDHuS6y4mfNJUtIIF8D8AQuRVYF7UspkeWpIa5RwMHo5h6VEZ8T62Y174-IjyheQgF0Ll7NGF/s200/Catlett.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 200px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0px; width: 150px;" /><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;">Both believed that their deep belief in the experience of working people, people of color, and people maligned by the ruthless class, could be elevated, transformed, and made resonant through exquisite articulation, through the marshaling of a considerable history of literary and visual art practice, in order to move that practice forward with integrity through their own work. Their profound humanism and their willingness to use their respective works to speak for those often rendered voiceless, and the ongoing crafting of their own individual creative and expressive voice, marks them as artists and culture workers of the highest order. Catlett practiced professionally for over six decades, Rivera for more than three.</span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; color: #0000ee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5727689971122880018" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8SP4_EfpibYvfiQZ4bL0sqCdG0N9z8h1vE-O7Y8dqT0vFYLbWcnnUtHEG6-0uTsqL1J9vtM_etrp-yvuMtFM4X7FrMfiktQTg2jMABHLiFL2cHTmFXI49TpVQB9dZw28Jp4xTOMSC19UQ/s320/Louis+Rivera.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 320px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0px; width: 229px;" /></span></span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;">I met Louis Reyes Rivera sometime in the 1970s when I began spending time with a group of writers in New York, my born and raised home town. Writers, photographers, painters, sculptors, dancers, heretics and the faithful...we were all one community, and could be found at each other's openings, performances, and readings...wherever someone had managed to stake a claim to a space from which to publicly hold forth. Within that circle I both began to find my community and become the artist I eventually became. Attending various readings, it soon became apparent that Rivera was a writer of deep principle and conviction, as well as one marked by a deep and finely tuned love for well crafted language. I came to look forward to not only hearing him read, but in speaking with him, as he loved to turn an idea around and examine it with the full force of his critical imagination, and challenged you to do the same. Over the years he became my "go to" person, the one I could contact when a particular piece of cultural information failed to fall into place in my memory. Places, words, phrases, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;">texts,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;"> locations, and who populated those locations when were all firmly stored in his mind, keeping the cultural history intact for yet another generation. His recent loss leaves a profound gap, but his long standing practice as writer and committed citizen provides a valuable model indeed.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;">Amiri Baraka delivered the eulogy for Louis at the service held for him in Brooklyn, New York. Amiri was kind enough to send it to me, and I have reprinted here in full for those who could not be there to hear it, and for the reflection of those of you who were. May Catlett and Rivera both rest in peace, knowing that their inspiring works have made a profound difference and shaped history in the best possible way.</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #006600; font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><b>Eulogy for Louis Reyes Rivera - Amiri Baraka</b></span></div>
<div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;">1<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><i>"People are always talking about The Creator, meaning some great abstraction beyond ourselves for whom and to whom we give deference to if we don't want to cop to God. When we were in the <span class="Apple-style-span">organization we use to call our weapons "Gods" so you can understand the relativity of the term. But for all our talk about the Creator, we rarely use that term for those moving among us whom we could concretely use that word to describe. And whose creations are knowable, tangible, though wonderful even if we could stand in a bar and have a beer with them. It is as if our familiarity with humanity downgrades its profundity. Like the only truly heavy stuff is what we don't understand. Like the economy, what's truly valuable is what we don't have.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><i>I'm saying this to wake us up to the value of our own earthly lives, and the great creators that </i><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>have walked, do walk, among us. But also to help us appreciate the grand livingness of what some of us give to each other. Though the contradiction to this is that then we will understand how much we lose when one of those long time creators disappears. Sometimes we don't even know who they are. What a tragedy, like the fog of ignorance which disconnects our heads from our hearts so that we can wander through the world and not even understand what's going on. Though Louis kept telling us, </i>Who Pays the Cost<i> (1978), </i>This One For You<i> (1983), </i>Scattered Scripture<i> (1996) or that great anthology </i>Bum Rush The Page<i> (2001).</i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><i>And we are always surrounded by Death. Now Death. Past Death. Death to Come. However we <span class="Apple-style-span">have to face it, it marks us one way or another. It is always much closer than we think and even what we think we see can suddenly disappear. Though there is always light if we know where to look. Our friend, brother, here brought it to us direct and its brightness must help light the rest of our lives. But the news of Louis' passing was freezing and horrible. I read the words and emotionally couldn't understand them. It didn't make sense. It was absurd or confused or a lie or whatever is not true or real. But it was both. But how could it be? Amina and I had just seen Louis and Barbara and hung out all day and ate Cuban food and exchanged observations, experiences, facts, beliefs, maps of consciousness We stood in front of the house and waved, "Take it Easy...See ya later ...Don't Take No Wooden Negroes."</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><i>If you know where the light is and it goes out it frightens and pours ice through you. Like somehow you got put out in the cold and the darkness. There is no one I fear losing like the poets. Not just because we do that, but it means there is one less trusted mind and soul in the world. It is a loneliness that jumps us remembering the someone like Louis Reyes Rivera whom we knew to speak the truth. In a world full of lies and surrounded by death and darkness, someone who would bring that wondrous light and truth to us, that we could count on to do that. That we might hear one sentence that would, say, put the Republican maniacs in check or even give righteous criticism to some leader who still don't know how to act. Or simply remark on a truth we needed but had momentarily forgotten, or simply make us hum that hip tune again like we sposed to.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><i>He said in his wonderful essay Inside the River of Poetry "Always there is need for song ...and <span class="Apple-style-span">every human has a poem to write ..." This last thing comes to mind because Louis was a live poet. And unlike we old heads Louis had mastered the art of memorization, which the generations after mine, have accomplished. So he was a spoken word speaker in the sense of textless recitation, although occasionally he would read. Louis also dug the enhancement that music gave to the word. Because poetry is the musicked word at base and the skilled recitation accompanied by or integrating the spoken word with music serves to emphasize both. His great poem “The Bullet Cry or A Place I Never Been” creates the living dimension of Malcolm's murder, beginning with the tumultuous and relentless question, Was You There? That work must be dug by any who claim information about real life.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;">2</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><i>We have heard Louis read excerpts from his Jazz In Jail, his masterful word music symphony that <span class="Apple-style-span">speaks in multiple layers of metaphor about the music which is our literal as well as our figurative selves, and we must collectively and unceasingly signify and put the whisper to work until that work appears. These grand creators must not be treated like comets to blaze across our consciousness helping us more clearly dig the world, and then disappear. Especially recently we have been losing grand master poets like Louis, Sekou, Pedro, Mikey, Piri, Lorenzo Thomas, Gil Scott.. ..What have we been doing wrong to deserve such spiritual wasting? It's like your head and heart are shrinking.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><i>Louis' death seemed so unreal to me, because I always thought of him (and he was) younger than me. Even though he had the Imam's long grey beard and the staff to go with it, the peripatetic prophet. We got together in the late 70's around the time of his first book, Who Pays The Cost. With a lot of people who will add a deeper cast to any eulogy or obituary, some long gone like his man Zizwe Ngafua, or the cruelly underknown Safiya Henderson, or the writers like Arthur Flowers and his De Mojo Blues, together with people like my wife, Amina Baraka, poets, Tom Mitchelson, Brenda Connor Bey, Layding Kaliba, Rashidah Ismaili, Gary Johnston and his Blind Beggars Press, Wanjiku Reynolds, Malkia Mbuzi, Mervyn Taylor, Akua Lezli Hope, loud ass Baron Ashanti. </i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><i>And in the spirit of John Oliver Killens, Barbara's father, Louis' father in Law, and the Harlem Writer's Guild which reflected his long historied nurturing of Black writers, we together with some others, put together for a brief storied moment a Black Writers' Union that met in Brooklyn and seemed similar, one of these writers commented recently, to the National Writers Union which it preceded. That's the way that do, was my answer. Even so, Louis <span class="Apple-style-span">was chair of the New York chapter of Local 1981 of the National Writers Union since 2004 and active in it from its inception. And he functioned like a real union rep. It was not just a title. If you wanted to know something about the formal attempt to make these Publishing Corpses respect writers' rights, Louis wd publish his work in the union regularly. In this effort were we all, certainly Louis and I and the rest of us brought closer.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><i>I remember Louis talking about his effort helping John Killens to put together his grand study of Pushkin, Great Black Russian. Lest we forget that until Pushkin made Russian a language that carried literature, the Russians wrote in French. Louis was one of the people most associated with self-publishing. Too many young people loiter unknown in the literary world because they think there is something negative about self-publishing. Thus this attitude keeps us subservient to the corpses. With Shamal press Louis championed the small press and self -publishing efforts that young poets should welcome.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;">3</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><i>Louis was always at heart the activist and this is why I always felt close to him. That the word was to spread the truth and the expression of that word was an act of liberation. It was the spirit of the Black Arts Movement, a more activist oriented reflection of the Harlem Renaissance, which gave us Negritude in Africa and the West Indies, Indigisme in Haiti and Negrissmo in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Spanish speaking territories of the Americas. That we would create an art that was as rooted in our real cultural and historical experience. That we would create an art that would come out of the elitist dens of ambiguity and poet for and with the people. That we would create an art that would help liberate those people! Dig his two anthologies Bum Rush The Page & The Bandana Republic. And you could hear Louis working at it whether in his twice a month workshops, his program on WBAI (until it was cut off by the white knights), his regular gigs and workshops at Sistah's Place or his various academic gigs at Pratt Institute and SUNY Stony Brook. One of the most important of Louis' formal or informal teaching gigs was his insistence on teaching, recognizing and living the Afro- Latin Hinge that characterizes the whole of the Western world. His rocked hat, swinging cane, his various dashikis above which lowered a long constantly stroked beard <span class="Apple-style-span">animated by a determined march to where ever, arriving with "What's Happening" and leaving with "Later," the characteristic Rivera Profile.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><i><o:p> </o:p>Louis gave us the warmth of his feeling, always. We loved him because we knew that whatever<span class="Apple-style-span">he looked like to you, he was a soldiers. That's why we miss him so much. And it is the essence of his soldiering that must be passed on. That's what we must urge on artists and scholars, not only cultural workers, but we need our most advanced folks fighting for equal rights and self-determination. To create art, and scholarship that is historically and culturally authentic, that is public and for the people, that is revolutionary. This is the paradigm that Louis Reyes Rivera's life and work presented. Unity with our people and struggle against our enemies. Anyone who really knew Louis would tell you that. They would know that he was a soldier. And we all should know that here, at this precipice looking down into the jaws of corporate dictatorship the new American Fascism.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><i>That we need all the revolutionary cultural workers, all the soldiers we can enlist and develop. Louis Reyes Rivera was that to the bone, to the head of his swinging stick and screaming dashiki. This One For You he said, he meant us, all of us, all the time. Like Sekou Toure said, "Victory To Those Who Struggle." Louis believed that. He told me so. Unidad & Lucha Companero. Hasta la Vista. Hasta Manana. Venceremos! Later!"</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;"><b>Amiri Baraka</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;">March 8, 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 85%;">Photographs (from top): Elizabeth Catlett, <i>Sharecropper, </i>1952; Elizabeth Catlett, Photograph © Al Sieb/Los Angeles Times; Louis Reyes Rivera, Photograph © by George Malave; Amiri Baraka's text is Copyrighted © 2012 by the Author</span></div>
</div>
</div>
Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-74045750879357121962011-10-03T13:07:00.000-07:002013-05-16T19:00:54.759-07:00Bill T. Jones - Remembering<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihPSPHJM10PUQ4NmXUCHSV0O_ga5HR6bz-y6uuLXR3MPO6kthHp0tikt2oVkSFFKtzEMBO9z3pcQBgc_m2JQaGALwaXPFU3ZEMbgmbgWOAGPCHay5Jc0oXVobx5RPXxtaDDw_NwE677uLi/s1600/emily.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"></a><br />
<div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYRxuiZ5yCwZlaSMrCWRcDJOMUTjqlELd1JUc6CyRx4I0zZ4zjg9G2Wb5xDpFS2Hc1V3Bdb-CsbwGbPpRsAwsOp-qi7rGx3Df6HXGfa0MgjsUBAZzTGw7Y_zfQFbFdByDo8jkdmh056-pm/s1600/Bill+T.+Jones.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5659367600739822914" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYRxuiZ5yCwZlaSMrCWRcDJOMUTjqlELd1JUc6CyRx4I0zZ4zjg9G2Wb5xDpFS2Hc1V3Bdb-CsbwGbPpRsAwsOp-qi7rGx3Df6HXGfa0MgjsUBAZzTGw7Y_zfQFbFdByDo8jkdmh056-pm/s320/Bill+T.+Jones.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 320px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 231px;" /></a><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #006600; font-family: 'lucida grande';"><b><br /></b></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #006600; font-family: 'lucida grande';"><b><br /></b></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #006600; font-family: 'lucida grande';"><b>Bill T. Jones in The Windy City</b></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande';">Dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones was in residence this past week at Columbia College Chicago where I currently teach. I had first seen Bill perform in New York in 1980 in a solo program at the late Hazel Bryant's Richard Allen Center for Culture and Art, located near Lincoln Center. Few outside of his immediate dance community had heard of Bill at that point, but word among the art community in NY was that he was someone to see. And so a group of us went to check him out. I've never forgotten Bill T. Jones from that moment on, and have followed him for almost three decades now. His performance that day heralded for me an introduction to a singular creative talent. While he and his late partner Arnie Zane went on to establish a company that was increasingly celebrated around the world, the charismatic Jones could clearly have commanded any stage with his individually compelling presence. </span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande';"><br /></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; color: #0000ee; font-family: 'lucida grande';"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5659404792737510754" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFlsudYtv0dPqQsed-BPX0OXsrBG8v9Rdtdwz_s-DsvGxCkJyl-o54TvRxyvqhcwOqrEM2p62w6fabkarrXxG3WfJjLo3-jEbe5Jb-Ulemw4rBUOciOv0oZx2H7lSHQKvscQbMadJkPjef/s200/A+Good+Man.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 200px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0px; width: 135px;" /></span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande';">A week before his residency at Columbia I had gone to the premiere of <i><a href="http://kartemquin.com/films/a-good-man">A Good Man</a>,</i> a documentary that follows Jones and company from conception to the presentation of his <i>Fondly Do We Hope...Fervently Do We Pray</i>, which was commissioned by the Ravinia Festival in Chicago and filmed by Kartemquin Films, better known for their social documentaries, such as <i>Hoop Dreams</i> and <i>Five Girls. </i>The film is an intimate look at one artist's process as he struggles to shape a piece commemorating the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. Watching <i>A Good Man</i> made me think back on Bill's history, and made want to reminisce with him about some of that history. So I was hoping to see him when he visited again. When I saw him the following week at Columbia College's Dance Center, we shared a few minutes one evening before he spoke with a group of dance students and his company performed. While reflecting on those long ago days when I had first seen him perform in New York, and what the ensuing years had wrought, our conversation turned to history, and how much of that history young students might or might not be aware of, and how that history might possibly inspire them...or not. How many of them, for example, were aware of that highly charged moment in 1994 when Bill staged "Still/Here," much to the public disfavor of one Arlene Croce, then the dance critic for <i>New Yorker</i> magazine? And what might it matter to them? And should it? Croce's article infamously began, "I have not seen Bill T. Jones's "Still/Here" and have no plans to review it." She then goes on, "Don't go. In not reviewing "Still/Here" I am sparing myself and my readers a bad time, and yet I don't really see that I have much choice."Before expended several thousand words about this performance she had no intentions of seeing, Croce attempts to defend the critical farce she is about to undertake. "A critic has three options: (1) to see and review; (2) to see and not review; (3) not to see. A fourth option - to write about what one has not seen becomes possible on strange occasions like "Still/Here," from which one feels excluded by reasons of its express intentions..." </span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande';"><br /></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; color: #0000ee; font-family: 'lucida grande';"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5659410524880158050" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-QgxjXvGt67pwnkWUly11vKaEp_DXPyXUyQel-DAG26rKXuDY-IfsTasEOUV3m038beDtHcxcesV2tJjluCoB-ItMffdptf-fTkXT8IzxTaed6lzdwIrJdSmKaCkIWR6HYY4ZY2PB6bpL/s200/stillhere_f02.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 140px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0px; width: 200px;" /></span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande';">Croce then goes on to dismiss this work, coining the phrase "victim art," and derisively asserting that in bringing the real world--the world in which people confront, in various ways, their own mortality--to the stage Jones had committed a aesthetic sin: drawing a vivd and provocative connective line between the world as lived and the world as transformed into subjective expressive material...as if <i>all</i> art doesn't do this in some way. But Croce loudly lamented the manipulation which she herself would not be suckered into: "There's no doubt that the public like to see victims, if only to patronize them with applause," she dismissively opined. She then goes on to lambast, "dissed blacks, abused women, or disenfranchised homosexuals" for daring to think that their lives are worthy of finding their way into any arena other than the merely pathological.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande';"><br /></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; color: #0000ee; font-family: 'lucida grande';"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5659778071827322882" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOVYKnpvSLzBjgpA4TV9dYNTpB2UctK55LUZKiISPuVdYLuA-NINRF8O0MAD5Y8eL7EEEXT95RDr1d0wb94mrwnmOi9cfD56QSuBI16RQMqw7gllyIa1stQTVZPn7J15Gqlu0VLwuO1kC9/s200/Tseng+Kwong+Chi+Keith+Haring+Bill+T.+Jones++001.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 200px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0px; width: 160px;" /></span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande';">The article became a critical flashpoint, raising a host of issues regarding the relationship of art practice and the larger society, and how those two could (or should not) intersect. For someone like Bill T. Jones, who had up until that moment been lauded as a breakthrough dancer and choreographer and dancer nationally and internationally it had to come as a rude awakening. Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane & Company had by then become an institution within the dance world, with laudatory reviews being more the norm. New York Times then dance critic Jennifer Dunning wrote, of a 1988 performance by the company, "The dances looked elegant and effervescent...<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 100%;">The choreography has always had an unusually strong visual element and theatricality. Its suppressed heat did not dissipate on this expansive stage." Collaborations with rising art stars such as Keith Haring has further raised the company's profile, giving it even greater cachet. But then along came Arlene Croce.</span></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande'; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; color: #0000ee;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5660942602049143554" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihPSPHJM10PUQ4NmXUCHSV0O_ga5HR6bz-y6uuLXR3MPO6kthHp0tikt2oVkSFFKtzEMBO9z3pcQBgc_m2JQaGALwaXPFU3ZEMbgmbgWOAGPCHay5Jc0oXVobx5RPXxtaDDw_NwE677uLi/s200/emily.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 77px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0px; width: 200px;" /></span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande'; font-size: 100%;">All of this was on my mind as I sat with Bill at Columbia's Dance Center, contemplating the young dance students populating the building, and wondering how many knew this piece of history. Each generation, of course, makes its own history. But how to make use of history's lessons if one doesn't know it? Which is why it is so important to revisit those defining moments, those moments when a deeply meaningful conversation took place. How much of history belongs to those who lived it, and how much belongs to <i>all</i> of us? Without viewing history as a set of instructions, it <i>can</i> provide valuable perspective, reassurances even. For some young artist (dancer or otherwise) who might be thinking of embarking on an ambitious path of pursuing work that some might find less than palatable, knowing that the battle has been at least partly fought (if not completely won) can afford some reassurance, some much needed validation. </span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande'; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5659828501912903522" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi89RUb4pSWlf6R-aPZPlu4R_QNdX81CPuQAcPkAjUbNqj-0ArbVyeZHm_2Bb28CqLH1UYdhwmKZpAus2GAPR8EVQRsfoEeQ15MRkvrXpOKaDAD0eOsUZb-jWEAiwAjNoCtr_N6I42sSKUS/s200/hideseek.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 200px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0px; width: 153px;" /><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande'; font-size: 100%;">One has only to look at recent controversies around the "Hide/Seek" exhibition at the Smithsonian, and the ways in which this exhibition was attacked, sight unseen, by opportunistic politicians turned self appointed censors and critics, to know that forward looking art is always suspect in some quarters. Young artists do indeed need to know these histories. And those of us who were present at the scene, and know that history firsthand, need to periodically step forward and voice it, and do our jobs as custodians of that history, lest it and its lessons be lost on a new generation. Our failure to keep these various crises present in the social and conversations makes the arts community continually vulnerable each tike a new threat rears its head. In that regards we are still, sadly, without a coherent script--or compelling response--as to why the larger public should care when we are attacked.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande'; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #006600; font-family: 'lucida grande'; font-size: 100%;"><b>Jeanette Ingberman, R.I.P</b></span></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family: 'lucida grande';"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5659784536700252146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghfih8_l5AgEPRIn2KyLAzWkCgqz1azMbtp97RTupPAwFOhfkhGjgMEUpf_nJf0GkvlXqMVH6-j_Q0FJAtDLznFhBrMaQ2Pwh3QME0J7unhb6mLjyKhjvp6DH7XR-BvObzIhDO607WaquJ/s200/robinson4-3-36.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 200px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0px; width: 171px;" /></span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande'; font-size: 100%;">When Jeanette Ingberman passed away this past August at the age of 59, we lost a real visionary. Along with her husband and creative partner, artist Papo Colo, Ingberman created the now venerable institution Exit Art in 1982. Weathering the many storms of change, the duo kept the institution viable through three relocations, managing to stay one step ahead of New York's economic and real estate juggernaut to build and grow an institution that by now has probably benefitted hundreds of artists, if not thousands. Consistently exhibiting those established artists whose works did not neatly fit the market driven economy of the art world, as well as those emerging artists with few viable exhibition opportunities, or those making work that was explicitly political in nature, Exit Art became an essential and imperative institution. Not content to continue working at other institutions (including the International Center of Photography and the Bronx Museum) and perhaps rise through the ranks, Ingberman harbored a more ambitious and less orthodox vision. </span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande'; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; color: #0000ee;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5659830732931628626" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY1erzE6Ni573ybAmRtolZBard6vLMxQecY44O3RZWq_iYSJJmXLbyllfPAorjtvMpISBuP8Wz-eDW43b1Xs5Z5aoDEvyTgrfzqNknqjVF2AFRYETkEwCtk3sLCmN7LIHutpBxgn3jLgcu/s200/barone4-10-29.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 200px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 0px; width: 161px;" /></span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande'; font-size: 100%;">That she and Colo were able to grow that vision over three decades is ample testimony to their creative and institutional savvy, and their ability to get others to share their vision and make it--and the institution--their own. Plenty of people bitch about what is wrong with the mainstream art world, and how much of a seemingly closed shop it can sometimes appear to be. Fewer are willing and able to craft an institutional answer and solution to that conundrum and pose a viable alternative. Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo together did that...and fabulously. All of those mainstream museums and institutions that have belatedly come to embrace "diversity" in their exhibition programming have Exit Art to thank for showing them the way early on. Thank you for being a fabulous visionary Jeanette. We will all miss your presence, but continue to be inspired by your vision. May our continued work on behalf of others honor your memory.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande'; font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande'; font-size: 100%;">Photographs (from the top): Bill T. Jones © Getty Images; Promotional poster, "A Good Man" courtesy of Kartemquin Films; "Still/Here" © Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane & Company; Keith Haring and Bill T. Jones photograph © Tseng Kwong Chi; Courtesy Columbia College Chicago Dance Center; Book cover, "Hide/Seek" courtesy Smithsonian Institutions; Jeanette Ingberman photograph courtesy Walter Robinson, Artnet</span></span></div>
</div>
Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-19422778387500076862011-06-15T11:15:00.000-07:002011-06-24T09:53:38.994-07:00Art and Its Various Publics or Beyond The White Cube<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiHNwnmSWJ7_EmXErRbs2wa1FGMZkr6HQEYPjUHb3mpWy5iNpF4Fq7La1xhDZ6qocziE_MBACOY1Ru3CGPWcHWWuuWiUSAv6-zNN_nr4irRGNWEIUyIYGoGMHV1wv1Lu8Odkyc9aqrGu0e/s1600/Eric+Fischl.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-eXT9nASRrqoq17NaM67sNFSVxUFtFkMZX1oeSVnf_PqLJcfPiDXvAlRtjfLCE72WzVw1QFBhLA6cp4PNYom3bTwraQYYJrnB_bEF-vYrFxqhJUyHOiGG_eXFaeGntXNqD1ao9z4omlep/s1600/IMG_0305.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-eXT9nASRrqoq17NaM67sNFSVxUFtFkMZX1oeSVnf_PqLJcfPiDXvAlRtjfLCE72WzVw1QFBhLA6cp4PNYom3bTwraQYYJrnB_bEF-vYrFxqhJUyHOiGG_eXFaeGntXNqD1ao9z4omlep/s400/IMG_0305.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5618643086046881250" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;">Reshaping The Art/Museum/Public Experience</span></b></div><div>The past few months have been interesting ones for those interested in the ways in which art practice, public institutional practice and their various audiences interact. As the economy has taken a downturn lately public institutions have begun to think about the ways in which they do or do not engage that larger audience that their very survival depends upon. With falling attendance, the rising costs of museum admissions institutions are realizing that a philosophy of "me-ism" and exclusivity is not only inappropriate, it can be downright fatal. So increasingly institutions are undergoing a reexamination of their missions, their very reasons for being. The smarter ones are coming to realize that their days as thriving public institutions are numbered unless they do more to engage that public than simply unlock the doors in the morning and collect their admission fees. This has led to a number of initiatives to expand the conversation taking place within pubic institutions, making them spaces in which a more dialogical experience can take place. This is not the case, of course, for every museum, but a fundamental shift is taking place, and taking real hold in more than a few places.</div><div><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1EAqU9NVTDzMnlaN2gzhQTLgMhow8JKsdWvV4I_9CpA3UdFaIIj_w1JJRileuumLiyiaScYJwbxalYMVFmVyaGVkMP8-ia64ZOpGndUtngqTamSpdyvNSsogYT0bV4EL6FUVFhkQnua46/s200/El+Museo+Window.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5618654046123608258" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px; " /></span><div>Of course, as one conference participant reminded those gathered at The School in New York awhile back for a conference on publicly engaging art practice, quite a number of community based institutions and organizations have long been engaged in creating just this kind of close relationship with their communities, and not just as a response to dwindling attendance or institutional reinvention. Institutions like the Studio Museum in Harlem and el Museo del Barrio in New York, and the DuSable Museum and National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago were created because both artists and audiences of color did not feel welcome in more mainstream places, nor did they see their art and culture adequately reflected there. Some of these institutions, like the Studio Museum have evolved to a point where they are now no longer entirely peripheral to the mainstream, with artists exhibiting in that institution also being exhibited on national and global platforms, even as the institution attracts an ever more diverse audience in addition to its original core constituency. </div><div><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiROk8D4WpZ4KQDfAxf_gWhomP2AJ4LUv3mVooBebWdTfw7Lsi_ztj-G6sWzH8jPaLkbE5fYOqY4KdGWPTEbpzethQxT-Mt2WR3Vc7ef6GYA13dkTktMc_WunZ2KTJ14TBVHJFuDsOW92Hl/s200/BradfordBanner%253AMCA.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5618656925744073714" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px; " /></span><div>But current realities--along with a genuine institutional introspection and a more progressive stance on the part of a younger generation of museum directors and curators--are conspiring to bring forth a more engaging climate for rethinking the ways in which art is experienced. A number of foundations are also stepping up to provide support for just this type of institutional paradigm shift. The federal government--through the National Endowment for the Arts--has also created programs designed to brings citizens into a more dynamic and inclusive relationship with these institutions. Having been a panelist and consultant for two foundations recently as well as a panelist for the NEA, I've seen firsthand how this shift is being tied to funding. Some institutions are being more ambitious in these undertakings than others, and even the more conservative among them are developing programs to go beyond mere "family day" activities and reach for a more radical rethinking of the institutional space and it various prerogatives around how art is experienced and how to make the art viewing experience one conducive to multiple levels and kinds of engagement that do not merely propose to perpetuate a "master narrative" for a passive audience.</div><div><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTqXJFl5kQN42cuF3KGJoOvnbq3xNLOuqNELiF_mlhyxYhPEIbmaTKr5FBAUDmVNZQXc4jdBN4wSSMm7V2CloZillLaBozaDWlBy0SVmZKvx2-LGhGiwk2vORJrY5ZzJP9Mezqj7kV13co/s200/Bradford+with+Student.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5618658984563679074" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 133px; " /></span><div>The recently completed Mark Bradford Project at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art was one recent example of a mainstream museum engaging in a radical reexamination of how it was functioning within the equation of art/artist/audience. Taking place over the course of several months, <a href="http://themarkbradfordproject.org/">The Mark Bradford</a> Project sought to not only engage 21 young high school artists from Chicago in an ongoing working/mentoring relationship with Bradford, but also sought to introduce Bradford broadly to a number of different communities in Chicago, from the art community to churchgoers, seeking to more deeply engage those communities through Bradford's presence and work during his residency. The project began last September with an ominously sounding program called "The Dialogue," which brought together museum theorist, consultant and educator Elaine Heumann Gurian and Bradford in a discussion moderated by MCA's director Madeleine Grynsztejn. Gurian, who has done museum based work and study for almost four decades (see her book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Civilizing-Museum-Collected-Writings-Heumann/dp/0415357624">Civilizing the Museum</a></i>) did a brief but scholarly presentation outlining her ideas on museums, audiences, and inclusion. Bradford did a more conventional artist talk. His somewhat sketchy responses during the Q & A period that followed the presentations left me wondering just how this project would shape up, as he wasn't able to address how this project might shape and perhaps expand his own practice; he saw it more in light of what he could bring to the students. </div><div><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBV5AcVoO1YfJ30KJ6TNve7Ow5qQYPAa-o31KJ5vt5soBv2lH-_erirtnZm6aIZzer0y-XrQVQzcKRIaFJ3ltu2f3cqmcq3ZAswwhlIUvFm4kVLC7D2Q1Kh1zJz6CTpnczxGpI5qoSuRZ3/s200/IMG_0232.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5618662408300368370" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px; " /></span><div>That it did very much effect his thinking about his own practice was evident from the public program that took place some eight months after that first one, by which time Bradford had completed his residency. On stage with several of the students who participated in the project he acknowledged how profoundly he had been changed by the experience of working with them. They in turn acknowledged the respect with which he had treated them. This was apparent from the exhibition <i>(Re)Collect</i> that the students mounted of their work in a Pop Up gallery space in Chicago's downtown Loop. The show (on view for only one week!) provided ample evidence of the highly sophisticated formal, material, and conceptual work the students had done under Bradford's guidance. Professionally and smartly installed the work was a far cry from the "after school projects" level that some people still wrongly expect from young artists. The authoritative way in which they held forth in the standing room only program in MCA's auditorium only further reinforced the impact that this experience had on them. Bradford's own survey exhibition remains on view at MCA at this writing. The project is one that could serve as a model to those museums with enough self confidence to not feel that allowing the museum space to be a space of exchange diminishes the serious of the museum enterprise or somehow demeans the art objects themselves. Rather it acknowledges that the viewer has a place in the conversation that is as valuable as what the museum itself has to offer. The challenge is to find a way to enhance that conversation while respecting <i>both</i> the viewers and the objects.</div><div><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKhhpYulTnvmqFqIoeWbQ-7H6Nebnd0e9cr-Dl_-V__tn01SKRQstfaCXwvEBQ05PD9nMFwj6VaL5OF_my23NmbjnKSllV9kcLhe1OEvizUMfIu_GmeAXH0dK7U7sUS_VBtnwcmkThiA2P/s200/Madeleine+Grynszjten.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5618669192818962242" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 126px; " /></span><div>This project represents another step in the evolution of this museum that began when Madeleine Grynsztejn became director four years ago. The exhibition immediately preceding Bradford's, "Without You I'm Nothing: Art and Its Audience," foregrounded works that required the active participation of the viewer in order to be activated or completed. This emphasizing of the viewer's position and relationship to the object set the stage for Bradford's extended project of community engagement. Significantly in choosing Bradford to undertake this project the museum was not making an obvious choice, choosing someone for whom--like Theaster Gates or Rirkrit Tiravanija--such engagement is endemic to their work and practice. Bradford is first and foremost a painter, a maker of nonrepresentational paintings. In spite of the social content and context underpinning and informing his work (which I feel is sometimes more rhetorical than present in the objects themselves), he is indeed a formalist, a maker of sometimes large scale, often atmospheric material objects. While he may be black, gay, from gritty South Central LA, <i>and </i>a recent MacArthur Fellow, his practice still would not make him an obvious candidate for such an ambitious project. That the project succeeded as well as it did bodes well for MCA, Bradford, the students, and all of those museums who might be looking to this as a successful model of how art and a broader civic engagement can meaningfully coexist. Indeed, MCA is in the midst of even more extensive changes, both physical and philosophical. One writer referred to these changes as, "a philosophical gut rehab." You can read about that <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-06-10/entertainment/ct-ae-0612-mca-main-20110610_1_madeleine-grynsztejn-michael-darling-curators">here</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#006600;">An Eighties Superstar Shapes A Public Project</span></b></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiHNwnmSWJ7_EmXErRbs2wa1FGMZkr6HQEYPjUHb3mpWy5iNpF4Fq7La1xhDZ6qocziE_MBACOY1Ru3CGPWcHWWuuWiUSAv6-zNN_nr4irRGNWEIUyIYGoGMHV1wv1Lu8Odkyc9aqrGu0e/s200/Eric+Fischl.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5618672331790896290" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 133px; " /></span><div>Eric Fischl is not necessarily the first name that comes to mind if one is trying to think of an artist who has been engaged in a meaningful social practice. One of the superstars of the overheated art market of the 1980s, Fischl--along with Ross Bleckner, Francesco Clemente, Sandro Chia, Julian Schnabel, and others--came to represent the degree to which the economy of the art world was totally out of touch with the economic realities of most people's lives. With paintings selling for far more than the average person's annual salary, Fischl and other came to epitomize the worst excesses of the art world. That was then, this is now. Fischl is now spearheading an ambitious project to bring art to the masses. Dubbed "<a href="http://americanowandhere.org/">America: Now and Here</a>," the project is designed to address what Fischl calls, "...an identity crisis in American culture." While I'm not sure that America's varied cultures are in crisis, the projects promises to be an interesting road show indeed. Consisting of up to six truck based roving museums displaying art and also bringing poetry, drama, film to various cities over the next two years, the venture is privately funded. </div><div><br /></div><div>Artists include a number of past and present art world stalwarts such as Alex Katz, Laurie Anderson, Barbara Kruger, Ross Bleckner, Chuck Close, Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns, Robert Longo, Cindy Sherman, Bill Viola, along with Mark Bradford, Lyle Ashton Harris, Fred Wilson, Glenn Ligon, Ellen Gallagher, Kay Walkingstick, and Jeanne Moutousammy-Ashe. Would that others like Moutoussamy-Ashe and Walkingstick, who are under-recognized even as they have been working steadily for decades had been included in this all star cavalcade of culture. Musicians include Lou Reed, Phillip Glass, and Roseanne Cash, and hopefully more diverse talent will leaven this group as well. There is a section of the project called Artist Corp, which will feature the works of young undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate art students. This should go some ways towards making the project a more inclusive one.</div><div><br /></div><div>An ambitious undertaking indeed, though the idea of a mobile art experience is hardly new. But if this project can generate half the excitement it is claiming for itself, it should be able to add to the dialogue around art and greater civic engagement with the arts in a meaningful way. You can go to the project <a href="http://americanowandhere.org/">website</a> to see when and if they will be coming to your town.</div><div><br /></div><div>Photographs (from top): The Mark Bradford Project documentation, MCA Chicago; El Museo del Barrio, NY; MCA Chicago, Mark Bradford exhibition banner, Mia Wicklund photograph © MCA Chicago; Mark Bradford and student lay out work for <i>(Re)Collect</i> exhibition, Nathan Keay photograph © MCA Chicago; Installation view, <i>(Re)Collect</i>; Madeleine Grynsztejn, photograph by Mark Randozzo; Eric Fisch, photograph by Chester Higgins, Jr. courtesy The New York Times</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-55691317168872925342011-01-07T04:09:00.000-08:002011-12-02T17:00:48.773-08:00The Artist as Institution Builder<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjknwMXCQGruefA8tJ_3tbM4TsUNs4Rgw1pZCoej0ifgLi5fiGEM18KEIdv5H5zBu9ji8TQcDsVOI32D8KBK8oSFKTw5oNeWXXpoMOabSkR08proIWDxik47SSGAdonCca1e8daOPJI6GE/s1600/Jazzmobile_Logo1.gif" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO_yaF08XhADLvlwZgEsTrQN32Yvlrb8hNTYlOPc1DmAOtTqH1bqQ_X4WYp_41nNyppHmr-WX-4ooyNcGgMGiZjXeNJpeinjP-wR19WLLByjgVL0XAVrn-SGtPD77jrQOipBk264f4zGIQ/s1600/Dr.+Billy+Taylor.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 302px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO_yaF08XhADLvlwZgEsTrQN32Yvlrb8hNTYlOPc1DmAOtTqH1bqQ_X4WYp_41nNyppHmr-WX-4ooyNcGgMGiZjXeNJpeinjP-wR19WLLByjgVL0XAVrn-SGtPD77jrQOipBk264f4zGIQ/s320/Dr.+Billy+Taylor.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5559432314926636722" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The recent passing of Dr. Billy Taylor was marked by notices of his contribution to jazz music as both musician and advocate. Taylor, in addition to being a seminal jazz pianist, had sustained for over four decades a position as one of the music's most visible and preeminent spokespersons, having taken on the role of educator and institution builder among his numerous other accomplishments in the field. In all of the obituaries published on the occasion of his passing a little over a week ago, I was surprised to not read more about his role as the founder of the Jazz Mobile Workshop, since that was how I came to know Dr. Taylor. </div><div><br /></div><div>Much has justly been written about his founding of the Jazz Mobile touring music program in the early 1960s. He developed this program in order to take jazz music directly into the community by way of a mobile stage which was attached to a truck. In a different context it might have been used as a parade float. Here it was used as a vehicle to bring free music of the highest quality into those communities who might be least exposed to it (given the decline of jazz as a popular music) and least able to afford it (given that the music was now largely played in clubs). During the summer the roving stage is set up in conspicuously public locations such as parks, and name musicians perform. It was a brilliant idea and one that persists to this day. It exists because of Dr. Billy Taylor.</div><div><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238);"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjknwMXCQGruefA8tJ_3tbM4TsUNs4Rgw1pZCoej0ifgLi5fiGEM18KEIdv5H5zBu9ji8TQcDsVOI32D8KBK8oSFKTw5oNeWXXpoMOabSkR08proIWDxik47SSGAdonCca1e8daOPJI6GE/s200/Jazzmobile_Logo1.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5559692595480009122" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 112px; height: 200px;" border="0" /></span><div>But oddly, little if anything has been written about the Jazz Mobile Workshop, the free music education program that Taylor founded in 1969 as one of the organization's programs to continue perpetuating jazz music. Located in Harlem in Intermediate School 201 on West 127th Street, just off of Park Avenue, the Workshop provided free instrumental instruction on Saturday afternoon for any and all. Taylor had appointed the bassist Paul West as executive director. I first heard about the Workshop from a trumpet playing friend in my Queens, NY neighborhood, Phil Clark. Queens at that time seemed populated by a wealth of musicians, young and old, the benefit some have said of having basements and backyards to practice in, given that we all lived in houses, not apartments. Phil was, like us, a young musicians and had taken to showing up at the band rehearsals we used to have in first my parents living room then their basement. I'm not sure if one of the other band member knew him or if he heard us playing from out on the sidewalk (the whole neighborhood apparently could hear us), but Phil took to hanging around. I suspect he wanted to be asked to join the band, but bands are formed around compatible personalities as much as shared musical interests and skills, so Phil became a perennial hanger on. Besides, we already had a strong trumpet player in our band. To his credit however Phil mentioned to me one day that he was taking classes with Lee Morgan, the well known trumpeter. He was taking these classes, he said, free of charge on Saturdays at the Jazz Mobile Workshop in Harlem, NY. </div><div><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238);"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJMjI7yG-LJwgc5E2ekI8hgT5ITdFfh6b0Sc0YEheDIQkXTxWKr3y-vH3o4MPX402ibyjxaeGUsTWHwpz651tABpGa6SzcV29wZQMI2WK0TWOwVGzrdZQOzLqkXQ7LG6uqvPYv7LE917KE/s320/Freddie+Waits.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5559671547025459618" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 213px; height: 320px;" border="0" /></span><div>Taking Phil up on an invitation to accompany him to the Jazz Mobile one Saturday afternoon shortly after, I was pleasantly astounded at what I found. Peering into one classroom door in Harlem's I.S. 201 public school building I recognized bassist Richard Davis. In another classroom I spotted saxophonist Jimmy Heath. And in still another I spied guitarist Ted Dunbar. I was a serious enough young scholar of the music by that point that I had seen all of these guys in performance, and heard them on recordings, so I knew they were the masters in the field. Continuing on I located the classroom for drum set instruction and entered the room. The teacher there in the introductory/intermediate drumming class was none other than Albert "Tootie" Heath. After several months in Heath's class I was promoted to Freddie Wait's advanced class after impressing Heath with a particularly fluid interpretation of a passage he had us all perform. Wait's prodigious classroom demonstrations both inspired me while, at the same time, convincing me that I had a <i>very</i> long way to go indeed if I was to make music my life's work...which I ultimately chose not to do, though I continued to play professionally in a number of bands for a few years. Dr. Taylor himself would visit the Workshop periodically. I had my most memorable experience with him one afternoon in the Small Ensemble class. He gathered us drummers together and, with himself on piano and a young Howard "Locksmith" King on bass, told us we were going to practice "trading threes." We each looked at each other quizzically. Most jazz musicians when they solo play four, eight or maybe twelve bars, and often trading "fours," that is soloing for four bars apiece back and forth. As such most musicians develop a repertoire of phrases they often--unwittingly or otherwise--resort to, which playing for an irregular three bars completely disrupts. By having us "trade threes" (soloing for three bars each instead of four) Taylor reminded us that true creativity and improvisation does not rely on habit. It was a lesson I never forgot. </div><div><br /></div><div>Other musicians assembled by Dr. Taylor to teach at the Workshop included such luminaries as Curtis Fuller, Sir Roland Hanna, Joe Newman, and Ernie Wilkins. All were following Taylor's lead and making their time and knowledge available to yet another generation. All of this asignificant history, occurring in the pre-internet age, seemed to have escaped the notice of the many writers paying tribute to Dr. Taylor upon his passing. I would have expected former drummer turned cultural critic and gadfly Stanley Crouch to have taken note, but in his obituary in the <i>New York Daily News</i> Crouch spent an inordinate amount of space once again bashing hip hop and "ignorant" baggy pants folks in general, while doing little to pass on this important and seemingly little known aspect of Dr. Taylor's life's work. But Dr. Billy Taylor was that rare individual, a consummate artist who had the vision and the institutional savvy to create something that would outlast him and benefit seceding generations. For that we can all be grateful.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;">Passing the Torch Yet Again</span></div><div><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238);"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZpe8p30xvE_TpLaujzZCwl6evAOR2t2TVyTFNMuDSYNP2DfZ98IYr4LTWlR_p0M0S4qAujgKLmCco4rj54NlKk69vV3M3D36912a2eDv3QS8eSRglDQbKyvztbycdrx_stp3f0en1xhW8/s200/Ailey_Jamison.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5559689085179565506" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 178px;" border="0" /></span><div>Thinking about Dr. Billy Taylor and Jazz Mobile put me in mind of other artists who have taken on the hard task of institution building. The recently announced impending retirement of Judith Jamison, former principal dancer turned artistic director of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, made me recall the formative history of that company and institution. Performing for the first time in 1958 with a company under his own name, Ailey went on to build a company with an almost unparalleled reputation, securing his first permanent home in 1979 after sharing a renovated church with choreographer Pearl Lang beginning in 1971. I was fortunate to see Judith Jamison dance "Cry" shortly after Ailey choreographed the dance--which he created as a birthday gift to his mother--for her in 1971. I saw (and photographed) Jamison dancing this piece and others a number of times, falling in love with her over and over again as she commanded the stage in this amazingly powerful piece de resistance of movement. Not too long afterward I did a portrait of her in the company's studio, and from that moment on swore that I would have followed her anywhere. </div><div><br /></div><div>Upon Ailey's untimely death at 58 years of age in 1989, Jamison took over as Artistic Director of the company as Ailey had requested, putting to rest her own newly formed company The Jamison Project. She has grown the institution steadily since then, weathering the economic storms of keeping a both the main and junior companies active, while moving into its second new home, which is no small feat in these times of dwindling support for the arts. At one time in New York there were a wealth of black dance companies: Fred Benjamin Dance Company, Dianne McIntyre's Sounds in Motion, Otis Sallid Dance Company, Rod Rodgers Dance Company, Arthur Mitchell's Dance Theater of Harlem and others could be seen on stage with some regularity. I seldom missed a performance by either of these companies while living in New York. They were an important part of my creative sustenance. But slowly, over the years, they all but disappeared or disbanded, victims of the difficult task of keeping a large or medium sized company together. Some, like Sallid, found early success in the commercial entertainment arena, choreographing for television and motion pictures, and others were fortunate to find work in the academy. That the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater has been able to survive and thrive while hewing to its original artistic vision is a testament to its founder and its soon to be retired Artistic Director, Judith Jamison. Their lives and hard work should be an example to us all.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>(Note: Hopefully in a future post I will write about Wynton Marsalis, who is yet another artist/musician who has done a significant and impressive job as an institution builder in bringing </i><a href="http://www.jalc.org/"><i>Jazz at Lincoln Center</i></a><i> into being. This institution appears to be the first long term major home for the performing and ongoing preservation of one of America's original art forms, with an in-house repertory band and multiple performing venues contained within its home, located at Columbus Circle in New York City.)</i></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Photographs (from top): Dr. Billy Taylor and youthful admirers; Freddie Waits (photograph © Tom Marcello); Alvin Ailey and Judith Jamison</span></div></div>Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-66298709814701800022010-12-27T08:50:00.000-08:002010-12-29T19:26:22.457-08:00"Degenerate Art Then and Now" or "America is Not Germany, 1937"<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Uv3Dw90b577uBLVHp7Qr4Ora6WRseNdfQveB-oGkLczXAgRK0FuV_fv79o8TmKf-D_I4JT57dPz_OHaUEDRpgbuIR1YxwZpkNZ6HP73Pgs8G5acglsTHh6cZTCYyrbFcimtnUHcUOlVS/s1600/r2773163575.jpg"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiR_Lw96zGSu5HhyFtVWdGgpvzpQ1VqgVpsp0CBrxbP1RY8lGDCRctDNvipqkCmy5xmr1ixkcCyaywT7OwAc19XelLGSBU9GBELOQtNhnZ9kebrQKzsSrHKnkTa7wv0At5d4lX-if8PwzZ/s1600/Degenerate+Art+Exhibition.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 247px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiR_Lw96zGSu5HhyFtVWdGgpvzpQ1VqgVpsp0CBrxbP1RY8lGDCRctDNvipqkCmy5xmr1ixkcCyaywT7OwAc19XelLGSBU9GBELOQtNhnZ9kebrQKzsSrHKnkTa7wv0At5d4lX-if8PwzZ/s400/Degenerate+Art+Exhibition.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555407321926216962" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><b>Recent Censorship Recalls Spirit of an Earlier Era</b></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In 1936 Adolf Hitler, German Chancellor, instructed </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Adolf Ziegler, president of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts, to put together an “exhibition of shame”, depicting the “deterioration of art since 1910”. Ziegler gathered a group of what were called “art inspectors” to trawl through the public museums and galleries. The committee compiled everything from some 100 art collections they considered useful for defaming the Modernist movement. The “Degenerate Art” (</span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Entartete Kunst</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">) exhibition opened on July 19, 1937 in Munich, organized by Josef Goebbel's Information Ministry, and was thereafter toured to numerous German cities until April 1941 to expose the alleged cultural decline of the Weimar Republic. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In the course of this campaign, at least 21,000 art works produced by artists associated with Expressionism, Dadaism, Cubism, Fauvism, Surrealism and New Objectivity were removed from museums, and sold abroad to earn foreign exchange. Other works were simply destroyed.</span></span></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 10px; "><p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.36em; "></p><p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.36em; font-size:1.4em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"></span></span></p><span><span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyOh7EUfmSl-yr_QFrU2LtgmXQr2SDJWThreD3-GlynFZCwCsb5LSawV56YDrIlgwqMkr6BSkSfMX8g9fx-9_PKnwaEcTgVYhFBAvDnARNw6jHtZ2elublDBS0Jel7B7sgi5XFTZcfgK-6/s200/EntarteteKunst.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555415549293847698" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 141px; height: 200px; " /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In his speech at the exhibition’s opening in Munich, Hitler declared: “I swore that if Providence made me your leader, I’d make short work of this degeneration. The German people deserve to be protected from these sick minds. These abusers of beauty and art should be confined to secure asylums for the insane until they re-learn how to think as Germans.” Among those artists whose works were classified by the Nazis as “degenerate” were Käthe Kollwitz, Emil Nolde, Franz Marc, Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka, George Grosz and numerous others. Those who were less famous are now forgotten because their works were either lost or destroyed. Once so labeled, victimized artists were forbidden to make art; many emigrated to save their lives; others died in concentration camps or in gas chambers, or committed suicide.This odious moment in German and world history was brought alive again when eleven banned works of art were surreptitiously uncovered during an archeological excavation in Berlin in preparation for the planned extension of a subway line in that city. All of the recovered sculptures </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">came from museums in Munich, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe and Berlin, from which the Nazis had confiscated them because the pieces did not correspond to the concept of art propagated by the fascist state. How they came to be at the site is not known, though several theories have emerged about the possible owner of the building hiding them for posterity's sake. Whatever the story, it reminds us that indeed "truth pressed to earth shall [indeed] rise again," and often at fortuitous moments. It is up to us to pay attention and make the connections.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span><span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 10px; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Uv3Dw90b577uBLVHp7Qr4Ora6WRseNdfQveB-oGkLczXAgRK0FuV_fv79o8TmKf-D_I4JT57dPz_OHaUEDRpgbuIR1YxwZpkNZ6HP73Pgs8G5acglsTHh6cZTCYyrbFcimtnUHcUOlVS/s200/r2773163575.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5556309781054616754" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 151px; " /><p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.36em; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The rediscovery of the formerly banned "degenerate" art from Germany coincided with the very moment of the recent controversy in Washington, DC concerning the censoring of the David Wojnarowicz video "A Fire in My Belly" at the National Portrait Gallery. There is much to be learned from the former as far as what the American response should be to in response the efforts of politicians and officers of the state to once again attempt to create and impose a national standard insofar as what constitutes acceptable art. The exhibition "The Berlin Sculpture Find" opened at Berlin's New Museum on November 9th. "A Fire in My Belly" was removed from the Smithsonian on November 30th. The timing could not have been more auspicious, though no one seemed to have linked the two events. Lurking there in the news, uncovered from the dirt in Berlin, lying in plain sight, was history's loud rebuke to John Boehner.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.36em; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Art World: In Search of A Script</span></span></span></b></span></p><p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.36em; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#33CC00;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 18px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLbGOu39pv_KD6TdlL2jDOHQV4gs0-QohdG01UJWZE41UfVgr1ICHTAJj7f8GQmxwThq-zAVkfAKEPjdTaOdVNvrOZp8P4OuAuKnExbjgURbJPafNMN9RLQukwvsWWJJ5aokBAq5z2pGU5/s320/Daniella+Zalcman+NY+Demonstration.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555431426604267634" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px; " /></span></b></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); line-height: normal; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">One of the reasons (perhaps the most significant reason) that the right is able to be so effective in propagating its message in the public arena has to do with the consistency of the script from which they all perform and hold forth. It is the uniform and persistent tone of their running commentary that adds up to a din that is always heard above the whisper of more reasoned discourse. To wit, neither House Speaker designate John Boehner nor incoming Majority Leader Eric Cantor bothered to go and actually see the exhibition in question, "Hide/Seek," before issuing their pronouncements condemning the exhibition. They had received their script from the Christian News Service, a news service that apparently trolls the national social, cultural and political landscape in search of things it deems offensive to its sensibilities. They then alerts their reliable foot soldiers who then go forth to faithfully parrot the CNS script. That they were able to make the Smithsonian shake in its boots and pull the "offending" work should demonstrate the power of a few consistent voices staying on script and creating the perception that they speak for legions of presumed supporters when in fact they never do. The fact that the exhibition had been open for over a month and seen by over 10,000 people who didn't raise any complaints? Doesn't matter apparently, since we still have not heard from those 10,000 unified voices that they don't appreciate politicians who attempt (successfully it would seem) to impose their own parochial opinions on the American people. Thus does the vocal minority hold sway.</span></span></span></span></span><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "></span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0E2KiEA5zKNKK2xYjpkylPWXpsoIKWyMQ3q8iilLI_v9BWMwWDuGLpwqcCfTvxuwLnUHmNac5mDCmbqnN19tmMhTm76EXQ2vnxaO7RgxAehee28PpJGbJP-lm_JJ_Ctk3hrcsluQiE8Nt/s200/Wojnarowicz+on+view+%2540+New+Museum.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555422858186763218" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px; " /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Response from the art community to this recent attack on fundamental American rights has certainly not approached anything resembling a similarly coherent script. Rather the response has been largely to approach this as an attack on gay art and artists, an attack on one artist (David Wojnarowicz), or an attack on one institution (the National Portrait Gallery). All miss the point...perilously. Boehner and Cantor's attack constitutes an attack against the American people and our fundamental rights...</span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">not</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> because we are gay, <i>not</i> because some of us make art using religious iconography, and <i>not</i> because of the facts of race, gender, sexuality or any of the other myriad reasons bigots </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">have </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">discriminated against others. What makes such discrimination abhorrent is that it violates basic rights and protections that are presumed to come with citizenship. It is an offense because it violates fundamental rights that make us very different from Nazi Germany in the 1930 and 40s. No, we Americans simply do </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">not</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> roll like that! We have something called the Constitution which guarantees our freedom of expression. And unlike totalitarian societies, we also reserve the right to make up our own minds, not to have these decisions left to agents of the state. And that is something around which we can find common ground with our fellow citizens, including those who may not even care about the Wojnarowicz video, or forward looking art in general. Indeed we are citizens before we are artists. Don't think so? Take a look at your passport and see what it says. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">So while demonstrations which attract a smattering of the already converted are justifiable immediate responses and screening the banned piece in various institutions may be seen as an act of solidarity and defiance, it doesn't constitute a coherent response; it's not a script that can be sent out to all concerned parties. We need to remind everyone that it is not only the arts that are under attack; the arts do indeed represent the culture of the larger society. The writer James Baldwin, in </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">An Open Letter to My Sister, Angela Davis <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">said</span></span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> that, "...if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night." If we in the art community want a script (and we badly need one) I would suggest the following: "An attack on art is an attack on all Americans." John Boehner and his ilk falsely and loudly purport to speak for some presumably outraged citizenry. We need to remind him--and others--that indeed we </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">are</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> those citizens. January--and the ascent of Boehner and Cantor--is just around the corner. They have put us on notice that they will be watching, waiting to make their versions of "degenerate art" disappear. What will our response be this time? Whatever it is it cannot be in the form of a million passionate voices speaking individually (though rightly). We need a coherent voice. We--urgently--need a script.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;">An Open Letter from Carrie Mae Weems </span></b></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;">and Others on the Censorship by the Smithosonian</span></b></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><p class="MsoNormal">December 16, 2010</p><p class="MsoNormal">As artists and citizens, we are outraged by the censorship rearing its head in our nation. In a country founded on freedom of expression – the First Amendment – we find it shocking and senseless that some amongst us would deny the rest of us by silencing any voice they deem “different” or “other.” Dissent is a <u>right</u> that has been bought and paid for by the American people. Disagreement is the cornerstone of democracy. A great nation is represented as much by its art and artists as by its statesmen and women. As artists and citizens, we will not be bullied by blind bigots, silenced by fear, or denied our basic civil rights.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">On December 1, World AIDS day, G. Wayne Clough, secretary of the Smithsonian, without consulting curator Jonathan Katz, removed “A Fire In My Belly,” a video piece by artist David Wojnarowicz, from the current exhibition “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.” Catholic League president Bill Donahue, with the support of incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner, exerted pressure on the Smithsonian. Even though this piece had been on view since October 30 without complaint, Donahue and company claimed this four-minute video is “anti-Christian hate speech” and a waste of taxpayer money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In short, the Smithsonian caved. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">Since then public outcry has built across the nation. As citizens, we realize that censoring work in a Washington, D.C. museum violates us all. We understand that this is not an isolated instance. We understand that the real targets go far beyond a four-minute video—to arts funding, to stigmatizing free expression and open dialog, to demonizing gay culture in all its forms. This fear-mongering and distortion is what is truly un-American, and it’s unacceptable. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">On December 14, in the midst of an upstate freezing blizzard, people gathered to attend an emergency screening of “A Fire in My Belly” held by ArtRage Gallery and Light Work in Syracuse. Both Light Work Gallery at Syracuse University and ArtRage Gallery will now continuously screen the work until February 13, the slated closing date of “Hide/Seek.” And we are not the only ones. What you can no longer see in our nation’s capitol you can now see in cities and towns across the land.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">Day by day, and decade by decade, social and cultural liberties have come under attack, disrupting our nation’s progress and the very vitality of our scientists, intellectuals and artists. At every turn we are losing ground with cuts in funding and the dismantling of cultural programs and significant institutions large and small. And this must stop! We are counting on all US representatives who care about fairness and freedom to protect and to defend the First Amendment at all costs. We invite others to join us in this protest. For more information go to Hideseek.org and PPOWgallery.com.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>Carrie Mae Weems </i>and<i> Social Studies 101</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>Mary Goodwin, </i>Associate Director, Light Work</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>Nancy Keefe Rhodes</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>Rose Viviano, </i>Director, ArtRage Gallery<span><i> </i></span></p> <!--EndFragment--> </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">Photographs (from top): Installation view of "Entartete Kunst", the "Degenerate Art" Exhibition; cover of catalogue from the "Entartete Kunst" exhibition; viewer looks at recovered art at Berlin's New Museum (photograph courtesy of Art Daily newsletter); demonstration in New York, protesting the Smithsonian censorship (photograph © 2010 by Daniella Zalcman); "A Fire in My Belly" being screened at The New Museum, NY (photography courtesy of The New Museum)</span></span></span></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 18px;font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div></div></div></div></div></div>Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-30466043184419337272010-12-04T18:09:00.000-08:002011-02-07T22:34:32.848-08:00The Culture Wars version 2010-11 Begin<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB9y4qvRkrL87xWNdXsDaD86S0qWy_io5vlat6B61qOY0_lVI1AiPU9NfEsV8GHnfE446taBNs3UkgXVZpYi9v4RLyjiC0q8xR_S88vGF6S0iEsfrMB0Q3jOhyphenhyphenT-SeDMmbdJCH3Y4NLd52/s1600/bessie_smith005.jpg"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqnu9L5MXcMqiNmewgszvrfLe06LSSiUtTVscxfNKj7W9v896d62-goUDIadoVRDauGm6uXpsyqooFSWQu912SWlMg3O9DCNxoO8dwoDEg6bM4H8-tIMM7GMrE0EKLFh0kH9580DR3j6Th/s1600/Jacquelyn+Martin%253AAP.jpeg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqnu9L5MXcMqiNmewgszvrfLe06LSSiUtTVscxfNKj7W9v896d62-goUDIadoVRDauGm6uXpsyqooFSWQu912SWlMg3O9DCNxoO8dwoDEg6bM4H8-tIMM7GMrE0EKLFh0kH9580DR3j6Th/s400/Jacquelyn+Martin%253AAP.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547075416797663122" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwilPWugpnzTM1AEd2QzjaqAc5NDziyo3bbbCb21U7hsEFgTIoY9rUWQnsKxiUgEtHIpyDMkMNyHNt9UdO7Ka2tvbfBvrT3jdhxdkfG6kBJIVyBxMg6stf2ix2NEnbMuUwAmo2TkWO2bC0/s1600/bill+donohue.jpg"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlgKeiWYGPhDRR-dkvZV-W1I7EtGRKhx9JKxNuD1wbQz7yrwCM4dgS8q67HECEk9u90G4dH1LaUKXxywTImKHYSW9dwmJ4dQpH-mlKvZQ3Nhp1WL4_cOvsZAVHKLDV_upTd2Bz14qpCSdh/s1600/Transformer+Gallery.jpeg"></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCON_5IC80KiBP3gdYL2L4iCvfOO1ql2F4RijNXnQE34heLubvwk0M07E9iNbspf_TnIcK6hu0VaecmwOJE9HSajHzWmYFfrPP8hm5oorjoh4KpxlmYC4wuNWFk9pyh7Z4hjACMhvUvfj7/s1600/Lyle+and+thomas.jpg"></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;"><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia,sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></b></span></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia,sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></b></span></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia,sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></b></span></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia,sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify; font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">John Boehner Fires the Opening Salvo</span></span></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238);"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3pMGx5Y_HXqj5mMlQr3-Ge6sYxOfcKQKlqXCBIpu84TaNUNUVqQMaAB0YScJ95czIUhABi02GtdWQEflXbhd3ZPsNfXNfj4ew4L4TKGPb9bhHrfmqQTuPHO_dlmKC7b9ZGpUFTLfL-FQk/s200/john-boehner.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547031379914182594" style="text-align: justify; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 138px;" border="0" /></span><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I had the rather auspicious fortune to be in Washington, DC for several days this past week when the opening salvo of a new round in the Culture Wars was fired by Congressman John Boehner. Boehner's ire had been raised when he was contact by Catholic League president William Donohue after Donohue had issued a press release regarding what he called, "the vile video that showed large ants crawling all over Jesus on the Cross." In light of what he considered to be the blaspheming of the Christian religion by a public institution Donohue asked that the House and Senate Appropriations Committees "reconsider future funding" for the National Portrait Gallery, who had included the video in question "A Fire In My Belly" by the late artist David Wojnarowicz in its exhibition "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture." Donohue is, of course, no stranger to uninformed highly inflammatory public remarks. Among other things he has previously blamed the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal on homosexuality and claimed that a number of individuals previously and continually abused by priests when they were young were in fact not abused; since they repeatedly allowed the abuse to take place they must have enjoyed it according to Donohue. So we should not be surprised that this self appointed religious watchdog is again rabidly on the attack. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238);"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDozUp72GyR-5ZEL6VBWhcqBUXgJ5XBsTV8XslNaou57ToFtdhxNCe51ICG6ytDRYU2cZMrbNRvIy6KGd1ib-FleQ5W1wnVsqR2eas_bPb99YEgmVQy1FjXbKG1O21WIIlfAL71hti-Lrp/s200/jese.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547031820515250754" style="text-align: left; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 128px;" border="0" /></span><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I was in Washington ironically enough serving as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, the federal agency who had come under attack two decades earlier from Senator Jesse Helms and other conservative religious groups and politicians for having given funds to an institution that had exhibited Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ," a large scale color photograph of a crucifix submerged in glowing yellow liquid. From Christ in urine to Christ with ants, the connection was an uncanny one. The National Portrait Gallery furor indeed echoes the controversy surrounding the exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe's work at the Corcoran Gallery (also in Washington, DC) in 1989, an exhibition which was closed after conservative intimidation and then mounted by the WPA Gallery, also located in DC. The Endowment itself was subsequently eviscerated by increasing funding cuts and its individual artist program--which also came under severe conservative scrutiny--was eliminated entirely. The arts have been vulnerable and drawn apart from the larger society ever since. As an artist who lived through that earlier moment the eerie feeling of déja vu was unmistakable and unnerving. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 238);"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5MCsTH6C5Qf6g5AkDXfc7iJm-Uks3q56XmWR2WX-j6ECCP7iOUteXRFsmy9DKihPxFAEioxBxCx50671dCUbayKV-IYTQhVcZvESXrHHZFxplxCKBlsaaInlZfdeIluFa2TObBT0289Jd/s320/IMG_5831.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547043375361061218" style="text-align: left; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" border="0" /></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">On the first day of business during an extended lunch break, on the recommendation of Endowment staff, I decided to visit the National Portrait Gallery to take in the exhibitions, including "Hide Seek." Little did I know that it was the very day in which the Wojnarowicz video work had been removed from the exhibition. I sensed that something was up because the overzealous security guards appeared to be on high alert when I arrived in the exhibition space. Unlike the other exhibitions I had passed through, the gallery containing the show seemed staffed by a few museum guards too many, one of whom seemed to always appear, hovering too nearby as I moved around through the exhibition. My first thought upon taking in the work was that this was decidedly unlike any exhibition I had ever seen at the NPG before. An accompanying exhibition "The Struggle for Justice" (which one passes through on the way to the "Hide/Seek" show) was equally provocative. Indeed it was that show, with its incisive texts panels, that first clued me in to the fact that this was a </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">very </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">different kind of NPG, one with a more revisionist and inclusive reading of the many objects it was showing, particularly those of the modern and contemporary eras. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238);font-family:Georgia,serif;" ><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB9y4qvRkrL87xWNdXsDaD86S0qWy_io5vlat6B61qOY0_lVI1AiPU9NfEsV8GHnfE446taBNs3UkgXVZpYi9v4RLyjiC0q8xR_S88vGF6S0iEsfrMB0Q3jOhyphenhyphenT-SeDMmbdJCH3Y4NLd52/s200/bessie_smith005.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547086542113604674" style="text-align: left; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 160px; height: 200px;" border="0" /></span><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Looking at a portrait of the blues singer Bessie Smith (one of a large group of African American portraits made by Carl Van Vechten that I am very familiar with) I proceeded to read the accompanying wall text: "Van Vechten's descriptions of African Americans were of the romantic racist variety, in which they represented elemental and primitive qualities absent in the falsity of modern society. Yet in his photographs he recovered and preserved the dignity and humanity of people such as the great blues singer Bessie Smith..." Well, I'll be! What a straightforward critical dissection of one man's varied intent. Other labels introduced a similar level of criticality into ones encounter with the works. Strategically placed near the small and elegant portrait of Smith is an imposing portrait painting of Van Vechten by Romaine Brooks, here brought down to a more manageable and humanly imperfect size by the aforementioned text which separates Van Vechten from Smith. It appeared to be yet another institutional situation where younger and more critically responsive and ambitious curators were being allowed to step forward and shape the viewing experience and rewrite art and cultural history in less than benign ways. So I was primed by the time I moved on to the next gallery where "Hide/Seek" was installed.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238);"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCON_5IC80KiBP3gdYL2L4iCvfOO1ql2F4RijNXnQE34heLubvwk0M07E9iNbspf_TnIcK6hu0VaecmwOJE9HSajHzWmYFfrPP8hm5oorjoh4KpxlmYC4wuNWFk9pyh7Z4hjACMhvUvfj7/s200/Lyle+and+thomas.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547051399691948130" style="text-align: left; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 146px; height: 200px;" border="0" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 18px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Entering the gallery I immediately located a number of works by artist friends, including Lyle Ashton Harris, Catherine Opie, and Glenn Ligon along with works by artists ranging from Duane Michals, Keith Haring, Nan Goldin, Beauford Delaney, Paul Cadmus, Agnes Martin, Charles Demuth, Thomas Eakins (whose </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Salutat </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">graced the exhibition entrance wall), Berenice Abbott, Marsden Hartley and others from both the modern and contemporary eras. Wojnarowicz was represented too, both in his own self portrait photograph </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(</span></span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Untitled/face in dirt) </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">and in Peter Hujar's portrait of him. And while much of the work was familiar, it was here contextualized in ways that foregrounded what had long been left out of the discourse surrounding the work: the sexuality identity of either the artist, the subjects or both, and the ways in which the work simultaneously embodied an aesthetic of both the object and the sexualized self; identity here became as much subject as the actual and nominal subject of the work itself creating a much richer and provocative experience of these objects. It was a lively, freewheeling, and thoughtful show, with the theme of difference and desire providing a thematic anchor that allowed it to hang together coherently. Indeed it was the lifting of the veil of sexual identity--particularly with the earlier works that had seldom been thus contextualized--that provided the rationale for the show itself to be brought into existence. As such co-curators Jonathan Katz and David Ward have produced a long overdue breakthrough exhibition. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwilPWugpnzTM1AEd2QzjaqAc5NDziyo3bbbCb21U7hsEFgTIoY9rUWQnsKxiUgEtHIpyDMkMNyHNt9UdO7Ka2tvbfBvrT3jdhxdkfG6kBJIVyBxMg6stf2ix2NEnbMuUwAmo2TkWO2bC0/s200/bill+donohue.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547072134327371234" style="text-align: left; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 133px;" border="0" /><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">And then came William Donohue, roused by a story about the exhibition from CNS (Conservative News Service). After being duly alerted incoming House Speaker Boehner and </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">incoming House Majority leader Eric Cantor proceeded to issue their own separate but consistent hyperbolic and opportunistic statements...without either one having ever having once set foot in the museum or the exhibition, which neither seemed to have thought an odd thing, as if having and airing opinions about things one hasn't actually experienced is the norm. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 10px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Said Boehner, "</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">American families have a right to expect better from recipients of taxpayer funds in a tough economy. Smithsonian officials should either acknowledge the mistake and correct it, or be prepared to face tough scrutiny beginning in January when the new majority in the House moves to end the job-killing </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">spending spree in Washington.” </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 10px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Cantor followed up with, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">“This is an outrageous use of tax payer money and an obvious attempt to offend Christians during the Christmas season,” said Cantor. “When a museum receives taxpayer money, the taxpayers have a right to expect that the museum will uphold common standards of decency. The museum should pull the exhibit and be prepared for serious questions come budget time.” The Smithsonian's Secretary G. Wayne Clough then responded to this attack by removing the offending video from the exhibition, with the consent of NPG's director Paul Martin, saying that it was creating an unnecessary distraction that was taking attention away from the rest of the exhibition. Director Martin himself issued a statement attempting to explain the true nature of the exhibition and offering reassurance that nothing more would be removed from the exhibition, which continues through February. So with this attack by the right and the tepid response on the part of the museum the next round of the culture wars--and the unfortunately muted instiutional terms of engagement--were initiated. </span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlgKeiWYGPhDRR-dkvZV-W1I7EtGRKhx9JKxNuD1wbQz7yrwCM4dgS8q67HECEk9u90G4dH1LaUKXxywTImKHYSW9dwmJ4dQpH-mlKvZQ3Nhp1WL4_cOvsZAVHKLDV_upTd2Bz14qpCSdh/s320/Transformer+Gallery.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547069623583935714" style="text-align: left; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 213px; height: 320px;" border="0" /><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I found all of this out when I opened my hotel room door the morning after my visit to the museum and picked up </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Washington Post</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> laying on the floor in the hallway. Reading the front page article by Post art critic Blake Gopnik (who has done a very admirable job in continuing to report this story while bringing a high degree of critical acumen and much needed perspective to the conversation) over breakfast the palpable tension at NPG the previous day now made sense. I wondered too what the art world response would be. Other than Gopnik, who seemed to fully grasp at once the full dimension of this attack, public response was initially oddly muted in relation to the level of the offense. Into this breach stepped Transformer Gallery, a small Washington, DC alternative space headed by Victoria Reis. With perhaps 100 square feet of exhibition space and a window "project" space to their name, Transformer didn't let its small size stop them, becoming "the little gallery that could." While others dithered (cowered?), Transformer immediately sent out a call to action, asking supporters of the arts community to assemble at the gallery on Thursday evening to march in silent protest to the National Portrait Gallery where a vigil would be held. They also started a continuous screening of the banned video in their window, vowing to keep showing it in a continuous loop until the NPG reinstates it in the show. Their call to arms resulted in approximately seventy-five artists and others meeting at the gallery for the evening march to the NPG. I was there at the announced 5:30 assembly time as people slowly arrived. Picking up a few others along the way, the group eventually numbered maybe 100 by the time we had marched from 14th and P Street to 7th and G, the front of the National Portrait Gallery. With news cameras, reporters, and photographers bearing witness the silent vigil was held.</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">So what happens next? <i>That</i> is the big and most meaningful question. The Republicans have let it be known that the arts are once again squarely in their sights. They intend to once again isolate the arts community from the rest of the larger social community, making them out to be the odd and perverse miscreants of society, rather than as much a part of the social fabric as everyone else. That is why it is imperative that this assault be framed </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">not </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">as merely an assault on the arts or an attack on a particular institution. It needs to be loudly proclaimed for what it is: an all out assault on the American people. The exhibition had been seen by over 10,000 people without a single complaint before it became the latest political football to be kicked around. Yet Boehner and his ilk do not believe that the American people have the wherewithal to determine for themselves what they do or don't want to see. They would make themselves the self appointed de facto curators of the American creative and intellectual imagination. There can be no "us" and "them" this time. That is what Boehner and the conservative right are attempting to do, to divide the American people along their own self serving fault line. It is no coincidence that this assault is taking place at the very same moment that Washington is wavering on repealing "don't ask don't tell" in the military. As long as any of us can be made to appear to be less than a part of the American family none of us are safe. <i>That </i>is the <i>only </i>story. Let's hope the art community gets it right this time and doesn't participate in its own self isolation. We need to assert our rights as </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Americans</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, not merely as artists. In that way we leave no loose threads in the social fabric for Boehner, Cantor, and Donohue to then use to rip us apart from our neighbors, doing the ongoing dirty conservative work of divide and conquer. The right speaks with one voice and from one script; we need to start doing the same.</span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 22px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Statement from the Association of Art Museum Directors on the NPG Censorship Imbroglio</span></span></span></span></div></span></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=";font-family:'times new roman',sans-serif;font-size:130%;" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;font-size:14px;" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: normal;font-family:arial,sans-serif;" ><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Association of Art Museum Directors, which oversees practices in North American museums and develops guidelines for art museums, issued a response Friday to the controversy at the National Portrait Gallery.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Gallery, part of the Smithsonian Institution, removed a video from its current exhibition "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture" on Tuesday after it received protests about its content from Capitol Hill, Catholic and conservative critics. The video by the late artist David Wojnarowicz contained an 11 minute view of ants crawling on a Christ-like figure. Local artists have marched outside the museum to show their disapproval of the action.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The AAMD statement said: "It is extremely regrettable that the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery, a major American art museum with a long history of public service in the arts, has been pressured into removing a work of art from its exhibition "Hide/Seek."</span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><a id="more" style="text-decoration: underline;"></a></span></span><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"More disturbing than the Smithsonian's decision to remove this work of art is the cause: unwarranted and uninformed censorship from politicans and other public figures, many of whom, by their own admission, have seen neither the exhibition as a whole or this specific work.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"The AAMD believes that freedom of expression is essential to the health and welfare of our communities and our nation. In this case, that takes the form of the rights and opportunities of art museums to present works of art that express different points of view.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Discouraging the exchange of ideas undermines the principles of freedom of expression, plurality and tolerance on which our nation was founded. This includes the forcible withdrawal of a work of art from within an exhibition--and the threatening of an institution's funding sources.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"The Smithsonian Institution is one of the nation's largest organizations dedicated to the dissemination and diffusion of knowledge--an essential element of democracy in America. We urge members of Congress and the public to continue to sustain and support the Smithsonian's activities, without the political pressure that curtails freedom of speech."</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font: 14px/18px arial; width: auto; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Photographs (from top): Demonstration at National Portrait Gallery, photograph © Jacquelyn Martin/AP; House Majority Leader designate John Boehner; the late Senator Jesse Helms; installation view, "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture;" "Bessie Smith" by Carl Van Vechten, courtesy Library of Congress; Lyle Ashton Harris, "Brotherhood, Crossroads, Etcetera," © Lyle Ashton Harris; Bill Donohue, courtesy CNN; Transformer Gallery, photograph © Jacquelyn Martin/AP</span></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=";font-family:'times new roman',sans-serif;font-size:130%;" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;font-size:14px;" ><br /></span></span></div></span></span></span></div>Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-62082677635902834522010-11-22T18:22:00.000-08:002011-03-24T16:39:46.855-07:00Big Change: A Paradigm of Social Engagement<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZrI4fCJYoVuBr0dauxUPP9uQ8hT6hQwxc5JoJyY2ko6ZC8mwOwiTLX1McNpbt8LpQxzoWqm1pzR7oZk4_3M-3YBYcs_P_iH29x4E9hMqMakh3QxjeSIxCfTPyjBaYcHi9eQhEbElLsSwq/s1600/Ono+Wish+Tree.JPG"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5lHlxou8TTwzOboZEOcoDZUBJfYl29GVLnrMlQbneAFynjz8Kui5bIZicV9BQS9b15nUKQBfQO06HWfjCdxvI42OiVRySF_4afcKEBaX3jeS-G9S95yaJuaNX9W6vRZf0iT4IvDlzX2Gj/s1600/IMG_5584.JPG"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5lHlxou8TTwzOboZEOcoDZUBJfYl29GVLnrMlQbneAFynjz8Kui5bIZicV9BQS9b15nUKQBfQO06HWfjCdxvI42OiVRySF_4afcKEBaX3jeS-G9S95yaJuaNX9W6vRZf0iT4IvDlzX2Gj/s400/IMG_5584.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542580546078861314" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1L8tE7wqQoZeoY2qd4WoDkZ-pj5GFLlz6XthhD3pnBEjlOansvDt17VSW5AQkQOqGF9l-ZPrljnEq_5ja_EKzySBnZL18fzOGqgJpWN5GO9d-0-WRF7Vgeyr_Zv4T2VxpgHV0JDb4SFz8/s1600/IMG_5592.JPG"></a><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);"><b><br />A Different Kind of MoMA?</b></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238);"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZrI4fCJYoVuBr0dauxUPP9uQ8hT6hQwxc5JoJyY2ko6ZC8mwOwiTLX1McNpbt8LpQxzoWqm1pzR7oZk4_3M-3YBYcs_P_iH29x4E9hMqMakh3QxjeSIxCfTPyjBaYcHi9eQhEbElLsSwq/s200/Ono+Wish+Tree.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542654913526118546" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" border="0" /></span><div>On a recent trip to New York I had one of those rare epiphany like moments where I found myself standing in front of a group of works that spoke clearly to how the work we do as artists might actually matter in the world. Such was the impact of this show on me that almost every other exhibition I saw both before and after in those three days came to feel almost meaningless, like so much empty, aestheticized and useless decoration. Certainly it made that work seem much less imperative. During past visits to MoMA recently I had gotten the feeling that something about the Museum of Modern Art had changed. Encountering the small crowd of deeply engaged people reading, writing, and attaching their own wishes to Yoko Ono's "Wish Tree" in MoMA's Sculpture Garden a few months ago was one recent breath of fresh air, one that suggested a very different way in which the museum public might engage with both the space, objects and each other. That piece created a space for both contemplation <i>and </i>participation. And several other shows there lately have seemed more conceptually daring, provocative, and more inclusive, with works not always where you would expect to find them (i.e. photography being shown outside of the Photography galleries and in relation to sculpture, architectural projects <i>not </i>in the design galleries, etc.), and not necessarily by artists you would have always expected to encounter in these quarters. But of course, that is just the point: exactly who and what work one should come to expect to find in the 21st century museum in this age of global culture. </div><div><br /></div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2ASXQvs0sRzxZlaCDy1idb8g6VO3_xPsdiOAL_r_CnrXhiy0lZ1P1xL4EKwO-3DX2pE9h3pW-zeoYFsqT4MyWrEOHxgUM5gtKVPQs478tbIRH1fOxHleqM0f5Rc6Yp8hoJbFB7t0-J3GD/s200/IMG_5620.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542601008339350466" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" border="0" /><div>The younger curators seemed to be finally holding sway (and maybe the influence of newly appointed associate director Kathy Halbreich was being felt) as more and more work outside of the long established "canon" finds its way onto the walls, integrated into the larger conversation in meaningful (and not token) ways. And the very nature of the conversation itself seemed to have expanded. I had a feeling that the museum--in spite of its recent bout of economic exclusivity brought on by the admission price hike (fancy real estate and serious square footage <i>must</i> be paid for somehow I guess)--was trying to reinvent itself, to make itself more relevant to the contemporary moment in a way that didn't necessarily merely re-inscribe the status quo of the larger art world. My most recent visit a couple of weeks ago convinced me that the institution had, in fact, become a very different kind of institution. Of course the irony of the price restructuring coinciding with a more ambitious and inclusive programming is not lost on me, but still it both looks and feels different in significant and intrinsic ways....and I'm not referring to the expanded building itself.</div><div><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238);"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioCS7onH2qsNKbwJfMe5-ZupfVhlXXblTTLhAwwQ3Jol68Uhj2pQcvGoHrGpRkrhIMz4-0a0FaGsq5IZJ91EZuEqpbIuPi3vlMHKtTqCI9xHSYBm30btcKh0Y-gNutFYNEeNx0tdVmi-Sa/s200/IMG_5617.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542604653656297234" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" border="0" /></span><div>Walking through the <i>Contemporary Art from the Collection</i> exhibition and encountering the work of Ellen Gallagher, David Hammons, Mel Edwards, Kalup Linzey, Kerry James Marshall, Paul Chan, Huma Bhabha and Kara Walker among others gave an enhanced and far more accurate sense of the state of American art practice in ways that was certainly not characteristic of much of MoMA's history. Din Q. Le's <i>Project 93--</i>which takes a fresh look at what Viet Namese refer to as "The American War"--reinforced this feeling of being in a very different kind of institutional space, one which spoke with a smartly multifarious voice. Some may recall the placement of the important black Cuban artist Wilfredo Lam's painting--exiled to a location by the coat check-- as one among other slights visited upon the works of artists of color in the museum's past...when and if they were displayed at all. That placement of Lam's work had for so long been an apt metaphor for the museum's relationship to its "darker brothers and sisters." That began to change gradually over the past two decades and now a greater and more ambitious inclusivity seems to be an intrinsic part of MoMA's programming. Clearly in addition to making an attempt to respond to its long history of gender inequity (the recent <i>Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography</i> for example was a tour de force), MoMA is facing head on its former perceived racial myopia as well. As such it felt more welcoming than I remember it feeling in a long time, especially since its auspicious reopening in its greatly expanded Yoshio Taniguchi designed quarters in 2004. In 2006 the Cullman Education and Research Center opened, providing the first building for expanded programming and teachers training, further expanding the museum's outreach. The lesson that 2st century institutions cannot expect to grown and thrive in glorious isolation appears to be one that, to some degree, is being taken to heart.</div><div><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238);"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnpiZg5j9XCdKwRaSF8XncMXJJO8CqyczxOVV5TsNdI6dP0iaVPUODFxNM-q7OAIqn_R9loeEvAsIXjm1fxU4K9NsRwUpD6Roh8nOOvur1suPhPs64xbczxiqrRbztne8K2GTFqO84gMUu/s200/IMG_5592.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542582543797129826" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" border="0" /></span><div>The real eye opening and deeply moving show for me though--and the one that spoke most forcefully to a paradigm of a broader social engagement--was <i><a href="http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1064">Small Scale Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement</a>.</i> The exhibition consisted of various projects designed and built by an international array of architects, all producing forward looking design projects in response to needs experienced in various economically disenfranchised and marginalized communities. The notion of architecture in service to an enhanced social order is, of course, not new. It has been central to much of the discourse surrounding twentieth century architectural practice. Much of this discourse centered on architecture's capacity for the creation of a kind of modern utopia, a reordering and transformation of social structures through design. Much of what became the postmodern critique of this utopian idealism pushed aside these aspirations in favor an architectural practice that sought merely to critique itself, yet another form of the postmodern "deconstruction of the text." In spite of this, groups began to emerge in response to this overly aestheticized set of dictates who began to argue anew for a return to architecture's capacity to have real social benefit. New Urbanism was a direct response to wanting to both reframe and recapture modernism's social dimension. The architects in this exhibition extend from that tradition. They believe that architecture can indeed be a powerful instrument for affecting social change and that architects have ethical and social responsibilities.</div><div><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238);"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB3ncqAONNU6ijictfkTRZh6tG1rYmjit5FfOChrMPhDOuEqU0p8fV5O7KijkG3kmQlrdzoi6ATYAH0dkuKNF58dZLy02T__XJJCTMaTsdr7wyH6NOGTtIKL7MrSXe4HqtX2ZXrXphubyN/s200/IMG_5600.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542586296492530514" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" border="0" /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I have been aware for some time now of Rural Studio, the design build program for undergraduate architecture students at Alabama's Auburn University. Founded in 1993 by the late Samuel "Sambo" Mockbee in Newbern, an impoverished town of some three people, the program has designed and built some 120 private and public projects, including homes, community centers, chapels, farmer's markets and sports facilities. All are designed and built by the students in consultation with the community. In this exhibition they are showing one of their most recent projects, The $20K House, a project that began in 2005 to address the dearth of affordable housing in Western Alabama. In response they have designed and continually refined the $20K house ($12,000 for materials, $8,00 for labor). Using local materials and local contractors to build them, the houses are affordable to a poor community for whom the monthly $100 mortgage payment (based on median income and the house's value) is as much as they can afford. And yet it allows them to own their own home, avoiding the trailers and other makeshift housing they would more often than not have to use as shelter instead. </span></span></div><div><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238);"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWiym-aISSleQ_2SPPIn9NEu4OASgHvrPpohiOF8-cOQPTZZbK551tJ6Ct3v8i5W9rHZnLKbU8LNUcUGejK8nf41IBL3ytoMe-df1gudBe4HFkNTrowo0FlVq1gOJEh8rV5Nr43wwoMZBu/s200/IMG_5597.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542593196626280370" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" border="0" /></span><div>Other projects in the exhibition detail projects situated in Bangladesh (Meti-Handmade School), Burkina Faso (Primary School), Lebanon (Housing for the Fishermen of Tyre), Los Angeles, CA (Inner-City Arts), and Chile (Quinta Monroy Housing) among others. I was particularly moved by Urban Think Tank's Metro Cable project in Caracas, Venezuela. The project ingeniously connects the poor residents of the La Vega and Petare barrios to the rest of the city by means of a cable car system which connects at the end to the public transportation system at the bottom of the steep hill which isolates them from much of the city's social and economic life. Resisting the initial proposal by the city to demolish homes in the barrios to make way for a road project, the architects instead devised an overhead cable system that left the town largely intact. Further, each station along the route has its own social program such as a library, small supermarket, or community center, further enhancing the quality of life of the residents while providing much needed amenities and opportunities for community social engagement as well. </div><div><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238);"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM7YFgyEgvoS29TC6BWreu_UPayByHQnG68CKxXEiuBhUnp9HFid6_eTggiUkTqur5jQjoGxY6wA6pBrQ3TN8PuXUWvMvxrhI8uRSN7AtR3ues_qY0v4EmG8jFYlqSr-XeTPKaGU3NAnDr/s200/Theaster-Gates-The-Dorchester-Project-stair-300x200.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542596555106954338" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 133px;" border="0" /></span><div>These projects, both large and small scale, all provide evidence of how a socially engaged practice can exist in ways that advance simultaneously a set of design and social agendas. These principals are adaptable to any scale; it is the intent that sets it in motion. Here in Chicago artist Theaster Gates, for example, is transforming a once abandoned house on the south side of the city into <a href="http://chicagoartmachine.com/2010/11/11/theaster-gates-the-dorchester-project/">The Dorchester Project</a>, a building which will ultimately act as gathering place, archive, and soul food restaurant for those in the community and anyone else willing to venture south. Gates, like those architects in the MoMA exhibition and other art practitioners working to join their practice to the larger social community are pointing the way to a future in which artists and community come to find that they indeed have more in common than is often thought to be the case. And that can only be a win-win for everyone. Now if only MoMA would do a price rollback on their $20 general admission fee things would begin to feel even better in these times of increasing economic apartheid. That, or giving their free hours greater public promotion so that the less well heeled know the most opportune time to visit, would enhance their newly inclusive stance even further. I am sure that there are those who would suggest that MoMA and other mainstream museums are still the bastions of exclusivity that they always were. Some are, but I would suggest they look a little more closely and consider that the smartest of these institutions realize that they are indeed <i>public </i> institutions and are attempting to come to more meaningful terms with that fact and their various publics, pulling them closer in the institutional conversation. From where I stand at least the house that Abby Rockefeller built seems to comporting itself in ever finer fashion these days.</div><div><br /></div><div>Photographs (from top): Installation view<i>, Small Scale Big Change, </i>MoMA; installation view, <i>Contemporary Art from the Collection, MoMA; </i>Viewers read wishes written by other visitors on Yoko Ono's "Wish Tree"; installation view,<i> Contemporary Art from the Collection </i>(Mel Edwards Lynch Fragments in foreground, General Idea AIDS in background);<i> Small Scale Big Change, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Primary School project; installation view; <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Small Scale Big Change,<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> $20K House; installation view, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Small Scale Big Change, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Metro Cable project; installation view, Theaster Gates, The Dorchester Project.</span></span></span></span></span></i></div><div><i></i></div>Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-35287822881444221092010-06-11T21:32:00.000-07:002010-06-23T14:30:32.000-07:00Art and Community: Rocco Landesman Comes to Town<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPWRfWPuqXCGt3I8apsqwzIQJU2M_WZdrGw-dJeZC9bqgwzyKVyIfxoeIg4qo8_DcjIyaBV6kdKi26hXLtmb6J5pqrWWssF5HphZNccqkPiB1TAOF87lBz059K_66xt8JSD629TKCl1xs3/s1600/Brett's+Kitchen.jpg"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwwDUX-wwWbRITi1xr0JtM1hnwBXTJYXvzV_PuB9Mg_xWkr6QI8jvQ9PafwaihnfbH0eUfmE1YAVgMTzImYMpe4TjhGTCPIvAgsVFWFYnfG68AdHmaGvekWgWf8QGeuMj5BB5IfV0vmnLh/s1600/rocco480.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwwDUX-wwWbRITi1xr0JtM1hnwBXTJYXvzV_PuB9Mg_xWkr6QI8jvQ9PafwaihnfbH0eUfmE1YAVgMTzImYMpe4TjhGTCPIvAgsVFWFYnfG68AdHmaGvekWgWf8QGeuMj5BB5IfV0vmnLh/s200/rocco480.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5481744577519696322" /></a>National Endowment for the Arts chair Rocco Landesman was in Chicago recently, holding a series of meetings, gatherings, and conversations with various institutions and the arts community. I was fortunate enough to be present at one of those gatherings, a Saturday morning breakfast conversation called the Director's Vision Think Tank at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which was hosted by MCA's Pritzker Director Madeleine Grynsztejn, and included various MCA board members, committee members and staff as well as artists and others from Chicago's art community. As artist Kerry James Marshall pointed out, it wasn't nearly as diverse as it might have been, but I don't think it was intended to be, given the number of other site visits Landesman had planned for his week long Chicago tour. Hopefully those were even more diverse than the MCA gathering, which seemed designed to address how that particular institution might begin to wrap a programmatic structure around the idea of creating a more dialogical relationship with the community as it relates to its own future conceptual growth, and to explore that issue with a group of its supporters. Landesman's announcement of the Endowment's new initiative <a href="http://www.arts.gov/artworks/">Art Works</a> would seem to provide a possible economic incentive for institutions to begin to more aggressively think through the possible reconfiguration of the various component parts of the art community and create an expanded and mutually beneficial paradigm and relationship. The Endowment admits that it is indeed following the example of the kind of work that has in fact been going on in communities across the country for some time. <div><br /></div><div>The MCA conversation seemed designed to begin to grapple with the question of how a mainstream institutions can become engaged in these inclusive issues that community art centers and institutions have long been engaged in. One has a reputation for being as exclusive and elitist as the other has for being an essential part of their communities. Hyde Park Art Center, for example (where I am both on the board and the chair of the Exhibitions Committee) has a strong and explicit mandate to be both of service and accessible to its immediate community, even as HPAC seeks to bring art to that community in ways that are are unique. While the specific purpose of the gathering at MCA seemed a bit diffused--<i>was it intended to extend beyond the institutional walls of MCA into the larger art institutional community or not?</i>--it provided an opportunity for an urgent and ongoing conversation that quickly moves towards concrete programming. I would suggest follow up conversations take place periodically and soon, the better to keep the irons from cooling around this issue. I would certainly hope that these conversations would include those board and staff members whose deep and enthusiastic ideas and support are essential to the implementation of what could easily become yet another very interesting but rhetorical conversation.</div><div><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPWRfWPuqXCGt3I8apsqwzIQJU2M_WZdrGw-dJeZC9bqgwzyKVyIfxoeIg4qo8_DcjIyaBV6kdKi26hXLtmb6J5pqrWWssF5HphZNccqkPiB1TAOF87lBz059K_66xt8JSD629TKCl1xs3/s200/Brett's+Kitchen.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5481755565541756098" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 198px; height: 200px; " /></span><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#009900;">A Neighborhood Spot </span></b></div><div>Speaking of community, I recently stopped in for lunch at Brett's Kitchen, a none to fancy luncheonette located in Chicago's River North. The place has the feel of a neighborhood spot that has been in its place forever, serving generations of area workers at breakfast and lunchtime (no dinner service). Indeed I have been having lunch at this place long before I ever moved to Chicago some twelve years ago. It's in one of Chicago's original gallery districts, so my son and I would often stop in and get our usual lunch when we were in town visiting my brother and his family. My son loved the place for its grilled cheese sandwich, and invariably ordered it with a side of fries washed down with a bottle of lemonade. I've been getting the exact same thing there for some fifteen years: a tabouli and Pyrenees cheese sandwich on multigrain bread with lettuce, avocado and tomato, washed down with an Arizona Green Tea, with the occasional home style oatmeal raisin cookie on the side. I'm sure they make other things there, but don't ask me; I honestly wouldn't know. I've never felt the need to order anything else. When I stop in now one of the owners, Lourdes, always asks about my son when she sees me, since he hasn't been there in quite awhile. She wants to know how big he is, what he's doing. Inevitably she is amazed when I tell her he's now six feet three and in college, since he couldn't even see over the counter when we first started frequenting the place, and I had to hold him up so he could place his order. I'll have to take him by for lunch soon. He may have outgrown the grilled cheese sandwich, but I don't think you ever outgrow those places where people still maintain a connection to each other. It's a reassuring feeling that gets harder to find each day with the rapid pace of change. The corner store in Hyde Park, where I used to get my daily paper and other occasional sundries is now closed and the windows forlornly papered over, awaiting a higher paying tenant once the building is upgraded, but Brett's Kitchen--thankfully--is still there in River North, tucked underneath the tracks of the Brown line "L," doing what good neighborhood establishments have always done.</div><div><br /></div><div>Rocco Landesman photograph © Damon Winters/New York Times</div>Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-61868339794667750472010-05-26T18:19:00.000-07:002010-06-23T14:33:04.570-07:00Commencement Remarks - Yale University School of Art<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOkAmkgJrVbhDTyWiU-966A8LJmyZ9m6w-Ma2eofojxG8yq0QBrEIvBjRe-m-O8MCjs6veiamOZ3yYdgN2fs8aoSiQgLs144YD4M_rNkF8EsamLM6h9-_yuY9V8hTgchVfYSWTelgaX04x/s1600/yaleArt.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 178px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOkAmkgJrVbhDTyWiU-966A8LJmyZ9m6w-Ma2eofojxG8yq0QBrEIvBjRe-m-O8MCjs6veiamOZ3yYdgN2fs8aoSiQgLs144YD4M_rNkF8EsamLM6h9-_yuY9V8hTgchVfYSWTelgaX04x/s200/yaleArt.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5475754930842864594" /></a> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; ">I was the speaker at the Yale University School of Art Commencement this past Monday. The School of Art ceremony followed the school wide ceremony on the Old Campus where, among others, Aretha Franklin fittingly received an honorary Doctor of Music degree. The feeling of well earned and shared accomplishment was palpable walking amongst the families of the graduates, and I was reminded yet again of the hard work and sacrifice that these moments are invested with.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I was introduced by Robert Storr, artist, curator and Dean of Yale University School of Art. I had met Rob many years ago at a bon voyage party at his home given for a mutual friend. He had just begun his stint as curator at the Museum of Modern Art at that time and we were Brooklyn neighbors. I would leave New York to start grad school at Yale one year later, in 1991. Rob became School of Art dean in 2006. He's a former University of Chicago Lab School kid and School of the Art Institute of Chicago MFA grad. In his brief remarks to the graduates preceding my remarks Rob reminded the students that there is "a lot of bad energy out there in the art world," and that they would do well to avoid these negative seductions as they began their own careers. Our remarks, taken together, hopefully inspired sober but inspired reflection for the assembled graduating class. My brief remarks follow:</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"Thank you for that kind introduction Rob. A very warm thank you to those of you who invited me here today to address this graduating class. It's a real pleasure to be back. I’d like to congratulate the graduating class and all of the family and friends who are gathered here today to celebrate with you. </span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Before I continue, I’d like to dedicate my remarks this afternoon to Richard Benson, former dean of the School of Art, one of my professors during my time here in the Graduate Photography program and one of the most brilliant and decent human beings I have had the pleasure to know. I want to ask all of you in the graduating class to stand and give a warm shout out to Chip, who couldn’t be here with us today.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Of course I remember well the feeling that those of you graduating from this institution and the School of Art are feeling today. I was certainly proud of what I had accomplished in moving my work forward, glad to have been surrounded by some of the best minds one could study and work with for two years, pleased to have formed a community of support and, quite frankly, scared half out of my mind! The nervousness mixed with anticipation that you are feeling is understandable, since you are indeed at the end of one journey and at the beginning—or the continuation—of another. What I would like to share with you today is my own sense of how you might go about both alleviating that nervousness and thinking about your place in society as artists at this particular moment in the 21</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">st</span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> century.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Once you leave here you will be faced with a number of decisions and choices that you will have to make. Certainly you will be faced with the need to continue your work, even as you are confronted with the realities of having to somehow sustain that practice at a moment of real economic uncertainty. Making art has never been—as far as I know—the safest or easiest career choice. It’s one thing to do this when you are very young without any real responsibilities to shoulder and another make a serious commitment to this as a vocation rather than an avocation. So it should go without saying that making art <i>is</i> a real act of faith. And your faith is about to be seriously tested once you leave here. Now I have not come here today to make you any more nervous about your possible futures than you might already be. Rather I want to encourage you to believe that your work not only should continue, but that it is </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">imperative</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> and that it </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">needs</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> to exist in the world. You each need to continue to believe that your work matters and that through your work you have the ability to change and reshape the world one person or one viewer at a time and to continue to expand your </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">own</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> sense of who you are in the process. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Now you might think that this is an overly ambitious agenda I am proposing here, but it is the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">only</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> agenda to have if you are going to continue along your chosen path. Indeed it is your responsibility to reshape the way the world is experienced through each encounter with your work. The viewer leaving your work has the potential to go back out into the world with new information, new perceptions, new ideas, and by extension a transformed worldview. And hopefully you too will find out something about the world through your </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">own</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> work and feed that back into the world through your own subjectivities. If we are to ensure that our work actually thrives in the world, then we need to be prepared to have a much broader conversation, a conversation that embraces the larger world that we live in, not just the marketplace of the art world. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In the past we in the art community have sometimes paid a heavy price for ignoring that larger world and living inside of an insulated aesthetic bubble that excluded the larger social community. The so-called Culture Wars of the 1980s was a moment in which the art world and the larger social world found themselves on opposite ends of a great divide, viewing each other with mutual hostility and animosity. Opportunistic politicians exploited these tensions.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It didn’t have to be that way, and we can’t afford to let it be that way now. Some of you will be leaving here to return to the communities you left two years ago. Others will be continuing on to become part of new and different communities. Wherever you are going I encourage you to return to those communities not only as artists, but as citizens. I am not asking you to be a social worker, but to consider what it means to be an artist in the fullest sense and how your presence in those communities can be part of a meaningful and necessary dialogue that can both enliven the civic conversation and provide opportunities for your work to embed itself in the social fabric.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Hopefully while you’ve been here these past two years you have also formed a community of support with each other. Contrary to what some might think, no one gets there—wherever there is--on their own; there is no lone genius who makes a solitary breakthrough without a supportive and sometimes challenging community of peers with whom to engage in an ongoing critical conversation. Each of you have that opportunity to encourage and to sustain each other. Embrace it. There is room for more than one person at a time at the table of opportunity. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Speaking of opportunities, it is clear that the current economic climate demands that some of the opportunities you are seeking are going to have to be ones that you yourselves create—not only for yourself, but indeed for each other.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Recently in Philadelphia I spent some time with Sarah Stolfa, who came out of the graduate photography program here just two years ago. Along with another recent MFA graduate from Syracuse University she started the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, an exhibition space that also provides rental digital facilities for area photographers as well as classes and workshops for others. These two artists have not only created positions for themselves, but have created a much- needed resource for other photo-based artists in that city. I did a benefit book signing for them while I was there and look forward to returning at some point to continue supporting their efforts. Think about what </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">you </span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">can do to build and sustain community with each other where you are. It is going to be an increasing necessity, one that you should welcome. So much of my career has been possible only through</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">relationships that span many years, relationships in which I have applauded and sustained the work of others even as they have supported me. And it can be this way for you as well. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I would encourage you to maintain your relationship with this institution as well and make it a part of your community of support. It may have felt at times like they were giving you a serious beat down up in here, but in reality you have been challenged these past two years as a way of preparing you to continue to challenge yourself over the life of your careers as artists. When people ask me what I most remember about my time here I tell them that this School exemplifies a strong work ethic. I believe that as artists we think by making things. The more things one makes the more you are able to work through the challenges of giving coherent and interesting form to your ideas. That rigor and that work ethic will serve you well as you continue on your path as artists. I know it has served me well. I couldn’t stop making work even if I wanted to. I’m afraid Tod Papageorge would belatedly decide to retroactively kick me out of the program. And so I keep working. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Yes, you will each have your School of Art war stories to tell; stories about how you were ripped to shreds during a particularly brutal crit. But it will make sense when you hit a rough spot, as we all do, or when you are in your studio thinking of tossing in the towel perhaps, and you hear and feel that nagging internal voice pushing you to keep going and to figure it out one more time. You will hopefully realize then why you were pushed so hard. There is no quick or clever hustle that will sustain you, no one you can meet whose connections will allow you to not have to put in the long hours producing something of substance.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">So, being an artist </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">is</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> a profound act of faith. I hope that each of you will </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">keep</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> that faith as you go forward, finding your own way to reshape the world around you and to continue to affirm that the work we do as artists </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">can</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">does</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> matter. It’s up to </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">you</span></i></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> to make it so, and I know that you will.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Thank you."</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(Yale School of Art graphic © Paul Rand)</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-22582663893145176032010-03-07T21:32:00.000-08:002013-05-16T19:13:39.398-07:00History Lesson in Philadelphia<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2YdiZulo9JbiyeDtVCAvk4vEe-epfOfDSAx8JXK2frcZK7tg3ydsDvCb93YVhnH8-kDX5ej6n8eA4v9WMuvuL6oIGRRNJ2Is2irDlnemAKP0akaHYWJvkhIV2dU-8qIGsv1e1BrHD7lr-/s1600-h/SPE+Visual.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446132330047484866" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2YdiZulo9JbiyeDtVCAvk4vEe-epfOfDSAx8JXK2frcZK7tg3ydsDvCb93YVhnH8-kDX5ej6n8eA4v9WMuvuL6oIGRRNJ2Is2irDlnemAKP0akaHYWJvkhIV2dU-8qIGsv1e1BrHD7lr-/s400/SPE+Visual.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 266px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #009900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">The Society of Photographic Education Meets in Philadelphia</span></span></div>
<div>
<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The Society for Photographic Education held its national conference this past week in Philadelphia. I had been active as an SPE member in the 1980s and early 1990s, but hadn't attended or participated in one of the conferences for probably fifteen years or more. This years conference theme and title "Facing Diversity," along with an invitation from the conference organizers to be a featured speaker, found me in Philadelphia among some 1200 photographers and photographic educators who came from all over the country to participate in panels, show their work to portfolio reviewers and to interview for various college and university teaching positions. A wealth of other programming--both on and off site--along with the presence of a number of a number of curators, writers, and critical theorists leading and participating in provocative discussions, made for a lively and engaging four days. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>At the conclusion of the conference a convocation program was held that saw a number of awards given to both students and various professionals, acknowledging their works and contributions within the field. The Honored Educator was my dear friend Dr. Deborah Willis, who received an outpouring of heartfelt tributes from former students, those she has mentored over the years and her son Hank Willis Thomas that left not a dry eye in the room. My remarks that evening were dedicated to her. I wanted to provide some historical context for the gathering, since the population of attendees at these events is becoming simultaneously both older and younger. The older folks may or may not know the history leading up that moment and the younger ones coming into the field more recently almost certainly don't. I was pleased to be introduced by Myra Greene, my colleague in the photography department at Columbia College Chicago. The text of my remarks follow below:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>"When I was asked to speak at this event I thought long and hard about what I wanted to say here and indeed if I wanted to say anything at all. Actually I thought about what </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">needed</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> to be said on this occasion in this place as this community gathers here in Philadelphia where over four days a wealth of ideas, thoughts and work would be presented. As a black person I have to say that I was quite honestly somewhat put off by yet another event purporting to be about “Diversity” since on the surface it appeared to be yet another ready opportunity to preach to the choir or to come to Philly and “stick it to the man” while “the man” is actually elsewhere, going about his usual dastardly business, completely ambivalent to the absence of those routinely excluded from the institutional conversation. I also am aware that the conversation about “diversity” as a specific term has gone on now for well over two decades even as during that time some things have changed while sadly more than a few things remain the same. I thought then that it would be helpful to re-examine some recent history, since I believe that it is important to be familiar with that history in order to avoid some recurring pitfalls. I am also aware that some might not know this history at all and subsequently take a lot of hard work and struggle for granted. Whatever advances have been made require an historical framework.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>My interest in making photographs was crystallized in 1969 when I went to see the exhibition </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1595581588/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1565842669&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1KTWEPV73Y6JA30SCDJ1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“Harlem On My Mind”</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> at the Metropolitan Museum of Art when I was sixteen years old. I had never been to a museum before on my own and I have to say that actually didn’t go to the museum that day to see the exhibition. Some of you may know the contentious history of that exhibition. You might know that Benny Andrews and a multiracial group of other artists organized themselves into a group that became the </span><a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,904984,00.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Black Emergency Cultural Coalition</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> to protest the exclusion of the voice of</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the black community in this this exhibition that purported to speak on their behalf. You may know that Meir Kahane formed the Jewish Defense League at that moment to protest what he felt were the anti-Semitic statements made by a young black woman student, whose essay in the exhibition's catalgue took the Jewish shop keepers in Harlem to task for what she considered to be their exploitative relationship with the black community. Unknown to the writer her essay had been altered and footnotes removed, making some of the quotes she used appear to be her own rather than the words of others that she was quoting in her essay. You may or may not know that </span><a href="http://www3.wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/deca-j07.shtml"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Roy DeCarava</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, refusing to give up control of his work in order to be in the exhibition was on the</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">picket line, with a sign that said, “The Foreigners Show the Real Nitty Gritty.” So when I set off that day from Queens, NY to go to the met I was actually going to see what all of the controversy was about, since I had read about in the local papers. As fate would have it by the time I found my way there the picket lines had vanished. Or maybe they had never come that day. At any rate I then had little choice but to go in to see the show. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Usually when I talk about the “Harlem On My Mind” exhibition I talk about seeing the photographs by James Van DerZee for the first time and how that experience informed my decision—along with my own family’s history there—to begin my first project “Harlem, USA.” But what I am in interested in looking at and revisiting this evening is the sense I got very early on of the museum as a highly contested site as the Met sought to move what it considered to be “the black experience” from the streets into the halls of a mainstream museum.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The “Harlem On My Mind” protests were not the only flashpoints taking place between artists, the larger social community and mainstream institutions. That same year Andrews and others petitioned the Whitney Museum of American Art, demanding that they be more responsive to the works of black artists. In the ensuing back and forth the BECC announced what it called “a massive boycott” of the Whitney over its decision to indeed mount an exhibition of works by black artists but with no input from them or black curatorial input.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Similar protests took place at the Museum of Modern Art that same year, led by the </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Workers'_Coalition"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Art Workers Coalition</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, a group of artists, filmmakers, writers, critics and museum staff, pressuring MoMA into implementing various reforms. These included a more open and less exclusive exhibition policy concerning the artists they exhibited and promoted: the absence of women artists and artists of color was a principal issue of contention. The coalition successfully pressured the MoMA and other museums into implementing a free admission day that still exists in certain museums to this day. All of these actions were undertaken by artists to press the issue of how to dynamically engage the museum as a pubic institution and make it more truly responsive to that public and the larger art community.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Not only were artists and their supporters protesting the lack of equitable representation on the part of mainstream public institutions, but more importantly they were forming their </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">own</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> organizations in order to provide the support that others were not. It is worth revisiting this history as a way of also looking forward. So let me talk a little bit about some of that history:</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="color: #242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"> </span></span>In 1967 the </span><a href="http://www.studiomuseum.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Studio Museum in Harlem</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> 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. </span></span></span><span style="color: #242424;">The Junior Council of the Museum of Modern Art lent its considerable backing to the fledging effort shortly thereafter.</span><span style="color: #242424;"> </span><span style="color: #242424; line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">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 Museum of Modern Art lent its considerable backereafter. By 1969 [the very year of the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Harlem On My Mind</span></i></span><span style="color: #242424; line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> controversy] 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).</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #242424; line-height: 150%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #242424;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The museum has been continually exhibiting works by black artists ever since that time. It’s first artist-in-residence was the painter LeRoy Clarke, who was joined shortly thereafter by Valerie Maynard and Lloyd Stevens. The museum has been providing work space, stipends and exhibitions to artist continuously ever since and many of those artists have gone on to become some of the most celebrated artists working in this country. The numerous publications that Studio Museum in Harlem has produced and the curators and art administrators it has trained are all testimony to its endearing importance. But it is important to remember that it began with one artist’s proposal and then another one joining him to help make that vision a physical reality, one that continues to provide much needed and extraordinary support some forty years later.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #242424;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span style="color: #242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Also in 1969 the photographer, curator, writer and educator Nathan Lyons along with his wife, the artist Joan Lyons, founded the </span><a href="http://www.vsw.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Visual Studies Workshop</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> in Rochester, NY. For forty years now VSW has been providing a resource to the community of photographers and those committed to the artist book. Their publication </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">AfterImage</span></i></span><span style="color: #242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> has been published consistently and has been an absolutely valuable source of information as well as providing an outlet for those writing on photography and media. VSW Press has published numerous artists books and their residency program has supported numerous artists as well, myself included. Again, it was two artists who undertook the hard work needed to create, build and sustain this institution.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span style="color: #242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Another history lesson:</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In 1974 five New York Puerto Rican photographers—Charles Biasiny-Rivera, Roger Caban, George Malave, Phil Dante and Nestor Cortijo--came together to found an organization that became </span><a href="http://www.enfoco.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">En Foco</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. While initially formed to create exhibition opportunities locally for their work and others, the organization for over thirty-five years now has exhibited, published and otherwise promoted the works of hundreds of photographers of color and provided workshops, portfolio viewings and other programming that have probably—both directly and by extension—benefited thousands of photographers as well as providing a resource for other institutions seeking the work of those photographers and artists. I know that many of you in this room today—including myself--have been the beneficiaries of the work that those five visionary photographers did as the organization has moved forward and grown over the years. It is important to remember that En Foco was not formed by someone deciding to open their doors and “diversify” or otherwise reconsider their pattern of exclusion. It was founded by photographers, by five Newyoricans who had a vision and attached a plan to it and did the hard work needed to make it a reality. So let’s acknowledge Miriam Romais and the current staff of EnFoco for the work they continue to do.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Let me continue with this history lesson. Around that same time in 1973 two former Syracuse University students Phil Block and Tom Bryan set up and began running the Community Darkrooms, a public access photography facility they had created by petitioning the University for much needed work space for area photographers. Community Darkrooms soon expanded and became </span><a href="http://www.communitydarkrooms.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Light Work/Community Darkrooms</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. Phil and Tom then brought in Jeffrey Hoone, who became and remained the director of Light Work from 1982 until recently, bringing in Hannah Frieser as its recently appointed director to continue the work of this extraordinary organization. Light Work’s residency program has provided an opportunity for hundreds of photographers over the years to have the necessary support to pursue their work in an absolutely supportive environment, and to disseminate that work through the publication </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Contact Sheet</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, which they grew from an 11X17 folded black ink broadside into a major publication which regularly puts that work in front of an audience of thousands. It would seem to me that we as photographers should be paying them for this, but no, they pay </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">us</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> while also providing this ongoing support through their residency and publication program. The existence of Light Work and its extraordinary growth makes it clear the power we each have to be the ones to make the difference that we need. I’d like to ask Jeff Hoone to stand so we can acknowledge his hard work on our behalf along with Hannah Frieser and current Light Work staff.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I could repeat these story in so many other ways by talking about so many other institutions. I could talk about </span><a href="http://www.exitart.org/site/pub/main/index.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Exit Art</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, which was founded by the artist Papo Colo and Jeanette Ingberrman, or </span><a href="http://www.autograph-abp.co.uk/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Autograph</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, which was founded by several black photographers in London in 1988 who had previously started a group called D-Max, or we can talk about </span><a href="http://www.g-a-s-p.net/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">GASP Arts</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, founded five years ago by artist Magdalena Campos Pons and her husband, the musician Neil Leonard.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I had a wonderful pleasure last night of participating in an event at the </span><a href="http://www.philaphotoarts.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Philadelphia Photo Art Center</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, a new organization here in Philadelphia that is being run by two young photographers, Sarah Solfa and Christopher Gianunzio, who are doing some really meaningful work right here in this community, creating opportunities and infrastructure for photographers here in Philly. All of these people, and others too numerous to mention, and some I don’t even know remind us what it is we as a community need to continue to do if we are to ensure our survival. There is no one else, quite frankly, but us. As the saying goes, “We </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">are</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> indeed the ones we have been waiting for.” I think we always have been and we always will be.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I believe that it is this self initiative, along with continuous public and vocal agitation insisting that public institutions be truly reflective of the public that sustains them by their tax dollars as well as demanding that public institutions reflect the very nature of the society in which they are situated, that will bring about the change that we both want and need. It was those public demonstrations, protests, writings and other forms of agitation that created whatever inroads </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">were </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">made over the past several decades. And progress </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">has</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> been made, but </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">only </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">because it was demanded. If you want an example of what happens when we fail to publicly agitate for change, what happens when we let our guard down, what happens when we stop letting people know that we have the capacity to get seriously pissed off if we are disrespected, one has only to look as far as the current </span><a href="http://www.whitney.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Whitney Biennial</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. In an exhibition that ironically uses an image of Barack Obama on the catalogue cover, we find among other things absolutely no Latino artists and a total of three black artists among fifty-five artists in the exhibition. Artists from other non-white cultures are also underrepresented or not represented at all. What is your response to that? What would</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the response have been in 1969? I can’t imagine that this kind of situation would have been tolerated at that moment. Perhaps because there </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">have</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> been some changes over these past decades that we have become complacent or less vigilant. After all a few people of color have received MacArthur Fellowships, Rome Prizes, Guggenheim Fellowships and other forms of significant recognition. Some of us may have books, commercial gallery exhibitions, residencies where others pay us to simply do the work we want to do. I’m one of them.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And others here tonight are also among those fortunate enough to have have made important inroads, all due to those who came and agitated before us. So it’s easy to think the work is done, the struggle over. And yes, it’s frustrating to realize that even as progress is being made pressure must still be continuously applied.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And then along comes the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Whitney Biennial 2010</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> to remind us just how little some things </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">have</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> changed as far as some people are concerned and why we must continue to agitate for an inclusive presence. With all of the profound problems we are facing as a country right now and for all of the frustration that grows out of a seeming inability to directly affect real and sustained social and political change, some have said that the progressive movement in this country is experiencing a kind of collective depression and that this explains the eerie silence surrounding so much of political discourse from the left at this moment. I wonder if those of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">us</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> who have struggled so long in our various arenas may not also be suffering from a kind of battle fatigue? One thing I </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">do</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> know is that those who would like to maintain the status quo of exclusion </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">never</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> seem to get tired of doing so. And </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">we</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> must never tire of letting them know that we belong at the table as much as anyone else, even as we go about the business of building our own tables.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So what to do? I don’t think it’s for me to come here tonight and answer that question. Rather I can only hope that through the example of history we get a sense of what needs to be done. Finally, I’d like to share a few thoughts on “Diversity,” since that is the theme of this conference. Diversity to me implies that there is still some normative paradigm at the center that we are seeking to destabilize rather than doing away with it in favor of something quite different. It suggests that institutions have an inherently white and male identity that needs to be added to in order to fundamentally alter the identity of those institutions. </span><span style="color: #242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">To operate out of this paradigm encourages, to my mind, a kind of tokenism by yet another name and seeks to trade on the momentary (but always empty and short lived) self-congratulatory excitement of seeing a new color in still unexpected places. It would seem to me that by now we should be approaching a point where </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">anyone</span></i></span><span style="color: #242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> should be expected to be </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">anywhere</span></i></span><span style="color: #242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. I think it's time to turn away from "diversity" as an operative objective and turn instead towards the more meaningful and substantial goal of making institutional spaces ever more<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"> inclusive</span> and to embrace the goal of inclusivity, in which everyone's identity is central to the whole. One way to accomplish this is to consider how in fact the institution's identity can be meaningfully transformed and expanded conceptually by this enhanced inclusiveness</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">in a way to deeply transforms the very nature of that institution. Inclusivity implies a desire to actually </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">change</span></i></span><span style="color: #242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> through institutional expansion, while diversity implies to me that those being brought in have to simply fit into the normative and dominant existing paradigms and simply add "color" to it.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In the end of the day we still need to agitate for a transformed worldview within institutional culture that embraces the truly global and multiracial character of our human community. Anything less than that should met with continuing, vocal and vociferous protest."</span></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--> </div>
Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-64377751537782525652010-02-13T17:58:00.000-08:002010-06-05T21:05:04.947-07:00Trying to Make A Difference at CAA<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHZB4njOyGCKra879w2TXzcojjA6bsIktPQIfRr-NlWpPbCIsbAebpLKhTJRPc7AfOrvgjNsRxmOasGsvAblT0bEyvDmHuQSHJ7idK-0Fqzb4xELd9Vg64LhZMT21qlguP6KxJONWC1sNY/s1600-h/McLin.jpg"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLuWpBL6h39z6pCwGwgzj_f9bEmY2Lev4AqsDGXspdhWwZC8MaOVxNewFfKvBpk75tFeCZgKq8hoAOgmYLxaImXlY7K1pJn3eQ5EF0SMr_5gAoobOCanxa6_Q7n6LhdEfGF60NBL7K24HU/s1600-h/CAAchicagobanner.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 74px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLuWpBL6h39z6pCwGwgzj_f9bEmY2Lev4AqsDGXspdhWwZC8MaOVxNewFfKvBpk75tFeCZgKq8hoAOgmYLxaImXlY7K1pJn3eQ5EF0SMr_5gAoobOCanxa6_Q7n6LhdEfGF60NBL7K24HU/s400/CAAchicagobanner.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437916294822605762" /></a><br /><!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Published here are the remarks I gave during my opening Keynote Address at the College Art Association Conference Convocation here in Chicago on Wednesday evening. My remarks were preceded by an awards ceremony in which a number of individuals were given awards of recognition and distinction for their work. Most notable for me were the awards given to Emory Douglas, Barkley Hendricks and Suzanne Lacy, <span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">since each has figured in the formation of my own history as an artist in some way. Gratifying too was the award given to Holland Cotter, often the only art critic at the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">New York Times</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"> to consistently note the presence of artists of color in his ongoing criticism and reviews. You can see the full list of awardees here: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; "><a href="http://www.collegeart.org/awards/2010awards"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"></span></a></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; "><a href="http://www.collegeart.org/awards/2010awards"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">http://www.collegeart.org/awards/2010awards</span></a></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">My remarks, "The Art World and the Real World: Bridging the Great Divide" follow:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Thank you. To all of those at the College Art Association who thought that I might have something to contribute this evening through my brief remarks I thank you. I am particularly pleased to be standing here this evening when Suzanne Lacy, Barkley Hendricks and Emory Douglas are being recognized and honored. All three are a part of my history and all three make clear that making work with and about ordinary people can lead to a sustained and meaningful practice. As a member of the Black Panther Party when I was fifteen and sixteen years old I sold <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">The Black Panther</span> newspaper which Emory Douglas designed and did all of the artwork for. So I’m particularly pleased to see him recognized by this organization tonight.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I would like to dedicate my remarks this evening to several people whose lives and work made a strong impact on me at different points in my life. From each of them I think there is much we can learn about how to conduct ourselves meaningfully in the world. To <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">John Coltrane</span>, who became my first artist role model. John Coltrane, through his brief life and enduring music exemplified how a sense of commitment and vision could be brought spectacularly into the world through ones art form with both power, creative and intellectual rigor, grace and a never ending adherence to mastering the challenge of craft. Coltrane once said, “I want my music to be a force for good.” To my late friend, the poet and performance artist <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Sekou Sundiata</span>. Sekou lifted his well crafted words off of the printed page and found a new voice and power by bringing those words together with music and then continuing to find ways to insightfully enlarge the scope of his craft and bring his presence and concerns to ever larger audiences through the stage and recordings. Sekou reflected through his work a place for personal experience, cultural specificity and the power of the word to transform lives. Finally, to <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Alma Nomsa John</span>. If you’re not from New York, and spent time in the Harlem community in the 1960s and 70s you have probably never heard of Alma John. A registered nurse and community activist, she worked in the Harlem, NY community for many years. Wherever she spoke Alma John always ended her remarks with these words: “If you know teach, if you don’t know learn. Each one teach one. Each one reach one.” These three individuals to me suggest the ways in which each one of us has the power and ability to transform the world around us.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>There are a lot of professional activities that take place at this conference as you very well know. And since I’ve been asked to give these remarks this evening, I’d like to ask you to join me in asking yourselves why </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">you</span></span></span></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""> are here, what do </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">you</span></span></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""> hope to accomplish and why these events and indeed an organization like the College Art Association matters; why the annual gathering of this community matters. What this gathering <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">could</span> mean for you beyond what you </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">know</span></span></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""> you came for.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>There are a number of definitions of community. Among them “community” is defined as:</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">•</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i> a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals</i></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>• a similarity or identity: </i></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>those who share a community of interests.</i></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><i> • joint ownership or liability</i></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I happen to be one of those who came of age in the late 1960s. And if you are my age, you probably heard a phrase in the 60s that was something of a call to arms, a defining statement. For me, when I first heard it I knew I had been given my marching orders for life. That statement was, “You’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.” I believed it then and I still believe it now. Of course, you don’t get to my age and still see things in absolute terms, but this statement is one that I think can be used as a meaningful compass for all of us, as it suggests that all of us indeed have the ability and the power—the responsibility--to continually reshape the world that we live in. Everyone in this room tonight has the ability to make a difference, to change the world one person at a time.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Too often we think that the ability to make a difference is work best left to people like my Hyde Park neighbor and our president Barack Obama. Or maybe you think it’s the responsibility of college or university presidents, provosts, deans, museum directors, department heads, or other people who are “in charge.” Maybe you think the heavy lifting of “making a difference” is something we assign </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">those</span></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""> folks to do. It’s a very convenient way of letting ourselves off the hook, a very convenient way to avoid considering how </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">we</span></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""> are going to make a difference while we browbeat the chosen few about the slow pace of progress. Or maybe you’ve grown cynical and feel that nothing can really change for the better, so why bother to do anything beyond the bare minimum required of you.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I’ve been teaching for some thirty-four years now, starting at a number of community based institutions in New York and continuing to various colleges and universities. The past eleven of those years I’ve taught at Columbia College Chicago. And at Columbia we have a credo that I think speaks to what I have been talking about. That credo is that we teach our students to “author the culture of our times.” That is something that I believe in deeply and it’s something that I encourage each of you to buy into; to consider how through your own work, through your teaching, your writing, your research, the exhibitions you curate, the students you mentor you are indeed authoring the culture of the times that we are living in and teaching others to do the same.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(36, 36, 36); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>And in spite of the ambivalence and depression that I know some of you are starting to feel as the political season has moved from one of campaigning to the much harder task of governing , I believe we are still in a moment of profound change as a society, one that is forcing each of us to acknowledge that our fates are in some real ways a common one. But fiscal crisis or no, I believe we are always in a moment where each of us can choose to change the world one person at a time.</span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(36, 36, 36); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I have been somewhat perplexed recently by the fact that while all of this major social, political and economic upheaval is taking place all around us, the art world—from all outward signs- still appears to be the same place it always was; quietly tightening its belt perhaps, but still predicating its existence on a set of exchanges that often seem completely out of synch with what is dramatically and traumatically taking place in the larger world. The seeming disengagement of the art world at this moment of seismic change does not bode well for our survival as a community, with the exception, perhaps, of those fortunate enough to find a rare place at the already crowded and increasingly shrinking table of excess and privilege.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">The art world is often presumed to be a rather liberal place. But--to be sure--it contains more than its fair share of those who are invested in re-inscribing art and culture itself as an arena of privilege and exclusion.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">Too often these acts of exclusion have left us as a community ever more isolated from the larger social community. It is that larger community that has the potential to embrace our work and make it imperative, giving it a much deeper and sustained presence in the fabric of society.</span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span style="color:#242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "><span style="color:#242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>To see what happens when we isolate ourselves from that larger social community, we have to look no further than the "The Culture Wars" of the 1980s. The so-called “Culture Wars” were, to my mind, a toxic combination of two things: it was the culmination of increasing social, cultural and fiscal conservatism on the one hand, and the increasing sense of insularity with which certain segments of the art community and institutions began (or continued) to function on the other. The two combined created a kind of social "perfect storm," which Jesse Helms and others on the conservative right expertly and successfully exploited. And sadly a whole lot more people than those on the right’s immediate radar paid the price by the wedge that was further driven between the art world and the larger community. This struggle between civic discourse and engagement versus a kind of absolute aestheticism and social elitism was embodied by public art projects like Richard Serra's "Tilted Arc," a 120 foot long and 12 feet high length of Corten steel that effectively bissected the Federal Plaza in downtown Manhattan, blocking immediate access to the building for those who worked there and impeding access to those in the vicinity. </span></span></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span style="color:#242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "><span style="color:#242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Complaints arose almost immediately from those who worked in the building and now had to take a long detour around the piece to get both in and out of the building. Serra remarked at the time that, </span></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">"The viewer becomes aware of himself and of his movement through the plaza. As he moves, the sculpture changes. Contraction and expansion of the sculpture result from the viewer's movement. Step by step the perception not only of the sculpture but of the entire environment changes.” To those who questioned whether this was an appropriate public work Serra responded, “Art is not democratic. It is not for the people."</span></span><span style="color:#242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""> (Less anyone interpret these remarks as “Bey bashes Serra,” I want to be clear that as much as I do find Serra’s work to be very significant—I went to New York to see his exhibition at MoMA twice—I am talking about this particularly piece at that particular site at that particular moment in history.) Throughout the long and heated controversy surrounding the piece advocates from the arts community framed the issue as strictly a first amendment one, dismissing those who objected to its placement as no more than a group of philistines, uniformly and foolishly unappreciative of the hulking steel object gracing their midst. At the final public hearing before the piece was dismantled 122 artists, curators, art administrators, critics and museum people testified passionately on behalf of keeping the piece where it was while 58 people who worked in the building spoke against it and were vilified by their overly aestheticized neighbors.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span style="color:#242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>This is, of course, only one example of a moment in recent history when the art world was enlarged caught in the crossfire of cultural and social outrage on the one hand, without looking at any of the broader social implications and nuances. Is that art world any different today than it was twenty years ago? What world do we believe we are teaching our students to enter into? In the twenty odd years since the Serra, Mapplethorpe, Serrano and NEA controversies we have experienced—via burgeoning technology—an even more extraordinary proliferation of visual culture in our collective midst. What is the place of visual art and intellectual criticality in this kind of culture? How do we talk to our students about the differences between visual culture and art making? How do we teach our students to be both critical producers as well as critical consumers of visual culture? How can we teach our students to make work that cuts through the overwhelming detritus of consumer driven visual culture and make work that has the ability to touch and by extension change lives. How do we teach our students that—like John Coltrane—their work too can be a force for good?</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span style="color:#242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Are we as artists and institutions engaging in the work of forging meaningful dialogues with our communities and various constituencies in ways that we previously hadn't? Are we ready to rethink the notion of institutional prerogative, privilege, and exclusivity, or is the current institutional climate as insular as ever? I have a strong feeling that how museums and cultural institutions answer these questions will determine whether they remain viable or end up in a state of crisis, or worse yet, shuttered as has happened to more than one institution recently.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span style="color:#242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Some of you, of course, have been working and teaching out of a framework of inclusiveness for some time, leading our students by example towards a more holistic art practice, one that makes the world your studio and acknowledges that everyone has a potential place in the conversation. Others have been involved in this work for a long time from the institutional vantage point. I invite those of you who are still laboring under the belief that we can each survive in exquisite isolation to reconsider.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span style="color:#242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Failure to acknowledge the profoundly changing social landscape and to devise a new paradigm with which to engage and to instead ignore it is an act of profound arrogance and willful ignorance that we cannot afford. For too long young artists have defined the art world as a kind of place where one attempts to do the most elaborate or provocative tap dance for the highest bidder. The art world that students are hoping to enter often appears to be little more than a place for the production of endlessly proliferating expensive and provocative objects, supported by a shrinking marketplace of commerce that attempts to keep its game face on lest anyone know that the game has pretty much changed in deep and intractable ways.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>How do we then define the work that we do in our respective fields, in all of the arenas that are represented here tonight? As educators how do we teach our students (and ourselves) to think about what makes their work meaningful? How do we go about making what we do matter not just inside of the institutional space of the college, university, museum or gallery, but outside of it as well. How do we take charge of making sure that our work and ideas have meaning and purpose </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">beyond</span></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""> the institutional walls? How do we make our work meaningful and imperative in a changing and destabilized social landscape? How do we teach our students that their work can be meaningful in ways that are not simply about trying to feed the market economy and that there are other economies and contexts where their work finds a place to be deeply meaningful and transformative? How do we teach our students to envision their practice as something that is deeply embedded in society, not separate from it? How do we teach our students that their work can and should have a much broader audience than simply the art world proper? How can we teach our students (and ourselves) to be participants in a broader social conversation, a conversation that concerns the many and not just the self-preoccupied few? This I believe is the challenge for those of us who teach and those of us who hope to continue to find a meaningful place in the world as members of this art community in the broadest sense.</span></span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Those of us who teach should always seek to remind our young artists in training of their connectedness to the world and to encourage them to devise ways of engaging in forward looking practices that both demonstrate a deeply held set of personal beliefs, individual attention to the rigor of their discipline but also a clear sense of how those concerns might deeply impact the world they are living in. We should also encourage our students—in the strongest possible way—to form communities of support and to be actively engaged as both citizens and artists in the communities in which they live. We should also be encouraging them to form communities amongst themselves, since contrary to historical myth no individual ever made significant strides on their own. The myth of the lone genius is really the erasure of that person’s community in order to create a mythic isolated "genuis." Certainly there is no honor in teaching students that their only job is to make their work and to then wait for someone to shower rewards upon them.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">Those of us who are practicing artists should ourselves be ever mindful of the need to continue shaping our own practices in less insular ways, believing that art’s transformative capacities are available to anyone who we can put our work in front of and no one is less deserving of the experience of that work than anyone else.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>And those of us who are writing, teaching and otherwise shaping and presenting past and present history need to be mindful that history traditionally has always been a place of selective exclusion as much as it has been a place for selective inclusion masquerading as historical fact. I was reminded of this not too long when I found myself at dinner with a couple of young curators and their patrons. </span></span><span style="color:#242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">None of them knew the work or name of a single black artists that I asked them about, all of whom I confess had emerged before the 1990s. None of these rang a bell for these young art historians and museum workers who are charged with mounting exhibitions and writing publications that document the expressive work of our time. And these were not obscure or marginal names...to me anyway.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">If one is going to do this work, one has to be willing and able to do the serious job of excavating history, not merely recognizing the already recognized and hitching your wagon to them. There are still histories waiting to be told and written, and the subjects are indeed hiding in plain sight. One has to believe that the work of bringing others into the center of the discourse truly matters.</span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span style="color:#242424;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>If we can encourage our students to live an inclusive and mindful life through their work we leave them better prepared to function broadly in the world. Over the many years I have been teaching I have seen my students go on to receive all sorts of honors, from the Rome Prize to the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Pulitzer Prize to name a few. But my greatest joy lies in knowing that I was part of a process of helping them each to find their voice and to realize that their voices mattered and could reshape the world in which they live in meaningful ways.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>This is what we as a community should commit to: The empowerment and transformation of each individual who comes in touch with our work in whatever form it takes. If we do this, we will be able to say—as I think we would all like to be able to say—that we are truly functioning as a community, one that seeks to be as inclusive and </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">reflective of our many histories as possible, and one that seeks to replace privilege and elitism with the realization that everyone is capable of what Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to as “painstaking excellence.” </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">That</span></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">, quite simply, is the responsibility that I believe all of us in this community called the College Art Association share."</span></span></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">RIP, Nathaniel McLin</span></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHZB4njOyGCKra879w2TXzcojjA6bsIktPQIfRr-NlWpPbCIsbAebpLKhTJRPc7AfOrvgjNsRxmOasGsvAblT0bEyvDmHuQSHJ7idK-0Fqzb4xELd9Vg64LhZMT21qlguP6KxJONWC1sNY/s200/McLin.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440850808243502626" style="float: right; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 151px; height: 200px; " /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 24px; font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Nathaniel McLin was a true gadfly, constantly encouraging those in Chicago to pay more attention to African American artists while also demanding that African American artists continue to raise the conceptual and aesthetic bar in order to secure an expanded place for their work in the critical conversation. Here in Chicago, where critical support for the arts is sparse at best--whatever the color of the artist--Nathaniel was a true beacon and a real lover of the arts. His radio shows, featuring a wide range of artists engaged in serious and often challenging discussions about their work, were broadcast for nineteen years in the Chicago area. McLin could always be found at whatever opening, exhibition symposium or public program was taking place around town. An astute writer, he penned an essay for artist Kerry James Marshall's Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago publication<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Kerry-James-Marshall-Meditations-Aesthetics/dp/0933856792"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Kerry James Marshall: One True Thing: Meditations On Black Aesthetics </span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">that should be required reading, outlining the ways in which museums and their supporters and African American museum support groups can shape museum's acquisition of works by black artists and further influence the institutional culture and experience in strategic ways.</span></span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span><!--EndFragment--><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>A native of Chicago, McLin grew up in an atmosphere steeped in art and culture. His mother is Lena McLin, a renowned composer and educator and his great uncle was Thomas Dorsey, the father of modern gospel music. I will miss Nathaniel's presence, as he was one of the few people who could explain to me some of the orthodoxy of black cultural Chicago and its history and present that I still haven't quite grasped. That he was able to be both highly critical and deeply supportive made him a figure who will be deeply missed.</span></div>Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-22295723311168385042009-12-15T19:38:00.000-08:002013-05-16T19:18:29.793-07:00Emory Douglas - Forty Years Later and Larry Sultan, R.I.P.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZd6sUkPLap4-bYFkIMWaWS9v97qg_B0G7DUdyYrOWkuDbOrAVMIZQiDMes_JjhmfHePZZF6_nHtqSPsxoPwHzK9Is50nMR0oDNssIfyH94XQPq-CxRotdqdvLZgvNen8wMte7hRfpks8u/s1600-h/huey-and-bobby2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"></a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfS00jESYYFEaeyUgKGJcmYtFA2gYtWrgcpdTRNS5JNvD9_M19LAbKlgv8iY3o6XLzBgGPevpbvIUOMtvXJar29F1SDI0E7d3if0C5JdxiHJ9GJgtWJaMFk2GHpv_ARSq4GuYuEoHd6ezv/s1600-h/powertothepeople.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5415674400363582130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfS00jESYYFEaeyUgKGJcmYtFA2gYtWrgcpdTRNS5JNvD9_M19LAbKlgv8iY3o6XLzBgGPevpbvIUOMtvXJar29F1SDI0E7d3if0C5JdxiHJ9GJgtWJaMFk2GHpv_ARSq4GuYuEoHd6ezv/s400/powertothepeople.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 261px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN96wqZBAvU9tSSJrTiaF2oOa2VNPov_-ssqm57FQoZ1iYFBDqlVuVYY-Y-N_mBgtbhUTfN-jMBbuuJk2IkkVtpl23mnkkFxU5HF8AF9m6lUXfcus_giVhGi8PXs13A6ySZoPMDej2lvOm/s1600-h/powertothepeople.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><br /></a>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">The 60s and 70s Redux: All Power to the People</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I could not have imagined when I was sixteen and seventeen years old selling <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">The Black Panther</span> newspaper on Jamaica Avenue in Queens, NY that forty years later I would finally meet the man who not only visually shaped the paper but also created the iconic images that were the visualization of the Black Panther Party's ideology and aspirations. And never in a million years would I have expected to meet him at a point when those same provocative and revolutionary images had been published in a coffee table style tome, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.rizzoliusa.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780847829415">Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas</a></span>, straight from the presses of the venerated Rizzoli publishing house and were being exhibited in white box museums, both in the United State and abroad. Given how vociferously these images--of policemen and politicians depicted as slovenly pigs and gun toting black citizens threatening to level the uneven social playing field through martial force--had been vilified by mainstream political culture during the times in which they were made, it would have seemed positively surreal had anyone proposed the scenario as it now exists some forty years later.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0000ee;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5415687938156597954" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHJekaVuqAu6ihn-zbeC-mF4W6vsdbKWP6ffs6ygRQBQziFVqykhkqn4UVWduVid5-19pwmA7rnCFWi-_7QxJjd338lVUGBq7lsM2LlmDRYqsJU4alUAQuS6mHaa2Z-oYhQovq_TmynCCY/s320/black-panter-emory-douglas1.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 230px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 320px;" /></span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>My own interest in photography had been sparked in 1968 when I inherited a camera from my godfather who had recently passed away. The Harlem On My Mind exhibition opened at the Metropolitan Museum the following year to picket lines, demonstrations and much controversy. The war in Vietnam was escalating, the first wave of the women's movement was taking shape and the civil rights movement had morphed into a movement of a more revolutionary and less conciliatory kind. Indeed, it was a moment when, "You were either part of the solution or you were part of the problem," as the popular saying of that time went. And so at the age of fifteen I found my way to the Black Panther Party's local office, located on New York (now Guy Brewer) Boulevard in my Queens, NY neighborhood. A high school classmate and fellow drummer Frank X Morris was already in the Party, and his political rhetoric and analysis seemed impressive enough to lead me to feel that I too needed to belong to an organization that was clearly not advocating a turn the other cheek strategy in the face of the increasingly repressive force that the political right was unleashing against those who did not support its policies, whether in Vietnam or in the larger social arena, and dared to protest. There was a popular saying within the Party that "Youth makes the revolution," and we were trying to live that out viscerally in our own young lives. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0000ee;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418456281661302530" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1IUzR1ls97gPXTl79MdAnqoYu9UC_LVj4GPGo5B1nGGvKXeFxKtJ8fh1y57Pz6tAg5Hs0UigQ6BaVr4m9SvilxYBQSufWQVbeZRyGEn0_N7MlI7UICdmT8vHwlHBvZwPW7enuS5j_5tMs/s320/Black+Panther+Newspaper.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 320px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 217px;" /></span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>After signing in that first day and later attending my first political education class (after securing a copy of the then ubiquitous little Red Book by Chairman Mao Tse Tung) I was soon given a stack of newspapers to sell. Apparently one chose their own sales strategy and I quickly chose to park myself on the busy corner of Jamaica Avenue and 165th Street, in the heart of the main commercial section of Jamaica, Queens. Selling papers on weekends, my quiet earnestness must have been persuasive as I had no problem quickly selling out of each stack of papers I received. I was drawn to the Black Panther Party because of its desire to find concrete solutions to the needs of the poor and most oppressed segment of the black community: their establishing of a free breakfast program for children before the age of free school public school breakfasts was one of many ways that they attached concrete programs to very real needs. Before it was governmental policy the Party had realized that kids couldn't learn on empty stomachs and so set up these programs in each of the cities in which it was located in order to feed those kids whose families couldn't always afford to feed them. <br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0000ee;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5419623566431005794" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZd6sUkPLap4-bYFkIMWaWS9v97qg_B0G7DUdyYrOWkuDbOrAVMIZQiDMes_JjhmfHePZZF6_nHtqSPsxoPwHzK9Is50nMR0oDNssIfyH94XQPq-CxRotdqdvLZgvNen8wMte7hRfpks8u/s200/huey-and-bobby2.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 200px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 194px;" /></span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>While I must admit that the Party's emphasis on armed urban warfare (or self defense) never quite seemed like a plausible strategic program for anything other than a hugely lopsided bloodletting, I was drawn to its activist principals. A number of us were already applying these activist tactics at the high school level. Several of us black students were by then members of the Black Panther Party and, along with some white student activists who were members of Students for a Democratic Society, we decided to take inequitable matters into our own hands and request a meeting with Ben Michaelson, principal of our school, Benjamin N. Cardozo High School located in the then almost exclusively white neighborhood of Bayside, Queens. The upstart of this "meeting"--which almost immediately escalated into a confrontation--was that we barricaded the principal in the office with us, insisting that he concede to our demands for black teachers, African American history classes, and greater student participation in the school's administration among other things. The school's response, predictably, was to call the police, who quickly showed up in wave after wave of squad cars and police wagons. After smashing down the barricaded principal's office door when we refused to open it the police hoarded us all into their wagons for the brief ride to Queens County jail to await release to our variously disgruntled parents after which we waited for our collective day in Criminal Court in nearby Kew Gardens. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Now known as the Cardozo 41 we each ultimately received our own individual forms of justice. At least one of the teachers who was in the office with us that day who supported our stance and refused to testify in court was summarily fired or transferred and the school soon hired what we called its own "Mod Squad," a trio of black and white hip looking, attractive and young plain clothes police officers (two men and a women, just like the characters Pete, Julie and Linc of TV's "Mod Squad") whose job it was to stay close to us resident political "trouble makers" and be a visible but inconspicuous law enforcement presence as political unrest continued with classroom takeovers and moratoriums against the war in Vietnam. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">[Readers will no doubt be amused to know that Reginald velJohnson of "Die Hard" and later "Family Matters" fame was among those friends and classmates involved in the classroom takeovers and teach-ins as was Danny Simmons, one of New York's cultural stalwarts.]<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> </span></span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>All of this only fortified my resolve to continue the agitational and organizational work of the Party, which sadly began to implode as a consequence of various government instigated killings, disruptive agent infiltrations and other tactics directly related to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO">Conintelpro</a> program that was established by the FBI to neutralize political dissidents. </span></span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0000ee;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418467838562180066" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSsKlnbIKbCeGUMNZbCOL70aiJpxOBJffqs-CTQNpIzB5xujNhjLoFOEKZ6Y7Lx3sVFUiT_4SF8qr8x58MoTQQggfldy5Nxi_LRuAJQBiprz2oCaeRK8pppnZ3ClT6mmq5RroAfeBx8G9_/s320/emory+portrait.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 223px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 320px;" /></span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The images created by Emory Douglas were, of course, central to the Party's identity. In addition to giving visual form to it programs and beliefs, this work clearly established a function for art. In addition to those pervasive images of policemen and politicians as ubiquitous pigs, Douglas also created works that celebrated the lives of the individuals in black communities struggling against great odds to maintain their dignity and humanity. I had only recently gotten my first camera around the time I joined the Black Panther Party and some years later began photographing people in Harlem, NY. This first project, "Harlem, USA," celebrated the lives of everyday people in this black urban community and was very much in the spirit of that work by Emory Douglas that lifted up these same largely uncelebrated lives. I would like to think that Douglas' images constitutes part of the foundation on which rests my own work. Much like other artists I was drawn to early on--<a href="http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.beardenfoundation.org/images/bio_image3.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.beardenfoundation.org/artlife/biography/biography.shtml&usg=__U7GK-WyxVgIWSRBTZsdGqrZ3rZc=&h=275&w=300&sz=44&hl=en&start=46&um=1&tbnid=vVMnMJo6AeMAuM:&tbnh=106&tbnw=116&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dromare%2BbeARDEN%26ndsp%3D18%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26sa%3DN%26start%3D36%26um%3D1">Romare Bearden</a>, <a href="http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.artic.edu/webspaces/museumstudies/ms242/portfolio17.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.artic.edu/webspaces/museumstudies/ms242/portfolio17.shtml&usg=__F9uED7P-2Y8uNh0SYVtQ28qiOMs=&h=336&w=492&sz=58&hl=en&start=12&um=1&tbnid=PtUYKWGmLE9qFM:&tbnh=89&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcharles%2Bwhite%26ndsp%3D18%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26sa%3DG%26um%3D1">Charles White</a> and <a href="http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.corcoran.org/collection/images/lawrence_1975.37.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.corcoran.org/collection/highlights_main_results.asp%3FID%3D131&usg=__wfNlrzK15PaGp-5N85lTGniEKLg=&h=531&w=400&sz=83&hl=en&start=18&um=1&tbnid=W2REIJcWceH4sM:&tbnh=132&tbnw=99&prev=/images%3Fq%3Djacob%2Blawrence%26ndsp%3D18%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26sa%3DG%26um%3D1">Jacob Lawrence</a>--Douglas' work affirmed that the lives of ordinary everyday people <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">do</span> matter and that their experiences and representations can be the foundation for a meaningful and sustained art practice.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">R.I.P Larry Sultan (1946 - 2009)</span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #0000ee;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418462438023637682" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJJd1mmVTmfnyohH5NyNxjn9OTqIxwH0IRj_XeVUgNIALhzrlxzrPgS1Ryenl-NasaHHIDHIJYJO_U5Nkzuo19rcpCnXMfVbfxZjdm50hpBlHMNvRkbnc9fKeLsoFGBV23ruGj_vCuhFj-/s200/Larry+Sultan.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 148px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 200px;" /></span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Larry Sultan sadly passed away a couple of weeks ago after a battle with cancer that began this past summer. A big hearted and intelligent guy, Larry certainly made his mark during his 63 years. I was fortunate to meet Larry through Jim Goldberg, another friend in San Francisco, and I quickly took a liking to him. I'd look him up whenever I visited San Francisco and always enjoyed seeing and talking with him. Larry seemed to have struck a happy balance between being a husband, father to two boys, teaching and mentoring at California College of Arts, making his own work and doing the periodic commercial assignments that came his way. Everyone who knew him always remarked on what a significant and sustaining presence he was in the lives of so many students who came out of CCA. He continually broke ground with his own work, moving from his earlier conceptual practice to his rigorous examination of his parents lives and the larger social world he inhabited and was curious about.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I had returned to San Francisco to be with friends there, all whom were heartbroken as the end neared for Larry, who passed on late in the day after I arrived. I was happy to get Larry out to Chicago a couple of years ago to share him with our students at Columbia College, each of whom he impressed with his generous feedback and response to their work. I will miss him and miss tooling around SF in his little Volkswagen Beetle. The lights of the SF Bay area and the Greenbrae Boardwalk community where he lived with his family will shine a little less brightly in his absence.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">[Note: Photographer Alec Soth posted a thoughtful reflection about Larry and his work here: </span></div>
<div>
<a href="http://littlebrownmushroom.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/larry-sultan-pictures-from-home/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">http://littlebrownmushroom.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/larry-sultan-pictures-from-home/</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">]</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Join the Larry Sultan FaceBook group here:</span></div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=55122566028&ref=ts"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=55122566028&ref=ts</span></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span">Photographs (from top): Art work © by Emory Douglas; Installation view "Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas" at Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; "The Black Panther" Newspaper; BPP Co-founders Bobby Seale and Huey Newton at Oakland Party Headquarters; Emory Douglas photographed by Jed Brandt; Larry Sultan photographed by Kelly Sultan </span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-65334642805820459892009-11-02T07:47:00.000-08:002010-04-18T22:09:39.188-07:00A Couple of Thoughts in/on Passing: Rona Pondick and Roy DeCarava<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvnu9IRarpGWDjFU0CZlFgmGqQXT9PDlP5YmHozUnPmAO4MGVpKYkqYBApcP8Rqh6PuePvT7W8E-M7pADNMx7991C4NVp_ZTerb9l-95fbyUrep6djvPFaTcwnDsYc7gZ3rwV4USiA0cVD/s1600-h/Pondick+Installation+1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 229px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvnu9IRarpGWDjFU0CZlFgmGqQXT9PDlP5YmHozUnPmAO4MGVpKYkqYBApcP8Rqh6PuePvT7W8E-M7pADNMx7991C4NVp_ZTerb9l-95fbyUrep6djvPFaTcwnDsYc7gZ3rwV4USiA0cVD/s320/Pondick+Installation+1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399582436970258322" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_83x4iXaHfI-lh9Fs3erjC5P8AUaW3p20er-raSm5Go7e4I5H7wkKNYfeWC5LsiTX-3-FvOQ_ZP0Oz45ATUl269g0w4D4jwvh0JJUtr5bp4DBulr_ZsKxaQLhgh5ImTVYrA1DJEItExbP/s1600-h/DeCarava+and+Black+Photogs.jpg"></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">A Sublime Experience in Worcester, MA<br /></span></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I had the opportunity during an unusually busy month to catch the curated exhibition project by sculptor Rona Pondick. The exhibition closed on October 11th, a Sunday, which is precisely the day a friend--Addison Gallery's Julie Bernson--and I made our way to the Worcester Art Museum from Waltham via Boston, MA. Having long admired Pondick's work I had been wanting to see this exhibition since hearing about it when it opened. The closing date had thus remained solidly fixed in my brain during the run of the show. It proved to have been well worth the trip and then some.</span></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I've written previously about how museums and artists can each reinvent their respective roles through placing the artist in more of a directly engaging conversation with institutional space. Traditionally we think of the museum space as a place where selected artists' works are exhibited. We don't often think of placing artists in positions of responsibility to actually determine what is exhibited in that space, particularly if it's not just their own work. Such activity is generally the purview of curators, those persons charged with articulating and visualizing the museum's raison d'étre or conceptual mission through its exhibition program. As in any profession there is a set of knowledge and skills required which generally are gained through both academic training and experience. An advance art history degree usually figures in there somewhere, but certainly not always. Encyclopedic or historical museums tend to have a more fixed professional track than contemporary institutions. I've known and worked with both curators and museum directors who have come to their positions in several different ways and all have attained a measure of success, working successfully in a wide range of museum contexts. Either way, it is the decisions of these curators--in some consultation with the directors--that come to define the institution's public face and identity. It is a position of great institutional and public trust and, one might add, power.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 124px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhByhTafu2CThFCjZ1LHD4n07mMx9NmrYlL6yKA3FupY4TXWZrkYK8Cv_901Np-xicTqTj-kjDo2q4uY4Mco96dVty8-_eD3I5Ou5O60FBK2bMDZY8saEm7Eh3BxP65clgfoTwaukerdvzj/s200/Pondick+Installation+2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399548241521393378" /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Generally speaking power is too often something that those who have worked to acquire it are loathe to share. The long arc of history generally confirms that those who don't share power, amassing it shamelessly and in a self serving manner, are eventually done in by it in some way. That goes for institutions as well. Institutions--public ones in particular like museums--generally operate within a framework of what we might call socialized power, that is the power to benefit others, in their case by collecting and presenting the best or most interesting visual aspects of culture for public appreciation and study. The question, then, of who is allowed to shape this viewing experience becomes an ever more loaded one, one in which the museum has an opportunity to redefine itself through how it chooses to answers these questions. And I am one who believes that the current climate of economic instability and shifting social change creates a ripe opportunity for museums to take a second look at how they view themselves, the artists they exhibit, the audiences they serve and the configurations these entities might then be placed in.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 154px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAapluJH9W4kSK7yboj1wyMXkGUYVEztq_cEK7wQEi1PcE5TBr13pGTF-zL908QeKiEsDm7SEBQS1v3GyrRJmIznlz20HURHT2M3TDkQLkr30trggRw4Jjw-p_wsRAFc_LjydJfWsFcF7q/s200/Pondick+Installation+3.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399553226391077810" /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Rona Pondick's exhibition, "Rona Pondick: The Metamorphosis of an Object," at the Worcester Art Museum is an example of the best that can result from this reconsideration of traditional roles within the museum, i.e artists exhibit and curators curate, and what can happen when an institution shares its curatorial and institutional power with an artist. The result of a conversation began several years ago between Pondick and the Worcester's curator of contemporary art Susan Stoops, the exhibition is one in which Pondick juxtaposes her own sculptures with those from the museum's collection spanning a broad historical range. As Pondick has said, "</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">I want to look at how sculpture is physical and how the physical makes psychological impact. Viewers have conscious and unconscious visceral responses to objects that they feel in their own bodies and that make psychological meaning. I am interested in looking at the way the psychological has been manifested in sculptures from all periods. When these different historic sculptures and mine are installed next to one another, there is a visual communication spoken in "body language" that needs little explanation. The sculptures start </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">losing their historical place and take on more physical, emotional, and visceral relations with the viewer. Gestures and postures don't translate solely into symbolic interpretations particular to a culture or time period. Otherwise, why would people look at historic work?</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">" This statement marks, too, the clarity and acuity with which Pondick has conceptualized and executed the project. </span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I'm not one to use the term flawless too freely, but this exhibition came as close to that in its conception and execution as anything I've seen in recent memory. The relational intricacies created through the placement of the sculptures enhanced the viewer's ability to draw connections and allusions between them and made for a joyously provocative installation. The shape and placement of the various pedestals allowed the viewer to move easily and revealingly around each group of sculptures to full effect, permitting one to view the objects as needed to full three dimensional and narrative effect, with all of the subtly revealed allusions clearly explicated throughout the installation. Pondick's spare wall text was almost subliminal in its measured ability to point to her ideas and motivations while leaving ample room for the viewer's own experience and discovery; didactic wall text it was not. I found myself smiling quietly and laughing broadly at the brilliance of it all as I walked repeatedly around the room. The reverberations between her exquisitely realized hybrid like contemporary sculptures and the historical works were wonderfully and variously nuanced, creating--as she intended--a much expanded reading of each. Indeed Pondick's own sculptures contain within them a wealth of references regarding her use of contrasting representational forms and surface finish. The exhibition suggested to me the very best of what one might hope for in handing an artist the curatorial reins.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: normal; "><a href="http://www.worcesterart.org/Exhibitions/rona_pondick.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"></span></span></a></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: normal; "><a href="http://www.worcesterart.org/Exhibitions/rona_pondick.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">http://www.worcesterart.org/Exhibitions/rona_pondick.html</span></span></span></a></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 189px; height: 162px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqov-HeErwTLJggWNfc7Uqz6s_vJLKIeHob2YVZZ3sFJ0Px8uTJ_-UUCUPdxkgBj3zP5zWfHL90aDmBOZdlbzxoL0RGfAbC2URh-m8CQfnvJpghHlKJjPxDRrpHF6D0m909mBJzkh29MPm/s320/kikismith1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399561060860518610" /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The experience of the Pondick project was only further heightened when my friend and I followed it up with a visit to the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College where Kiki Smith was holding forth in a curated exhibition project there entitled "Cut from her Breast" as part of a project entitled "The Permanent Collection: The Artist-as-Curator: Kiki Smith." The museum's pr materials describe the project as such: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Smith's presentation of these works of art is a departure from the typical aesthetics of museum display. By inviting artists to curate selections from the collection, the Davis Museum hopes to expand upon the ways in which works of art are experienced and interpreted. As museums increasingly call attention to how the display of objects encodes and constructs meaning, Smith has joined a growing number of artists sought after as curators."</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>This sounds to me a bit more like a "sought after artist sweepstake" than an invitation to any deep and meaningful institutional, curatorial or conceptual engagement. And I would suggest that what the Davis "won" was the use of Kiki Smith's name, certainly not an expanded experience of the objects from their collection for their visitors, since there is virtually no clearly discernible discursive context in which to meaningfully engage with these wide ranging objects. The installation consists of vessels from different cultures and periods placed in display cases that Smith designed (which I believe I recall her saying had some relation to the cases in which her family kept their wine.) In the entrance of the gallery Smith hung a beautiful 18th century Mexican ex-voto of a woman undergoing a mastectomy. First making a reproduction of this painting, Smith then proceeded to cut bits of the painting, reproduced on paper, into irregular rectangular shapes and then place them in various irregular locations within the cases containing each vessel. Several low hanging bare light bulbs complete the vaguely aesthetisized effect. The relationship between the painting and the vessels? The relationship between the fractured pieces of the ex-voto and their placement in the display cases? The light bulbs?</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Unfortunately no interpretive material or even minimal wall text was available to help unravel that particular conceptual riddle, though Smith did look rather thoughtful in the video as she cut out the shapes and placed adhesive on them before affixing them to the insides of the cases and other talking heads held forth in an appropriately academically jargonistic fashion. I even noticed a few rectangular pieces of the reproduced painting affixed to window of the gallery. It all had an oddly rushed and sadly "phoned in" feeling to it that made me want to rush back to Worcester to again immerse myself in what a truly engaged and dialogical project looks like, one in which the artist has her own intense conversation with the objects and the museum and then invites the viewer to participate in the ensuing conversation. </span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Like all situations of public presentation, an exhibition is an opportunity for the artist to either fail very publicly or for their ideas and work to take hold in the imagination. It is no different when institutions choose to put artists behind the curatorial steering wheel. In the best cases--my own project at the Walters, Vik Muniz's "Rebus" project at MoMA, Kara Walker's "After the Deluge" at the Met and Pondick's Worcester project would qualify I believe--it becomes an expanded institutional conversation, one that presents a set of provocative choices that emerge out of a serious engagement between all parties. The artist, the institution and certainly the viewers are thus all the better for it, and in some real way are transformed.</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Roy DeCarava, R.I.P (1919 - 2009)</span></span></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_EZK43av0uiANLbDK7WlYQqno0HWRIfQCLSuHGOQPcM2IpCJ8esomOrIzMp5Eio3v7tKhxNcfIyIH6VjRUzWVOgL5NKfuPuMTD-j75XTAs11VXzPlQy7a1oM8u5e8_9UXt6_J5TQaEjsZ/s200/Roy+by+Mitsu+Yasukawa:LA+Times.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399568171574342434" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 154px; height: 200px; " /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>To speak of Roy DeCarava takes me back to the very beginning of my interest in photography. Quite simply Roy DeCarava was the first black photographer I ever knew of who was successfully making his way in the world through the making of pictures that were shaped entirely by his own internal need to talk about his experiences and the experiences of the people her knew through photographs. It is hard enough for anyone to make a way in the world in this way and at the time Roy DeCarava made this decision it was certainly almost impossible for a black man to make a way in the world in such a manner. And to do this by visualizing a race of people whose public image was a much maligned one was audacity and faith personified, certainly not the typical subject for the kind of high photographic art of the type that DeCarava was creating. DeCarava turned the African American experience into photographs that didn't traffic in visual pathology or confirm for a wider audience the dangers lurking in the urban black community that was his home. Rather he created his own idiosyncratic form of visual poetry, one in which content, form and material were seamlessly and evocatively wed. And he saw love, tenderness and humanity where others might have seen something far less. Where he did see pain and social tension in the world he turned them into photographs that crafted a complex visual reading of the situation not merely a didactic and illustrative response.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The publication of his book </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">The Sweet Flypaper of Life</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"> with Langston Hughes and his receiving a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship--the highest honor of its kind--was a watershed moment of validation for all of us who were black and photographers who would come after. Indeed it gave some us the first tangible sense that we </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">could</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"> become such a thing, since models have to exist before ideas can take hold in the imagination. Receiving the Guggenheim Fellowship in photography myself a few years ago was, as you can imagine, a profound moment for me in light of these beginnings. Roy was the first black fellow in 1952 and there have still been only a mere handful since. And at a time when photography as a fine art form was still not firmly established DeCarava took the initiative in 1955 to open A Photography Gallery, a space where a number of photographers received substantial exhibitions of their work, including Minor White, Berenice Abbott and Harry Callahan among others. The gallery remained in operation for two years and suggests DeCarava's often overlooked seminal position in securing a place for photography as a fine art in the post war era along with others such as Helen Gee who opened the Limelight Gallery during this same time. As such he was following the example of Alfred Steiglitz, yet another significant photographer whose two galleries, An American Place and 291 also provided an important space for the viewing of significant but then underexposed works by other artists.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>DeCarava is too often grouped within a kind of black photographic trinity, which includes James Van DerZee and Gordon Parks. Many years ago I myself made the mistake of naively calling DeCarava to ask if I might interview him for inclusion in an article that I was writing about Black photographers for <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">American Arts</span> magazine. Roy asked me who the other photographers where that I was including in the article and bristled when I mentioned James Van DerZee. I tried to explain that my inclusion of Van DerZee had more to do with the historical reach I wanted the article to have and that I was also including Anthony Barboza, and other younger black photographers. I can still hear Roy's response ringing in my ears. In no uncertain terms he attempted to educate me and set me straight. "Listen, James Van DerZee was a studio photographer, making pictures of people in the neighborhood who paid him. His pictures are interesting for a whole different reason. That's </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">not</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"> what I do. If you want to do an article on them, do an article on them. If you want to do an article on <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">me</span>, then do an article on <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">me</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">. </span>But you will<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"> not</span> do an article on them and me. I'm not a commercial photographer. What does my work have to do with theirs?" Ouch! I tried lamely to explain, but his answer remained the same. I meekly said, "Thank you Roy," and dejectedly hung up the phone. Of course Roy was right. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The difference between working on assignment for </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Life</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"> magazine, working in a neighborhood portrait studio or making one's way in the world independently through pictures that have no obvious commercial or reportorial value or use is considerable, and each carries with it a different set of practical and conceptual imperatives though each involves a requisite craftsmanship. And he wanted me to understand those difference and to think about it and his work more critically. There are still more than a few people for whom this distinction is not clear. Roy wanted me to understand the difference between his intentions and theirs and not to carelessly group them together because of race, as often happens with black photographers, who often finding themselves grouped together in conceptually dubious exhibitions in which the rubric of race is often the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">only</span> unifying factor. It was Roy DeCarava who first gave me a healthy skepticism about these kinds of shows, given their often thin scholarship, thematic diffusion and tendency to further segregate black photographers from a broader historical conversation about the relationship between visual and material culture. If I'm difficult when folks contact <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">me</span> to participate in these kinds of exhibitions, you can credit it to DeCarava.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_83x4iXaHfI-lh9Fs3erjC5P8AUaW3p20er-raSm5Go7e4I5H7wkKNYfeWC5LsiTX-3-FvOQ_ZP0Oz45ATUl269g0w4D4jwvh0JJUtr5bp4DBulr_ZsKxaQLhgh5ImTVYrA1DJEItExbP/s320/DeCarava+and+Black+Photogs.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399578326293659298" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 194px; " /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana, serif;color:#1E1A14;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>He was equally unflinching and direct in his critique of the work that some of us younger photographers brought to him for feedback and criticism. I am still smarting (but oh, so much wiser) from the first critique he gave me some thirty-odd years ago, asking me if that intrusive black border I put on my black and white prints was part of the picture or a overly obvious way of signifying that I didn't crop any of my pictures. He made no comment on the pictures themselves, instead choosing to get me to think about that one heavy handed stylistic gesture. I don't have to tell you that those black lines grudgingly disappeared soon afterwards as they began to look like the material affectation that Roy had clearly seen them for. DeCarava was as generous with his time as he was unstinting in his criticisms. These personal crits began to take on an almost tragicomical dimension as those who had recently brought work to show Roy vied to see who had gotten the worst critical beat down. Running into someone after one of these sessions was like running into someone who had barely survived a too close encounter with their fragile psyche. Jules Allen told me one day after coming from such a session, "Roy had me crying like a baby." Julio Mitchel told me, "I was so upset I threw my cameras in the closet and couldn't photograph for a month." Each such telling had the humorously perverse but earnest quality of trying to outdo each other over who had gotten their ass kicked the hardest by Roy; a kind of pissing contest of sorts. I was loathe to participate in this game of one-upmanship, but appreciated hearing the latest tales of angst and tough love emanating from Roy's home and studio on Halsey Street in Brooklyn.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Those of us who knew and respected Roy are a rigorous, hard working and uncompromising lot, as my students will tell you. Roy demanded a lot of himself and in so doing made us all demand even more of ourselves. He didn't want his work, legacy and life taken lightly and insisted that we who knew him approach our work with the same utmost respect for craft, discipline and integrity. He leaves a legacy of sheer brilliance and passion in his picture making and a life lived that calls all of us to steadfastness in the face of challenges and rebukes of every kind and to maintain our integrity no matter what and by any means necessary. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 26, 20); line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Photographs (from top): Rona Pondick installation views courtesy of Rona Pondick and the Worcester Art Museum; Kiki Smith installation courtesy of the Davis Museum and Cultural Center; Roy DeCarava portrait © Mitsu Yasukawa courtesy of the L.A. Times; Roy DeCarava at Witkin Gallery courtesy of Coreen Simpson (l. to r. Accra Shepp, Coreen Simpson, Dawoud Bey, Roy DeCarava, Tony Barboza, unidentified)</span></span></span></div></div>Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-38207015889173095272009-09-01T16:10:00.000-07:002010-04-18T22:10:29.752-07:00Diversity and the Blue M & M<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0Rag7WDOFUcQ0FdRE8M1xnP60wEpP1vsQOdOcDXr3c28yPXcVRKA8DpL6OEFrRhviYDRy-eJpsMhMzbFtmeLhChEKbaagY9-6cIqNxkE6P_ZgNZ6Mmg42C3-3_O3KS60d2fiqvDq7szCs/s1600-h/George+Kirby.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 250px; height: 318px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0Rag7WDOFUcQ0FdRE8M1xnP60wEpP1vsQOdOcDXr3c28yPXcVRKA8DpL6OEFrRhviYDRy-eJpsMhMzbFtmeLhChEKbaagY9-6cIqNxkE6P_ZgNZ6Mmg42C3-3_O3KS60d2fiqvDq7szCs/s320/George+Kirby.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376643905919528242" /></a><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>When I was a kid the calm evening air would sometimes be dramatically and suddenly broken by my father's excited shout. "There's a blue on!" he would cry out from the living room. Sometimes this simply got shortened to, "A blue!" The tone was such that we all knew to drop whatever we were doing and come running to the TV where on the screen appeared that rarest of things, a black person. We knew we had to come quickly since the presence of African Americans on television at that time wasn't nearly as commonplace as it is now. Blink and you'd miss it. Certainly my father's forceful tone, which shot through the house, signaled that something of high significance was taking place. We had over time come to know what "a blue" was and the presence of one was a historic moment that you had to hustle quickly to catch or things quickly reverted to their normal place in television land; that is "Amos and Andy" (with the connivin' and jivin' Kingfish and company) or "The Beulah Show," with Beulah, the stout maid/mammy character who was touted as "the queen of the kitchen," figuring out a host of minor travails for her white employers, who somehow seemed too flummoxed to think their way out of a paper bag. <div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The Beulah role, like the ones of Amos and Andy, was originally played by a white actress in blackface and then was passed from one black actress to another as the perennial and cliched hand me down role, the kind of which were for so long the bane (and sole employment) for black actors and actresses. No matter the program or film, the roles were always the same. But when my dad yelled to alert us to the presence of "a blue" we knew that something different was in the offing. This was not yet another black person caught in the insidious web of media promulgated stereotypes, this was a black person standing on stage practicing their craft--usually comedy or music--in a more dignified manner. As such they heralded a moment in American history that my father didn't want us to miss, a moment when blacks did not have to debase themselves in order to receive their due as they had for so long. There were only a few shows that these black actors, actresses and performers were likely to appear on and there was a hint of something liberally conspiratorial in their mere presence, since whatever shows they were invited to appear on were clearly going against the prevailing racial status quo. Indeed the Southern station affiliates often refused to air those shows that had an integrated lineup, segregation then being the Southern social norm. Advertisers and sponsors were also wary of the the black presence on these programs upsetting their largely white viewers as well. Variety shows such as "The Jackie Gleason Show," "the Ed Sullivan Show" and later "The Dean Martin Show" were the most likely arenas in which a dark presence would suddenly and unexpectedly appear. Likely as not it would the same handful of black performers such as comedians George Kirby and Nipsey Russell, or singers Della Reese and Ella Fitzgerald. Sammy Davis, Jr. was likely to pop up on his "Rat Pack" buddy Dean Martin's show. And if you were allowed to stay up late, you might catch Hines, Hines and Dad (a young Maurice and Gregory Hines with their dad) tap dancing on "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson." </div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7hJawvy_rZ6vAUiBCB5dCQckNxtDbXKtVrGC_YY6TQCj0G1l1Cz_3Wl7nZHwlsdL07gbnOPp-VqAGZEAmCXc64pLIKAi5lQjq8qTimGGPass9bpTsyZq7nGTCjEm72lYLx07PbVv8PG5Q/s200/1968-petula-harry-photo.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376652385307100642" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Each of the shows hosts and producers knew that they were breaking the color line and each of the performers knew that they were breaking new ground as well. The comedians in particular made sure to leave their more risque material back in the clubs in Harlem, Philly, and Detriot, where they could let it all hang out for their black audiences. But with a clear intention to let everyone know that "we" too could sing meaningless ditties and novelty songs as well anyone, George Kirby could often be found on the Ed Sullvan Show singing "There's A Hole in the Bucket Dear Liza" of all the corn ball country foolishness. In true assimilationist spirit one could be "a blue" but one couldn't let <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">too</span> much blue show in ones act. This was, after all, being beamed via fuzzy black and white images into living rooms all across America. The presence of "a blue" in the television studio could easily become quite volatile as America found out when Petula Clark innocently touched Harry Belafonte's arm as they were singing a duet on "The Petula Clark Show." Immediatey the switchboard lit up with outraged white citizen's venting about the blatant violation of the racial codes of conduct created by this benign interracial moment of vaguely insinuated intimacy. And this was in 1968, when both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were violently murdered. So my father's excitement was not without reason or context.</div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT2wcBfzNoxs7CpNEL2_XmtPNn6yC53x5tpFugoCjMs-w_gpgr4FZWiNqb5OjN0nBo-_U3Wq2-_toJDG1M_yyVYJPIff-OJwO9-W3QFjDsPqRF30iLyNrYYMQxIxJBZ2nY1cSygILmJ-Xu/s200/MCA.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376810459990978706" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>\I thought about the presence of blacks in mainstream institutional culture again when I got an invitation recently to attend a program about diversity, or "Diversity." as it was heralded on the invitation. The invitation came from one of my favorite local institutions, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) and invites the public to "...join them as they examine the evolving concept of diversity and its impact on museums, artists, and society today." Joining MCA's director Madeleine Grynsztejn in this discussion will be artists Glenn Ligon and Tania Bruguera along with Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Associate Professor at Princeton University. Given MCA's success in making its programming more inclusive than a lot of other museums, I was surprised to see them still doing what I think is the earnest and presumably well meaning "diversity" song and dance act. I actually think they have--through a lot of hard work--achieved that immediate goal and should now be considering how to achieve something quite different, something I would call inclusiveness or inclusivity. It is this inclusivity that should now be the focus of their enhanced institutional efforts.</div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo7yl9bt7owblv5Scz83Arv7bFNZhk7gqZ_2eO0Pa11CQv9NhI5XEwJMyRXLFpotpkhBnNAtWX0qXJueihIEy2E7Tc5NfL_trTB1YGWFaARLK_vYf3oGzsrb8Cz7fWFfbFpiNkJSkW7nQw/s200/M&Ms.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376663673620310370" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>"Diversity" to me implies something akin to the blue M & M campaign from a few years ago. You'll recall that M & M (Mars Candy) created a momentary marketing buzz by announcing that they were going to add a new color to the longtime standard selection. They were going to diversify, i.e. add another color to the mix, and invited the public to suggest what the new color should be. Diversity by public consensus! The problem with this kind of diversity strategy is that while one can loudly proclaim that a new and exciting color is being added (to the M & Ms or the institutional mix) the basic taste, structure and packaging remains exactly the same. The only difference being that you can now loudly trumpet your willingness to include heretofore excluded colors. This is, of course, a kind of tokenism by yet another name and trades on the momentary (but ultimately empty and short lived) excitement of seeing a new color in still unexpected places. It would seem to me that by now we should be approaching a point where <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">anyone</span> should be expected to be <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">anywhere</span>. True inclusiveness happens when one allows the flavor and perhaps the packaging and institutional flavor to then take on a different quality in response to the expanding cast of players. MCA is in fact doing this in its exhibition and performance programming, but is laboring--as so many continue to--under the weight of a language and term that is inadequate to articulating the current challenges that lie ahead for public institutions. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>In an age in which it would be superfluous to say that "diversity" has been achieved in the White House, given Barack Obama's position as the titular head of that institution, it's time to turn away from "diversity" as an operative objective and turn instead towards the more meaningful and substantial goal of making institutional spaces ever more inclusive, in the case of museums, to artists and audiences alike. One way to accomplish this is to consider how in fact the institution's identity can be meaningfully transformed and expanded conceptually by this enhanced inclusiveness. Inclusivity implies a desire to actually change through institutional expansion, while diversity implies that those being brought in have to simply fit into the normative and dominant paradigms.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>One final note on the upcoming MCA program (which is taking place on September 9th). I always tend to take note of who is <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">not</span> present and accounted for when these kinds of programs take place, since that absence to me speaks louder than any words. Missing from this program are probably some of the only voices who really matter, the ones whose role it is to shape the institutional agenda and experience. In that regard I'd love to see a few of MCA's curators and trustees hold forth on <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">their</span> views about "diversity" or inclusiveness, since they actually have the very real power to enact this programmatically, not two artists and an academic with no substantial affiliation with the institution. I know a number of theses trustees and curators well, and would certainly look forward to hearing their take on this in a public forum, as they are indeed quite an engaged and progressive lot. Now <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">that</span> would be one conversation I <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">really</span> wouldn't want to miss.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Photographs (from top): Comedian George Kirby, "The Beulah Show," Petula Clark and Harry Belafonte, M&Ms, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago</span></div>Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-39576166176111378702009-08-28T08:20:00.000-07:002009-09-01T01:24:40.708-07:00The Significance of August 28th<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">[Note: Today I am turning this space over to my good friend the writer and playwright Ifa Bayeza. Ifa's critically acclaimed play "The Ballad of Emmett Till" completed a successful run at the Goodman Theater here in Chicago a year ago, where it premiered. She recently received the prestigious Edgar Award (as in Edgar Allan Poe) for Best Play. Here Bayeza shares her observations about the deep significance of August 28th (today) as it relates to Emmett Till's death and more recent events that we should be cognizant of.]</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">August 28th: Remembrance and </span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Reflection - 2008, 1963, 1955</span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);"><br /></span></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""></span></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">By Ifa Bayeza</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 125px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE7doxrOW4zWn9T24gy1RiFQ7jgD2GPXQl42AOzHTsh9cqqEbzkwTEoX_tiWEyq4DzUzj3tcGVPTwjAUltJ99EhskySxc8PNauvJJKQF4E0fQbnw6HT4zc5PxVZFquE6WM5bLELqctZltY/s200/Obama+at+Denver,+Courtesy+EPA.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375045199354922002" /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Palatino Linotype';">One year ago today, Barack Obama accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party for the office of President of the United States. It was a crystal Denver evening, a twilight sky. He stood before a crowd of nearly 90,000 packed into the Denver Stadium, and in addition, before a record breaking global audience of millions. It was a groundbreaking event, the first African American Presidential nominee, a landmark full of promise. In his eloquent acceptance speech, Mr. Obama spoke often of this notion of “promise,” chronicling our nation’s progress from its revolutionary birth over two hundred thirty years ago. It was fitting that the date marked the anniversary of another pivotal American event, another day of promise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>“Forty-five years ago today,” said Mr. Obama, “[that promise] brought Americans from every corner of this land to stand together on a Mall in Washington, before Lincoln’s Memorial to hear a young preacher from Georgia speak of his dream.” The event, of course, was the 1963 March on Washington, the “young preacher,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.</span></div><div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 144px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbGuQD5e09NOV1tjmdJNW7Bm5aj0KcDbn9qLwY5_fv4Jqd64dWR2pip5_AGZnMeGTFdf-4J1lRzKx4X3IlfWUvmwr9gLTjhwj2AO2WvhLtgIrUyNzpxsZRDTrsLOsW-gH-Z4Zw3dpTclWZ/s200/emmett_till_1955.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375045390822617362" /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Palatino Linotype"font-family:";">Another anniversary is marked by this date, another pivotal American event. Fifty-four years ago, while visiting his family in Mississippi, fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Louis Till was abducted and killed by a group of white men for the alleged offense of whistling at a white store clerk. In the desolate hours of a moonless Sunday morning, he was subjected to a ruthless torture that brought about his death shortly after dawn, August 28, 1955. Two moments of triumph and one of high tragedy ... Perhaps it is serendipity that these three events share the same date; however, their impact and transformational power are undeniable. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Palatino Linotype"font-family:";">Among African Americans, the story of Emmett Till has continued to resonate through the decades, rippling through time in wave after wave of influence. His murder and his mother's subsequent decision to have an open-casket funeral are believed by many to mark the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement – for just cause. That same year, 1955, on an otherwise ordinary December afternoon, when Rosa Parks boarded a Montgomery Alabama bus, she was thinking about Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley. It was that reflection that caused Mrs. Parks to refuse to give up her seat, to refuse on that day to acquiesce to Jim Crow segregation. The ensuing Montgomery bus boycott gave Martin Luther King, Jr., his first national platform. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal">A few years later, Sunflower County, Mississippi native Fannie Lou Hamer, upon seeing the brother of J.W. Milam, one of Emmett’s confessed murderers, among the sheriff’s deputies confronting her when she attempted to register to vote, decided that day that she would go to jail, rather than submit. She committed her life to activism, no matter the cost. The decision took her all the way to the 1964 National Democratic Convention. This forty-four year old sharecropper’s public plea before the party’s Credential Committee brought the all-white Dixiecrat stranglehold of the Democratic Party to an end, thus paving the way for Mr. Obama’s ascension nearly fifty years later. Muhammad Ali, who is the same age as Emmett would have been, derailed a train in a teenage act of protest upon hearing of Emmett's murder. With the maturing of his consciousness, Ali became a symbol of black excellence and power, worldwide. Like him, current NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, civil rights scholar Cleveland Sellers and many other activists who came of age in that time, credit the Till case with the beginning of their political awakening. Emmett was the first spark of consciousness for black youth across the country and he became a symbol of the youth-centered character of the Movement from thenceforth.<br /></p><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 244px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiko7wlhMNK_qgKI548jwwTGZeJzQf8fGyuS3ufZOp_MCi7umkcDrIidXIX9ViR1iQG-_N7RjDgcRbsRsztDXivHDhHF4RcLboZQWhmdmmmIjtjPrK8Jii6S-zqlUc-zvLwq-L5RGF_0sGb/s320/Emmett+Till+Funeral.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375042450502350210" /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Palatino Linotype"font-family:";">The event bore other emblems of the coming Civil Rights Movement. The spontaneous outpouring of grief of the 50,000 plus mourners who lined the streets of Chicago for the viewing of Emmett’s body foreshadowed the mass, non-violent protest gathering that would be the hallmark of the Movement. As President Obama noted in his speech celebrating the 100th anniversary of the NAACP, when Emmett Till’s uncle Mose Wright summoned “the courage to testify against the men who killed his nephew,” Wright’s dramatic open court challenge to Jim Crow was a harbinger of the scores of civil rights trials to come. The work of journalists across the color line during the court proceedings set the blueprint for how Civil Rights would be covered and for the interracial cooperation that would also be the Movement’s signature. The boycott of the Milam-Bryant family stores, driving the family of Emmett's killers out of business, predated the Montgomery bus boycott by nearly a year.</span></p> <img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 151px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkILx3QiVLNw1AU3TzumSUyAdPurJYkb093lzhhdgDyAKs3I3EwKbBwvq7aAcKLLa9aGV18BYfqTUxkrn91Dg0vFYO051veWP6M_UNICrDj13HZwMhTLjSlF-X9qIYvN7E1fNMkR3JOmak/s200/KingPhoto-sm.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375045659941771474" /><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Palatino Linotype"font-family:";">Then we come to a speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, eight years to the day after Emmett’s death. When Dr. King spoke about dreams deferred, he was perhaps referencing the lost promise of Emmett Till, the first child soldier casualty of the modern Civil Rights Movement. The unwitting hero, in his life, in his death, and in his inspiration, propelled us all.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Palatino Linotype"font-family:";">The profound sense of loss and the impassioned commitment that Emmett Till inspired in my generation is matched by the profound sense of hope that President Obama has inspired in this generation. Just as we all became Emmett, a whole generation of youth today can imagine becoming President. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Palatino Linotype"font-family:";"> So when I think of August 28th, that bright white sunlight on the DC Mall and that glorious twilight evening in Denver, I also remember the dark and perilous night when a young boy on the threshold of manhood walked alone, and how his journey changed the course of our nation. From desperation to inspiration, from tragedy and triumph, this date in history will for many reasons be a day to remember and honor -- always. We should celebrate, but let us not forget the great cost and sacrifice of others, delivering such possibility and promise to us. And let us not squander the moment, but as our forty-fourth president has suggested, “seize our future, each and every day.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><!--StartFragment--> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="Palatino Linotype"font-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">I</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">fa Bayeza is the recipient of a Eugene O’Neill National Playwright’s Center Fellowship and the 2009 Edgar Award for her play, "The Ballad of Emmett Till," which received its world premiere at the Goodman Theatre in May 2008.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Palatino Linotype';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Photographs (from top): Barack Obama at Democratic Convention, 2008; Emmett Till, in life and in death; crowds at Emmett Till's funeral; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addresses crowds at the March on Washington, 1963)</span></span></span></span></span></p> <!--EndFragment--> <p></p></div></div></div></div>Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-88013206559512783632009-07-13T20:46:00.000-07:002010-04-18T22:12:06.770-07:00The Invisible East Village<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoIt8ikItSz739ahlGDEZAP5Tnx1ShyHDWh-UT3oXnjAeG4A0CEebpIO8GXbMMdHEvREaiHYqo0bjF2QW5nZqDqITvhHoZmCgVlovm6BWi4y_VcPc8zbG2PIxrdtmz75XBpEUjHY8vN3Xf/s1600-h/Bey-BBar.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoIt8ikItSz739ahlGDEZAP5Tnx1ShyHDWh-UT3oXnjAeG4A0CEebpIO8GXbMMdHEvREaiHYqo0bjF2QW5nZqDqITvhHoZmCgVlovm6BWi4y_VcPc8zbG2PIxrdtmz75XBpEUjHY8vN3Xf/s320/Bey-BBar.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5364443756954026850" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);"><br /></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Where the Past Meets the Present</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);"><br /></span></span></div><div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I was in New York recently, the East Village actually, and from my usual perch at BBar on East 4th Street and the Bowery found myself reflecting on the rapid pace of change in that neighborhood. I had worked on St. Marks Place for awhile and spent a lot of free time there as well starting in high school. I discovered Indian food there on East 6th Street and became an eternal convert. I had come to know the neighborhood well and it's still my first--sometimes only--stop when I am back in New York. Whenever I'm there the rapid changes taking place remind me of the place that the East Village used to be, before the luxury hotels, condominiums, expensive boutiques, Whole Foods on Houston Street and homogeneous looking young (white) people everywhere. It was a much more diverse and dynamic neighborhood then.<div><br /><div><div><div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyJqXjRUBSfiNGIrL4YA4GJH8RGrALTRuBcwk1ibp8rpKb54Qt5hTHWtp8L2xL0OTSqe2n9Y_WqfVD1BYfOfBNnZucLVh1bWdUJNfYUm6EFwkfpeSlD43rH4rrnumn0SrpH1Bd-PSWZ7-n/s200/IMG_2073.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5358163362854512242" /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Every place is simultaneously the memory of the place that <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">was</span> overlaid with the place that currently <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">is</span>. It is this layering of experience and place--so common in a rapidly changing city like New York--that gives the place its frisson and energy as the old is constantly being supplanted by the new. For those who know and appreciate those histories, the ambivalence of the neighborhood's current habitues can be a difficult pill to swallow. I think I first ventured to the East Village from Queens, NY where I grew up when my brother and I went to the Fillmore East, the New York branch of Fillmore West, located in San Francisco. Started by music impressario and promoter Bill Graham the Fillmore was the site of numerous seminal concerts in the late 60s through 1971, including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Doors, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Miles Davis and others too numerous to list. We saw the Allman Brothers band there...when Duane Allman was still very much alive, Blood Sweat and Tears and others I can't even remember. The Fillmore site is now a bank and few of the current East Village residents know that it once housed the concert hall that helped to define American popular music and culture. For my brother and I it was our first serious exposure to live music, though we had also been to the Apollo Theater by that time, having first been taken there by our mother to see a show that included the Cannonball Adderly Quintet, the singer Nancy Wilson and comedian Flip Wilson...all on the same bill! We were of course too young to grasp the audacity of such a star studded lineup performing several nights a week.</div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR3N_KZnsNOS3EYd6HaERf-Gn4qZaxNTG2dXtlia6apLAa1ITOVYa0oZpD2cFTHobuta5cEm42L06B7QYVSdWawTw8jd9yi_bvz3MHKAZPSIdbsfSV46BbKbrtilwbNPG_MBcsN20vuRrw/s200/Kurve.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5364356392957712914" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Whenever I pass the site of the former Binibon Restaurant on the corner of Second Avenue and East Sixth Street I think about the odd confluence of circumstances and lives that can have permanent and devastating effects and forever alter the shape of ones life. The location will forever be synonymous with good intentions gone horribly wrong. The tragic story of the Binibon features the late writer Norman Mailer. Jack Henry Abbott was a longtime career criminal who in 1978 had ended up in yet another federal penitentiary, this one in Marion, IL. He had entered the penal system at age 12 and continued to be locked up on charges as varied as breaking and entering and fatally stabbing a fellow inmate. Noticing in his readings in prison that the writer Norman Mailer was doing research on the killer Gary Gilmore as part of the background work for his novel <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Executioner's Song</span>, Abbott began corresponding with Mailer in 1978. Impressed with the literary quality of Abbott's lengthy letters, Mailer alerted friends in the publishing industry and secured a book contract for the convict, complete with a $12,500 advance. Though his murder of the inmate had earned him an even lengthier sentence than he was originally serving, Abbott sought parole, and with the sponsorship of Mailer received it in 1981 just as his book was due to be published. Mailer and the publisher had strategically placed excerpts from the book in various journals, making Abbot something of a rising literary star. Voila...redemption! Not quite. Abbott's book <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">In The Belly of the Beast</span>--complete with an introduction by Mailer--was released one day after his tragic encounter with Richard Adan, a waiter and aspiring actor who was due to be married that week and who worked at the Binibon, a resturant owned by his father-in-law to be. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The tragic story unfolds as such: Upon securing parole in 1981 Abbott was assigned to a halfway house on E. 3rd Street. He began making the media rounds, appearing on "Good Morning America" and being hailed as a convict literati. On the morning of July 17th, just a few weeks after his parole, he was in the Binibon with two women companions for breakfast. At some point he asked the waiter (Adan) if he could use the restroom, which unfortunately was for employees only as Adan informed him. Abbott didn't take too kindly to this answer and got into a verbal altercation with Adan, who asked him to "take it outside." Both men stepped outside whereupon Abbott, in true prison justice fashion, proceeded to stab Adan to death, leaving him to die on the sidewalk outside. Unaware of his crime, the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">New York Times </span>published a rave review of his book in the following day's paper. Adan's widow successfully sued Abbott, however, and it was she who received the millions that the book went on to reap. Abbott, returned to prison after briefly being on the lam, eventually hanged himself. The Binibon is now the site of an upscale Thai restaurant called Kurve, but it will forever remain to me the site of an almost Shakespearean drama; a senseless killing and a sadly misplaced desire to redeem and valorize one human being which then resulted in ending one young man's life and future.</div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFMXY1x5vvEtQKPi8dHibW25Hrvuuy_FP1weSoH9KjTpHINTM-P8J4LqszvMiRNoXeQ2k3F1omdOeCyzSkuJR86P16-X_OoQ8MRcy3OjlIk-YcEiAD52oT1JyHn07Ds5d9S0vO7h05Dolw/s200/St+Marks+Photo:Grafiks.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5364363913024115266" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>For about a year and a half in the early 1980s I worked on St. Marks place in a photo lab called St. Marks Photo/Graphics. It was actually two separate businesses run by the same guy and his partner, with the graphics and stat shop being the other half of the business. They were located side by side. While I toiled away in the basement black and white lab developing endless rolls of film and cranking out endless prints (I was the one man lab staff), Sur Rodney Sur toiled next door making photo stats and film positives, while also helping to manage the place the rest of the time. As for me, I was hidden from daylight during my hours in the lab other than lunch time, which is when I grabbed a quick bite and then spent the better part of the hour making pictures. My boss, a guy from Thailand with a conspicuously long pinky fingernail was running a cash business and it seems no matter how many hours I toiled and inhaled chemicals the weeks take was always "a little short" and so he couldn't pay me what he had promised. Well, better luck next week I guess (wink wink)! I had taken the job only after having recently gotten married. When my newly minted father-in-law asked me what I did for a living, I told him I freelanced. His response was, "Oh, you mean you work when you want to!" A little bit more of that and I was down in the basement lab doing "real" work, coming home smelly and exhausted like other working stiffs. I had inherited the job from my friend Stephen Critchlow, a former School of Visual Arts classmate who had recently started doing a lot of work for "The Village Voice" and "City Sun" newspapers. He had warned me about the "coming up short" scam, so I wasn't too surprised when it went down. It was a cash business after all and $150 cash per week was a lot better than the peripatetic freelance life at that point, especially considering that I was living in a eight room floor through in the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn that only cost $175 per month to rent. I didn't know then that the landlord was going broke at those rates, and that the building would eventually be seized by the city for unpaid back taxes. But we eventually ended up buying the building from the city in one of the low cost housing conversion programs that then existed. It wasn't a bad life at all. Going by to take a look now I see an awning has been added to the site of my former job and it is occupied by a Tibetan shop and a tattoo parlor. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I run into Sur Rodney Sur every now and then when I am in New York. He and Gracie Mansion opened Gracie Mansion Gallery a couple of doors down from where we worked and the two of them helped usher in the East Village art and gallery scene in the 1980s. He's been with his partner Geoff Hendricks now for a number of years. Geoff, of course, is one of the original Fluxus artists and one of the nicest people you'd ever want to meet. I taught with him at Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts for three years before moving to Chicago. I have a beautiful and haunting picture of Sur made by Gary Schneider that I look at everyday and it too reminds me of that moment in the eighties when we were schlepping stats and prints and planning the future. And I can still hear my boss shouting down to the basement through the trap door, "Dawoud, Ms. Sandrisser is here! Do you have those fifty 5x7s!?"</div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjek-PCvzvPk7B7u7ITMbxlt2n7eW81g-S-x7DttZX8c5a-7CMemDEFfIT74y2L27bJaXjLhuFfaPL0nqrjuBsdx1DUJuZH5nIX0DyB6fyBBXkOXULQV9x7uGhr94yL0PwVrEHINRVpX1z0/s200/Slugs%3F.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5364370578089643986" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I used to think that this location on St. Marks Place and Third Avenue across the street from where I worked was the former site of the jazz club Slugs. Now I'm not so sure, it might actually be the location of the former Five Spot. In addition to being the site of some of the most legendary performances in jazz music, Slugs will always be for me the place where trumpeter Lee Morgan was shot and killed in February 1972. The night Morgan was shot I happened to be playing in another jazz club--a bar actually--in Hollis, Queens with my friend Phil Clark, a trumpet player and student of Morgan's. I was a student of Lee's drummer Freddie Waits at the time and so we both had a connection to the man. There was a jazz organist in Queens by the name of C.C. Williams who played a mean Hammond B3 organ in a traditional organ trio format. Being a fan of the ultimate B3 player Jimmy Smith I thought it would be cool to play with Williams, which was as close as I was likely to get to playing with Jimmy Smith at any rate. Williams's son Jafa was his usual drummer, but this night the drummer's chair was mine.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>So there I was ensconced behind my drum set swinging away with the Hammond B3 organ and its giant Leslie speaker blasting in my ears while Phil did his best imitation of Lee Morgan and early Miles Davis. Halfway through the second set a phone call came in at the bar and everything went quiet. We knew it wasn't good whatever it was. And it wasn't, Lee Morgan had been shot and killed. It seems that Lee, a brilliant but notoriously philandering man, had one of his girlfriends at Slugs with him that night. We found later that Lee's wife Helen had paid him a visit at the club, confronting him about the girlfriend and demanding that he pay some attention to her. Lee uttered some epithet to Helen, who then proceeded to pull out a gun and shoot him where he sat, straight through the heart. Lee died instantly. He was only 33 years old. When we got the call in Queens all of us, especially Phil were totally broken up. After putting his hand through a mirror in the club's bathroom and cutting his hand--effectively ending our performance that night--Phil and I walked home in the snow, telling tales of Lee Morgan and recalling the great man's music. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Though the East Village is indeed a <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">very</span> different place now, all of this history sits heavily in the air for me when I'm there, hanging like an ever present spirit over the increasingly antiseptic neighborhood, continually shaping my sense of just where I am. Indeed the past for me continues to shape the deeper meaning of the present.</div><div><br /></div><div>P<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">hotographs (from top): At BBar, 4th Street and Bowery; former site of the Fillmore East; former site of Binibon; former site of St. Marks Photo/Graphics; former site of Slugs (or the Five Spot)</span></div></div></div></div></div></div>Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-37849635613042670122009-06-28T09:05:00.001-07:002010-04-18T22:12:52.787-07:00Communal Spaces for A Diverse Populace<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9hVYbJvtnhxqRmFFpoANTPlanDxlmzBFvSc18iSw22c9aXkaURgrV2uEW0zP4wgQuFclEJPsQfKSoOkRotCms7FUFf4iOE038mXr2-T5gWen5llkIk_80SrVHimRTxJ4yVxHadd-wF5vZ/s1600-h/IMG_2046.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9hVYbJvtnhxqRmFFpoANTPlanDxlmzBFvSc18iSw22c9aXkaURgrV2uEW0zP4wgQuFclEJPsQfKSoOkRotCms7FUFf4iOE038mXr2-T5gWen5llkIk_80SrVHimRTxJ4yVxHadd-wF5vZ/s320/IMG_2046.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5352412437914399474" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Where People Go to Be Themselves in Public</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Cities are composed of diverse communities. The makeup of these communities is determined by everything from ethnicity, culture, economics, patterns of migration and more than a little bit of overt and covert social engineering. As much as social engineering (often under the guise of social planning) can create communities it can just as easily destroy them. The creation of Lincoln Center was, of course, the result of the decimation of the community that once stood on its site. The construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway, which cut a wide and gaping wound through several Bronx communities created a destabilization of huge swaths of that borough that persists to this day. Not surprising since the multi-lane highway literally cut through what had once been a physically joined neighborhood. Through the aggressive use of the eminent domain laws (which allows for governmental seizure of privately held property for public use) the late city planner Robert Moses was able to exert his will (and love of the automobile and highways) on the city. This is not news of course, and much has been written about Moses, who in spite of holding no publicly elected office, was allowed to simultaneously build and pillage throughout New York. </div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Kqr406fmgN0ri5MBMtQpCh_b_-ScxSnoLB6at1BDzp84HMUatcMT4mu8hsJGH2vQ_0j6p1HfWbLpqbhyvxTB15mLAh8Odt63pFifZE5PgkX_FNCIO066CIUeM7sdqSNyFcPurus7dmQl/s320/Dearborn+Homes.JPEG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5352426526697688226" /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>In Chicago the late mayor Richard Daley was an almost single handed purveyor of the city's social engineering cum urban planning during his long reign. Under his watch public housing rose in isolated areas of the city, clustered far from the usual amenities and support services, beginning the process of vertically warehousing (and segregating) large numbers of largely black Chicagoans. Like many cities Chicago has numerous ethnic neighborhoods, including those comprised of largely Mexican, Greek, Italian, Polish, Ukranian, Chinese and numerous other groups. Unlike many major cities where the social dividing lines between these various communities are often fluid and porous, the instances in which these communities actually intermingle are few and far between here in the Windy City, described by the Chicago Tribune as "the most segregated large city in America." In spite of this social engineering, all cities need spaces where its populace can spontaneously congregate, to join with their neighbors in moments of grief, celebration or relaxation. </div><div><br /></div><div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4abF0Ycq8YT1IRHFkpjg7z5L_6DPeQEwGo8JjBOcvfBkERkK5TSiV2HU-cTz_YLzXDFBKmZbJPxAHhO9eDQeNRNBxyCDaTCpdYnNFhMtxwNljbIgIx-CQWlVzC7hJY5nGrDDnbzOmBpwi/s320/Crowd+at+Apollo.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353122107583043794" /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The recent death of pop star Michael Jackson brought spontaneous crowds to Union Square, Times Square and Harlem's 125th Street in New York among other spaces all across the country. And the national grief immediately following the attack on 9/11 also brought an outpouring of spontaneous assembly in parks and public spaces throughout the country as grief stricken citizens sought solace and connection. Clearly these public spaces are an integral aspect of who we are, particularly in those large urban spaces where a sense of isolation (in spite of being physically overcrowded) is more likely than in smaller tight knit communities. When they are seeking various forms of release people need to know almost instinctively, where they can go to not be alone.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS_jnptP0bpNK4l_PA_5R4Z7uT5_e8UC74KwNiMwQDyyPvDVqVlns33zFCOr7nFeQ-AqcDxBZSJX0ebUWKG-UVOIHp64dzcGoouduZd-EkVwkO9t9TzQkB4eGIvGsZCHkKajTWZZyG1HyH/s320/millennium_park_crown_founatin.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353110688193108706" /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>This is what makes the Crown Fountain, located downtown in Millennium Park, such a singular kind of communal social space and an absolutely vital piece of public art. When the weather is warm, as it has been lately, the fountain attracts a diverse group of both Chicagoans of every conceivable stripe as well as tourists, all drawn to this location. Completed in 2004, the fountain--conceived by artist Jaume Plensa--consists of two forty foot glass brick towers encasing video LED images of the faces of nearly one thousand Chicagoans. The people populating these almost still video images come from every conceivable racial, ethnic and cultural population in Chicago. As such they directly mirror the diverse population that is drawn to the fountain itself. Surrounded by black granite and containing a shallow wading pool in between each tower the fountain attracts a bathing suit clad array of people from Chicago's various neighborhoods who seldom if ever congregate socially in this segregated city. They are joined by hordes of tourists from around the country and the globe. All fountains must have spouting water of course, and this one does too, with the cooling water periodically spouting from the mouths of the subjects, drawing screaming children to its cascading coolness. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Crown Fountain raises the bar for public art in an almost singular way. Most public art consists of objects sited within a particular space or environment for public contemplation. The degree to which the public actually interacts with this work is largely cerebral. Jaume Plensa's fountain poses a more visceral approach to public art, blurring the line between the object and the public. That a broad cross section of people rich and poor, resident and visitor can all claim ownership of it suggests what public art can be at its best. Considering those battles in the past in which various publics took offense at some of the public art that suddenly sprouted in their midst, Crown Fountain suggests that forward looking art can indeed be broadly embraced by a diverse and appreciative public of all stripes. As such it becomes a comforting place, a kind of granite beach to which people are attracted and allowed to be themselves freely in the company of others. One can't ask more of public art than that.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">(Photographs: Jaume Plensa's Crown Fountain; Dearborn Homes public housing; crowd gathered at the Apollo celebrating Michael Jackson; Crown Fountain)</span></div>Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-88590907577862470452009-04-25T05:23:00.000-07:002010-04-18T22:14:41.382-07:00Landscape and Memory<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7A3TXfDoPcSeM2-DI7FyfxGfyjPzn2jAl7Y0mbBBJHxBBPO7YxsdUcBySQhgb5Nl8l7GopIogIhAt7HgoFluyqCbt3jsPhoHnvHT4SwN-7FG-jI-uOpm6wVU0ys8iWecJNtFbR4zjbYcl/s1600-h/Dennis+by+Scott+Stohler.jpg"></a><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 230px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEGF5K7qP3DFl_sIXDth_kyHcbk64BVjTczj5Pm6Gy9HMhqCcLNOLs53N8t03fjcEJijo7VBL7ig50yBKK4RD6zq1fYt265gP4IlKPuLgZqQfZXhxn8u2bFKoh7Nbceke7zsbqkLfyprV5/s320/gohlke+-+queens.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5328646342403836370" /><div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Frank Gohlke's Queens Photographs</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Photographer Frank Gohlke was in Chicago recently as my invited guest at Columbia College Chicago. Gohlke had been one of my professors in grad school as a visiting faculty in Yale's photo program years ago, and I had fond memories of the man as well as a long standing interest in his work, which is considered seminal in the contemporary landscape tradition, having been included in the groundbreaking "New Topographics" exhibition in 1975. So after a bit of back and forth in setting a date, I had finally been able to arrange for him to come and meet with our students and to give a public lecture. Self interest was also involved, as I wanted to revisit his work in his presence and to have the opportunity to ask him some questions that I didn't have the presence of mind to ask him all those years ago. The landscape, quite frankly, was never a favored genre of mine, which may have accounted for my failure to engage him more deeply when I was in his midst as a student. But having continued to follow his work closely since then, I was by now more steeped in his work, though no more steeped in the genre itself than I had ever been. His visit--and events since--have nudged me ever more forcefully into a deeper consideration of the idea and tradition of the landscape.</div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 160px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcam7C7rySENEO-CCLoFG1W6UNzaiIMoTPOWoYiHuKKe-SYlu63lF2IK7DxoqdQpMhz5MmgGGKj7kZL4QKQeA2A7qYmDe1Zo7QAe8mDkrP3tDUfxr3oA5KeA_1rBEbD3oDQCbndYISpkFT/s200/joel+-+lemoniceking.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5328646474082873714" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Gohlke arrived at Columbia lugging a portfolio of large and beautifully printed black and white photographs that he shared with the Thursday class of students. Among the works he had brought along were photographs from a project that he and Joel Sternfeld had been commissioned to do by Queens College in 2003 and 2004 for installation in the college's new Powdermaker Hall. Working in tandem and alone, the two had gone out into the borough to respond photographically to what they saw, seeking to set down their own subjective responses--as outsiders--to the diverse communities that make up this populous area. There are more languages spoken in this borough than in any other American city, and the diversity of its inhabitants has increased tenfold from when I lived there. I was born and raised in Queeens, and spent a good part of my life traversing the borough by school bus, going up and down Hillside Avenue and the steep hill leading away from it, to first elementary then junior high, high school and then Queensborough Community College. I had also drifted far and wide by foot, bike, bus, train, and the back seat of my parent's car in the course of a wide range of activities. My Aunt Louise lived right next door to us in Jamaica, Queens and my Aunt Delcie and Uncle Ted lived in Corona-East Elmhurst, a half hour drive or so on the Van Wyck and Grand Central Expressways. Between visiting them and engaging in a host of everyday activities over many years of growing up, I had come to know Queens in the way that one only comes to know the place that they are truly from. Viewing Gohlke's photographs reminded me of that fact. Speaking recently with the manager of Columbia College's bookstore, who it turned out was also from Jamaica, I mentioned the illuminated brown painted Santa Claus figure that annually appeared above the doorway to the singer James Brown's house every Christmas season. It's a memory that could only elicit deep laughs from someone who knows that neighborhood and Brown's former house on Linden Boulevard intimately. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>As Gohlke showed the students these photographs, my own memories about the place where I grew up were continually jogged. Here a picture of a street with a sign for the Q65 bus visible in the myriad details. There a photograph of a driveway, much like the driveway connecting our house to my aunt's. Looking at the Q65 bus stop picture, I told Gohlke I knew almost the whole route that the bus traversed along Parsons Boulvard from the then almost exclusively white neighborhood of Hillcrest where I seldom ventured to its descent down the hill to Hillside Avenue and on to Jamaica and Shoutheast Queens. The stop on Parsons Boulverad was adjacent to the E and F subway stop where we often waited to pick up my aunt when she came from work. We often met my dad here too, waiting in the car with my mother until he came up from out of the subway. It passes what used to be the Gertz Department store as it continues down New York (now Guy Brewer) Boulevard, eventually passing the Rochdale Village apartments where my brother Ken moved when he left home for the first time upon getting married. My friend Gerry--who passed his brother's unused enlarger and darkroom equipment on to me so I could set up my first darkroom--eventually lived there too, with his wife and children. Gohlke's photograph of the driveway also provoked a rush of memories, inviting me into a space so eerily familiar as to recall the feeling of that narrow drive leading to the backyards of our homes which also provided a bridge between our house and my aunt's, where the back door was always left unlocked. My brother and I staged many a cookie raid through that back door.</div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 223px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil2e8DSkLVWnuUmfO_mMkiK7hox34BVYic2hY768UwtpuPD4J4ITrYW5mWJJYd2rPJSn5c9uVoJf7uQ30CPyEyxAcQjt7R7Az39UBHJCv4l2ygSAMO9PqrihCRr2YpRjK_3AM0E0vIqLSN/s320/Gohlke+Jamaica+High.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5328625225193394034" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Seeing Gohlke's photographs also reminded me of an aborted project I had attempted many years ago, the only proposed project that I never completed. In the mid 1980s, as part of a fellowship awarded by the New York State Council on the Arts, I had planned to make a group of pictures in the Queens neighborhoods where I had grown up. Starting in South Jamaica at 115th Road and Sutphin Boulevard then moving to 119th Avenue and 168th Street and finally to Hollis/Queens Village on 208th Street off of Hollis Avenue, I wanted to photographically revisit the places where I had been shaped. Looking at old family photographs also prompted this desire to return for a "second" look. What I experienced instead, upon visiting the St. Albans neighborhood and my old block there, was a rush of conflicting emotions and motivations that led me to not make a single photograph. Looking for the past, as it were, and confronted by an entirely unfamiliar present, I couldn't exactly figure out a way to reconcile the two, either emotionally or visually. Of course everything looked smaller than I remembered...it always does. And in spite of the address on the house being the same as the address of the house I had once lived in--168-26 119th Avenue--nothing else about the house looked or felt remotely familiar. How do you photograph a memory I wondered. I was still wondering as I walked to the bus stop to get to the subway and then out to Brooklyn and home. Maybe, as they say, you <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">can't</span> go home again. And yet, through the photographs of an outsider--Frank Gohlke--I <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">had</span> momentarily gone back home.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>This encounter with Gohlke's Queens pictures led me that evening to Google Maps, where I typed in my old address and then went to "Street View." Sure enough, there it was: my old home looking even less familiar than when I had ventured out to Queens over twenty years ago hoping to photograph it. With Google's 3D Stret View I then preceded to drift through the neighborhood, looking for my aunt's home next door (still one of the most attractive houses on the block) and then to the homes of various friends and neighbors...all still there, though recognizable only by certain details held in memory. The flagpole is still in front of the Outlaw's house, as it had been since the early 1960s or earlier. My brother and I would wait at their house to be picked up by my mother after school. It was there one afternoon that we learned from a distraught Mrs. Outlaw that President Kennedy had been shot and killed earlier that day. Other places had either disappeared or been transformed into unrecognizable places: the corner candystore was gone, a barbershop now stood where Curt's Bakery--home of the finest sweet potato pies--had once stood. I continued this cyber walk, roaming freely throughout the neighborhood as memory after memory was shaken freee. Here again in this very different but highly mediated arena I was having a visceral experience very unlike what I had experienced in actually being there on the block. </div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 264px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHWfrlYhFCEyn58WjFGaVSwxVp0A9VDOFnYPQ3xEBvqlcoUQhm9_iE0dk3z2FFe8hr6a9ez1EDtPTcHFcLl6o-dTTx3cIFp1OZtpKuXWPz4h26GZCjNCK0B-mc95IFEfBHeC5m7XVIEMGn/s320/OscarPalacio.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5328754791569318498" /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0); font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Oscar Palacio's American History Lesson</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>With Gohlke and Google Map's Street View providing food for thought about two mediated ways into the experience of landscape and memory, I left Chicago that weekend to meet up with friends in Massachusetts. One, Oscar Palacio, was exhibiting photographs <span class="Apple-style-span" style=""> in an exhibition at Boston's new FP3 Gallery titled<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"> Re-represented</span>. The large scale color photographs from his larger project <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">History Re-visited</span> depict places in the American landscape where significant history has occurred or is invoked. This Colombian born photographer is in the midst of a provocative project that casts a questioning and critical eye on American history, and questions how this history is remembered...or not. What is provocative about the project, among other things, is the degree to which memory functions as the critical perceptual device or trigger, since in a number of cases the photographs are rather ambiguous as far as exactly what they describe and in the absence of text or title could easily be anywhere. His photograph "Gettysburg Gate" could well be any weathered wooden fence and posts in the outback, but for the significance of that historical place.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Which is to say that the meaning embedded within the photographs is a received and subjective one, and its appearance is often at odds with the heroic "official" version of history that was enacted or memorialized there. Palacio approaches these sites with an eye that is in equal measure caustic, restrained and unflinching. Much the way that Robert Frank appeared on the American shores from Switzerland turning a jaundiced eye on the American social landscape, so is Palacio making clear the ambivalence and quiet horror at the root of so much of American history. From the locale of the infamous Salem "witch" hunts to the mangy gated Plymouth Rock, he locates the dissonances and unsightly runs in the fabric of American history. In doing so he also questions photography's ability to adequately deconstruct that history or point the way to an affirmative resolution of it. </span></div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 194px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgawEqFmS6Idz0XiAzzX-K9NaRI4bT4NYDY53iKJaAtiAJHxRVGGBVVkVH1RkDvI1zgk5S20sUjg2B-7nTRa2mpVvkSqoEPDlkKDH119_2uMBdrtR73fq7f6AD8eH3A9SolBOTzYI7Fbqzb/s200/scott+speck+-+binocs.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5328745622277301538" /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Landscapes and the Mediated View</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Oscar's photographs were fresh in my mind as we set off early the next morning with friends to go to North Adams to visit MassMoCA and the exhibitions there, particularly the massive Sol LeWitt wall drawing projects which are installed over three floors in one of MassMoCA's newly refurbished buildings. Driving through the landscape of the Berkshires in western Massachusetts provided wonderful and fresh food for thought regarding the landscape. As we traversed the winding roads leading to North Adams, evidence of the recent harsh ice storms were apparent from the many sharply bent trunks and snapped branches of small trees and growth along the way. Periodically one comes to one of the expansive and majestic vistas of this mountainous region and catches a glimpse of what much of America must have looked like at its dawn. It's hard to miss these locations of course, since they are usually encountered through the clearing of a viewing platform upon which have been mounted at least two large and unsightly mechanical binoculars, which for a quarter allow you to peer through the lens at the then shaped and mediated experience otherwise unfolding directly in front of you. I've never quite understood the need for these devices at these locations, since the drama lies in the vastness of the landscape laid out before you, and it is the physical sensation of standing alone facing this great expansiveness that seems to be central to the very experience. The binocular visually "bites off" only a small piece of this grandeur, putting a device in between you and the experience. It strikes me as somewhat akin to the tourists who in their travels spend more time picturing the experience than actually <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">experiencing </span>it physically and viscerally. You may not touch, feel or remember much, but you'll remember and have the photographs. And so it is as I contemplate this past week in the presence of so many images that seek to help us remember where "we" have been and to provide a sense of connectedness to the world through optical and mechanical--if not physical-- means.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">[For an earlier post about Gohlke, my grad school memories of him and his traveling survey exhibition see "A Brief East Coast Sojourn" in Older Posts]</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Guggenheim Fellowship Congrats</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBqguWSCfcpbBMmFzwb5JpEE29eCWgPFq5GSgusZnvdzkxfuU5LO3OM1jz7-AtkphpYrW55imcHYSv9d7mDvphdJx5hquAhMZ2xgQsqixYZwDJbZbqyOh_OlqL4E7MIs1SsFvTM4fahVjX/s200/Brian+Ulrich+JPG.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5329036747617275378" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 160px; height: 200px; " /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The recent fellowship announcement from the Guggenheim Foundation brought the good news that fellow Chicagoans </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Brian Ulrich</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"> (left) and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Anna Shteynshleyger</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">were awarded Fellowships in Photography. Both are adjunct faculty at Columbia College Chicago, where Ulrich graduated from the MFA photography program some four years ago. Ulrich has been hard at work on a project examining consumerism in America in all of its varied states, and has been creating a whirlwind of professional activity the past few years, with shows at Rhona Hoffman, Robert Koch and Julie Saul Galleries among others and attendant interest from a range of museums as well. Shteynshleyger, a graduate of Yale's MFA photography program, has been flying lower on the radar, but making no less interesting work photographing in Siberia examining the sites of Russian labor camps under the former Communist regime and continuing her more recent project </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">City of Destiny."</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"> She's soloed previously at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art in a </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">12X12 </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">exhibition of her work and at New York's Motti Hasson Gallery. A show of her work is slated for the Renaissance Society here in Chicago early next year. Both photographers reaffirm the vibrancy of photographic practice here in the Windy City and make clear the Guggenheim Foundation's alertness to work of significance and depth wherever it may be found.</span></span></span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Dennis Gallagher - In Memoriam</span></span></span></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7A3TXfDoPcSeM2-DI7FyfxGfyjPzn2jAl7Y0mbBBJHxBBPO7YxsdUcBySQhgb5Nl8l7GopIogIhAt7HgoFluyqCbt3jsPhoHnvHT4SwN-7FG-jI-uOpm6wVU0ys8iWecJNtFbR4zjbYcl/s200/Dennis+by+Scott+Stohler.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5330169133027281810" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 157px; " /></span><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>A friend of mine, the sculptor Dennis Gallagher, passed away last Monday after complications from a sudden illness. The husband of Trish Bransten, father of Rena and Sam, and son-in law of Rena Bransten, Dennis was a gregarious and gifted man with a wonderfully dry sense of humor. His large scale abstract ceramic sculptors had garnered recognition for him over the years with many museum and gallery shows. I last sat with him over drinks in O'Reilly's Bar in his Russian Hill neighborhood in San Francisco, one of those notorious watering holes where numerous stories (and more) have surely passed across the bar. A reunion with Dennis and the rest of the Gallagher-Bransten clan was something I always looked forward to. It's been a bit too long since my last stay in San Francisco. The lights of that wonderful city will shine a little less brightly and defiantly in Dennis' absence. He made the corner of the city wherever he stood, lived and worked a much brighter and interesting place.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">Photographs (from top): Frank Gohlke, Queens, NY 2003; Frank Gohlke, Queens, NY 2003; Joel Sternfeld, Queens, NY 2003; Oscar Palacio, "Gettysburg Gate," 2008; Photograph by Scott Speck; Brian Ulrich photograph by Dawoud Bey; Dennis Gallagher photograph by Scott Stohler</span><br /></div></div></div>Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-17859041339229512322009-03-22T14:53:00.000-07:002010-04-18T22:16:47.256-07:00The Twenty-first Century Museum<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtJrPjvzvsylFKUgRYKMKKoy2RovxZnDxiF3EKIes-QoowfAXqd6mTA9TVdUek6SX7Idr_f8UaUy_CcXGllhfBoJY9vsAk6AdqXpydnVIzfRxymuOZnwebGiTRpzC5-JHjTd0UtmhrQLqR/s1600-h/Theaster_Gates.jpg"><br /><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtJrPjvzvsylFKUgRYKMKKoy2RovxZnDxiF3EKIes-QoowfAXqd6mTA9TVdUek6SX7Idr_f8UaUy_CcXGllhfBoJY9vsAk6AdqXpydnVIzfRxymuOZnwebGiTRpzC5-JHjTd0UtmhrQLqR/s320/Theaster_Gates.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316361322730087538" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">When Artists Rock the [Art] House</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I was asked to give a presentation for the Education Committee at the Museum of Contemporary Art a few weeks ago. The committee is comprised of educational and curatorial staff, along with a few trustees and patrons. I had worked with Jackie Terrassa, MCA's recently appointed Assistant Director of Public Programs, when she was the education head at the Smart Museum of Art a few years back, and had actually known her before that through her work in Columbia College Chicago's Photography Department. So when she invited me to </div><div>give a presentation at MCA I readily accepted, though I wasn't exactly sure what the exact context was. I did know that Jackie was familiar with the project based work I have done at various museums since the early 1990s, and this work was consistent with her own interest in museum education and the museum as an inclusive and dialogical space of participation. I also knew that I have definite ideas about how institutions like MCA can use the current moment of economic and social turmoil as a moment of opportunity, a moment to embrace an expanded paradigm of what and how a museum can exist as a part of the socio-cultural fabric of society. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>In the past I have only done these kinds of presentations at museums where I am already slated to do a project or, at the least where the institution is consideration extending an invitation to me to do a project and wants to do a presentational "meet and greet" with the staff before committing. I didn't know exactly what MCA or Jackie was thinking, but I was game, having a work in the museum's collection which has been shown there on previous occasions, and being a fairly regular attendee, not to mention perpetual member. Indeed MCA is one of the few museums, through its ongoing <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">12X12</span> exhibition program of emerging Chicago artists, to have shown itself to be genuinely responsive to artists in its immediate orbit while also maintaining a meaningful diversity in its other programming as well. It's given the institution an even greater vibrancy while affirming its commitment to talent at its own doorsteps. The question of how to maintain national and global relevance and stature while being responsive to one's local community is one that most museums have simply shied away from entirely, or responded to in a token way when they have responded at all.</div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 149px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjISLdQBryr9SsI_ILVAdbCVO6X55BCTO0KAALK84F3rwg_hWk_P603eAj3KbtA3DO4inw7taYTc_2wJdGTOzNage-2rbJC9Qn6AAQO_y6F2NnogiySyI6ekOex-vfcmDMMw6Oof_2cFMZq/s200/Theaster+overflow:MCA.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316144846855578994" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>My private presentation was preceded by two public events at the museum that took place in the immediately preceding weeks that I thought signaled a significant shift for the museum; both of these were fostered by Theaster Gates, a dynamic young artist from Chicago's South Side, who is himself devising an evolving art practice that directly engages public ritual and social structures, seeking to use his practice to satisfy both his own expansive sensibilities, but also his need to bring together diverse social communities to bridge prevailing social structures. To that end Gates created a series of performances and events in venues across Chicago that included Shine King, a far west side shoeshine stand, the MCA, Little Black Pearl, an arts center in the Kenwood-Hyde Park neighborhood, and Sonotheque, a club on the north side. At the opening performance in his <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">12X12</span> installation <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Temple Exercises </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">(with his ever evolving cast of cohorts The Black Monks of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="">Mississippi) </span>at MCA Gates--much to the surprise of the museum I'm sure--brought his whole merry overflowing band of enthusiasts to the museum for his performance. Spilling out of the small <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">12X12</span> gallery space and out in the MCA lobby, and winding its way up the grand stairway, the capacity audience was a grand celebration of the kind of diverse crowd one would hope to find populating a contemporary institution but all too often don't.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 146px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLRJUqBIZQezz-h-PTq0MreA55tn8E8agFTMWESjwgiey0Vetp4Ls-szZVnZ45FPJCqIJZfUkVFXaqdkJ9Gxr9oiLwxOe6FDZcuM9iYD4JEJ2HF08rf76KwjlElU7gd-8G10ULMDaesgBX/s200/lowe_park.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316147898183216626" /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Along with his scatter site performances and events, Gates facilitated a dialogue with Project Row Houses' Rick Lowe and Kyong Park, founder of New York's Storefront for Art and Architecture. Both Lowe and Park have also devised institutions and practices that are broadly and socially engaging, so their presence at MCA during Gates' exhibition project suggested a interesting confluence of sensibilities. This program too was well attended, suggesting a real desire for these kinds of programs, which the museum again must have noted. So I was looking forward to following up on this with my presentation for the education committee, giving my own take on the museum as an active social and aesthetic space. </div><div><br /></div><br /><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghLmAWr9jUpberVI-t84HMjri8BPcazC_O-kGH7OzuLY_lRU0b2sTBsvwA4H0BxWfBrJlZcjY24q-v4Y_kMMivuin3hH5RgPecsL3AGpahHLkN-P7JUWfhs-rykl8bZv7JqgSHhF4N46G-/s200/MUNIZ.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5320265812742097810" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I had also been thinking about a few other recent projects that tilted the museum experience in a provocatively engaging way, such as Vik Muniz's recent curatorial project at New York's Museum of Modern Art, "Rebus." The show, which garnered much critical and public praise--friends called it a "must see" show--was the result of handing over the curatorial reins to an artist, who then brought a keen and sometimes humorous sensibility to bear on the selection and arrangement of a wide range of fine and design objects from the museum's collection, mixing mediums along with the high/low function of the objects in a way that created an entirely new and out of the box context for considering the work. This is, in fact, the ninth in MoMA's artists curated projects, "Artists' Choice." The exhibition was revealing and refreshing for what it said about how a new and meaningful museum experience could be fostered by being willing to reconsider the artist's role, allowing their "work" as such to be the shaping of an exhibition. Muniz's unconventional selection and presentation, with its own quizzically challenging logic, revealed a conceptually refreshing approach to curatorial practice that suggest one way that museums can shake things up by loosening the conventional reins and seeing what results. It was also a way to create a very different kind of conversation around the collection and around the presumed role of an artist. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>As I can hear my more conservative curator friends starting to huff and puff quietly, there is one caveat I'll offer here: not <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">all</span> artists--even interesting ones--make interesting curators. But there have been enough effective ones to give one pause as to what other such opportunities would reveal. (Artist Mickalene Thomas' recent curated exhibition at Collette Blanchard Gallery, "The Brand New Heavies," suggests a similar sense of an astute artist-curator at work, albeit within a commercial gallery context, and provides strong evidence that artists are not only good at presenting their <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">own</span> work. Kara Walker's "After the Deluge" at the Met in 2006 was yet another provocative and successful artist curatorial project.)</div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 158px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_ilToFpDjV3Z9GEMMD19arvnlS2nhR8qwDJGXOHqS-uejheIXntRzkc4aWaqjnwBkVuQ3Ht0QN0567YDTAQQJtyAKMsIJQmAVok4fOND_zKwRvix5SinNQjGT-cjB60DELpJTIP6hMrjT/s200/art-Institute-chicago.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5320263226194342866" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>For the most part the kinds of conversations that take place within the museum are private ones: the viewer engages with the objects and has a private, often unspoken response to them, and then moves on to other objects, and so on. The transformative experience as such is one which only the individual is privileged to, and there are few (if any) ways for that response to then enter into the actual experiential framework of the museum. If there were such an opportunity for response, the museum space could become a more conversational one. One of the ways I think museums can transforms themselves into more dynamic spaces is to allow for a space where this usually private conversation can somehow become a public one, one which is then embraced and folded into the fabric of the institution. This conversation need not be restricted solely to artists, and can--with a degree of programmatic finesse--be extended to a number of different constituencies. Muniz's engagement with the collection and the resultant exhibition was an example of this kind of conversation, one in which an artists' individual response was shaped into an exhibition. Of course, within the hierarchical environment of most museums, there exists a rather fixed notion of just who is allowed to shape the viewing experience.</div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiaYwaNFUBgZznQLa6rHBTYesuIDSDB0bUnZDfrubZd45z5wur6EDtF1VsxMkvXB7bIKQ7kCC6gQtvNHilgtw-GrxuHhoQ0qFJtxcWfJ887zt8Vbv6R3TMOrV27EwGg_zBhJrUtHuWKDRa/s200/PS1_DawoudBey_DD_T09-10.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5320255615108358786" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The role of curator has long been defined as the kind of position that comes attached to a whole set of assumptions about professional expertise and training, with this training then being subjectively deployed in the shaping of the experience and perception of the work within the museum going experience. As such, curators have a significant hand in also shaping the larger art historical experience, since museums do make decisions about which works of a given historical moment will be elevated and perhaps canonized by their very display. And while this is certainly one very legitimate way to think about the scholarship and display of art objects within a museum, when assigned instead to an artist or--in the case of my recent project in Baltimore at the Walters Art Museum, assigned to twelve high school age students working with an artist--the results can often bring an even more expansive and certainly unanticipated reading and response to those same objects. Muniz's brilliant and irreverent <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Rebus </span>at MoMA<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"> </span>revealed a selection and arrangements of objects that crossed all boundaries of mediums, notions of high and low, and historical period that is hard to imagine anyone trained in the specificities of any of those single areas doing. My own project at the Walters uncovered works in the collection that were exhibited for the very first time, and in a way that also exploded conservative historical museum notions about how such objects should be displayed and thus experienced. Both projects suggest that artworks need not be solely framed by notions connoisseurship to be with meaningfully engaged with.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>One of the things I have noticed about institutions that purport to want to make systemic changes in their programming is that by temperament, training and tradition, a lot of individuals at those institutions are often not capable of out of the box thinking; they might <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">want</span> to, but they just don't know <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">how</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">and their academic and institutional on the job training certainly didn't prepare them for this.</span> For an institution to do so requires the kind of power sharing that goes against the grain of the aura of institutional authoritative power. But the results--my collaborative curatorial project in Baltimore received a sustained and positive critical response unlike anything the museum had experienced recently, the Vik Muniz show at MoMA received laudatory press and public response, and Theaster Gates' performance and installation at MCA and Little Black Pearl revealed a largely untapped audience--shows that when museums <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">do</span> open themselves up to new paradigms it's a win-win situation for everyone. What is needed now is for even more institutions to step up to the plate and be part of the inclusive conversation that defines the moment that we are in. The current economic and social crisis that we are experiencing should make it clear that we are indeed interconnected in profound ways, and that we urgently need to be thinking out of the box and having a whole new set of conversations in response to this degree of interdependence. That goes for institutions, and that goes for us as individuals as well. Our collective growth and survival depends on it.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">A Museum Quality Cafe - Tweet</span></span></span></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 132px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXEDdnK3IzKFZVruZWyv-mAL-e660yJRBuRgqQHHpcLoAnaXrVduskqAVJODNmqfAKjIDKq7jH4TKgyxo8q25vRC-WRqFfAE1UxfVIwn3FU7iNh7IHIr_VVqTOp-3FrmVOmvuM5rtyaphG/s200/Tweet.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316918757015852162" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I'm probably the last person in Chicago to eat there, so I probably shouldn't even let on, and instead act like I've been in on the deal all along, but I finally got up to Michelle Fire's restaurant Tweet, located in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood on North Sheridan Road. I'd heard that on Sunday the lines and the wait to get in were completely off the chain, so on Saturday morning with my hungry son and nephew in tow we found our way to what various friends and reviewers had described as "the absolute best brunch spot in Chicago." I'd also heard that Fire had an impressive collection of photographs displayed on the restaurant's walls. Having recently met her when she acquired one of my prints of president Barack Obama, I had made it a point to pay her a visit. It turned out to be well worth the trip from Hyde Park and then some. The food was as impressive as I'd heard, with a wonderfully dizzying array of freshly made selections (organic ingredients all), and the photographs on display--salon style--are an absolute treat. It doesn't get much better than having a museum quality viewing experience while downing fabulous food. Among other pictures I recognized on the walls (both in <a href="http://www.centerstagechicago.com/restaurants/tweet-lets-eat.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">Tweet</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span></a>and the adjacent Fire owned bar <a href="http://www.bigchicks.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">Big Chicks</span></span></a>) were those by Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Flor Garduño, Lisette Model, Diane Arbus and Bob Thall along with works by Tony Fitzpatrick and the late Ed Paschke, along with other luminaries and emerging talent, hanging side by side. My Barack Obama print gazes down from on high at the front entrance. Can't say I've ever seen anything quite like this place in all my years in New York! Michelle Fire is truly a Chicago treasure. I think I may have found a new hangout.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Photographs: (from top) Theaster Gates' "Temple Exercises" (© Sarah Pooley photograph); Crowd at Gates' 12X12 "Temple Exercises" performance (courtesy MCA Chicago); Kyong Park and Rick Lowe (courtesy MCA Chicago); Vik Muniz, "Rebus" (Hiroko Masuike/New York Times); "Art Institute of Chicago 2" © by Thomas Struth; Installation view, "Portraits Re/Examined: A Dawoud Bey Project"; Interior view of Tweet</span></div>Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-85686299582209803242009-02-16T07:20:00.000-08:002010-12-30T18:32:03.484-08:00Young People and Art - The Kids are Alright<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIRtaSHf5VNunnJYnokaobEeMPFTG-awl3avc5Dul6V05eXRd6eiIlllrL4nkFfYeoP7vMtVucbhA-_qPQM8T3fsvcOTTRELNs24rIyQKzv2g_3AYNyjFdkklMO0bdSsVqQwj8E4IyUf09/s1600/Bernstein-Young+People%2527s+Concerts.jpg"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqDZ8SOmi4YErxLfjHFfyvj7Yuxme08aQtF8AYCBDgM6NaOoLaPWQHn0ojdfEoOR5C1LFrISOvkC6cbAV32111hwCis7vsPPtpCJ4tk5moqRIc-rPnB4y8poCaPLqbtMqjBpudnfbs2mLw/s1600-h/miles+in+europe.jpg"></a><div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9-i8JeQnjTZgzfiwLhVKDt4dhpzFoKbC5ZBv_8hD0xclCNm2Y7p5o5r10Zeacvb7rIjFGX50uJ5xaO221jnEeqoN1CfvRPH8SlmrO3lYBD75wa5AzpcA1hHRUz_TC5aOHljh5Xhu1xxAg/s320/Bernstein+w:kids.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303416022527411490" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 300px; " /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); "><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9-i8JeQnjTZgzfiwLhVKDt4dhpzFoKbC5ZBv_8hD0xclCNm2Y7p5o5r10Zeacvb7rIjFGX50uJ5xaO221jnEeqoN1CfvRPH8SlmrO3lYBD75wa5AzpcA1hHRUz_TC5aOHljh5Xhu1xxAg/s1600-h/Bernstein+w:kids.jpg"></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); "></span><br /><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">Art and Youth - A Powerful Combination</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>One day when I was in grade school, my class took a field trip to Carnegie Hall, then the home of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. It had all the makings of yet another "Get Out of School Free" pass, and my mother had outfitted me for the day in my pressed white shirt. Come to think of it, white shirts and ties were mandatory for assembly day too, so we were periodically <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pressed</span>. (The Principal's office even kept extra ties in a drawer for wayward souls who showed up at school on assembly day in less than proper attire.) As I recall the field trips seemed to always end up in Manhattan, either at the Museum of Natural History or the Hayden Planetarium, two different institutions that are in fact part of one museum, located at Central Park West and 79th Street. The range of field trip options seemed strangely limited, as I spent year after grade school year alternately in these two institutions on outings. Not that they were uninteresting, it just seemed that there must be some place else we could go. On this day, instead of pulling up to the all too familiar group entrance at the lower level of the museum, the school bus turned onto 57th Street, disgorging us kids from Queens, NY in front of Carnegie Hall, one school group among numerous others. Filing into the magnificent huge and ornate hall, which I had never been in before, our class managed to get seats down front not too far from the stage. We didn't have long to wait before the musicians filed out, followed by a very pleasant man with no instrument who took his place at the head of the orchestra and turned his attention to us. I don't exactly remember him introducing himself, but it was Leonard Bernstein, the Philharmonic's young conductor.</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre;"><br /></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIRtaSHf5VNunnJYnokaobEeMPFTG-awl3avc5Dul6V05eXRd6eiIlllrL4nkFfYeoP7vMtVucbhA-_qPQM8T3fsvcOTTRELNs24rIyQKzv2g_3AYNyjFdkklMO0bdSsVqQwj8E4IyUf09/s320/Bernstein-Young+People%2527s+Concerts.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5556666470774404114" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 173px; height: 320px; " /></span><div>Bernstein had joined the Philharmonic in 1957. One year later, believing (against prevailing opinion) that classical music could be enjoyed and understood by children, he implemented the "Young People's Concerts," in which he and the full orchestra performed while he explained the music, its form, structure, and history to young people in the audience. The program continued for fifteen years, running through 1973, building an even larger audience when it aired on CBS television for some fifty-three episodes, making Bernstein famous as both performer, composer, and lecturer to America's children. It remains the longest running series devoted to classical music to have aired on commercial television, bringing classical music into the homes and lives of millions of children and families on a weekly basis. Sort of hard to imagine in the current climate of increasingly dumbed down "reality" shows!</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>That day I had managed to get an aisle seat, which was fortunate, since it afforded me an unobstructed view of the stage and the man. In addition to explaining the music and then performing it, Bernstein would ask serious but good natured questions, finding a way to wed the ordinary experiences of childhood knowledge to the complexity of classical music, making it fun and enjoyable in the process. Taking the music apart, and rebuilding it instrument by instrument, we were given a sense of how the music was both composed and assembled: what melody and time signature meant, how tempo and dynamics gave expressive shape to the music being performed, and the role of the conductor in making the music come to life. All the while he had an ebullient smile on his face, taking obvious delight and deep pleasure from the work he was doing. And clearly it was his choice to be engaged in this work; the work of teaching and thus developing future audiences for the music he so loved. While I never became a connoisseur of classical music, I do nonetheless listen to it on occasion, and in so doing pay silent tribute to Leonard Bernstein and that formative experience years ago.</div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 198px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEVvi2Lo52bUq0AkLE3HGOtpxjgZPSkL2A4v2Atsh1ujiT3F_srJq49jsY27JUtKhX4CpabEzm821ONs6Tt0YCbLifIgv93nBzfKRhaoaWSnehUNkZ2WyJbzywStIFVBD8ToZ6lta-i5VD/s200/tony+williams+by+francis+wolff.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303429816351857810" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>When I was young, growing up in Queens, NY my older cousin Teddy, Jr. used to come by my parent's house after work or on his lunch breaks to relax, unwind, and listen to my dad's recently acquired hi fidelity stereo. My Cuban uncle Roland, a confirmed deep audiophile, had gotten my dad hooked on the new audio sensation of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">really</span> listening to music, with a finely tuned turntable, amplifier, receiver, and some powerful speakers. My brother and I would accompany my father on these visits to Uncle Roland's, where inevitably he would unveil yet another new and more advanced piece of equipment, and proceed to demonstrate its superior audio qualities by putting on a recently acquired album, usually jazz (organists Jimmy Smith and Richard "Groove" Holmes were favorites). Sitting in the living room with the lights dimmed (the right mood seemed important to the listening experience, too), he would enthuse over the undistorted bass, the clear mid range, and sparkling high ends in the sound. My dad, being an engineer, certainly appreciated the science of it all, and had acquired a turntable (a Thorens) and speakers, but built his own amplifier and receiver from Dynaco Audio's Dynakit. With the equipment in place, and few choice albums added to his now growing collection, the set up (and a comfortable arm chair) attracted my grown cousin, who took to spending his free time after work periodically hanging out in our living room listening to music.</div><div><br /></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqDZ8SOmi4YErxLfjHFfyvj7Yuxme08aQtF8AYCBDgM6NaOoLaPWQHn0ojdfEoOR5C1LFrISOvkC6cbAV32111hwCis7vsPPtpCJ4tk5moqRIc-rPnB4y8poCaPLqbtMqjBpudnfbs2mLw/s200/miles+in+europe.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5329494210312504546" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 199px; " /></span><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>One of the albums I began to hear during this time was <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Miles Davis in Europe. </span>Recorded in 1963, it was probably but a few years old at the time my dad acquired it. My cousin used to fall into what appeared to be a deep trance listening to this album, sitting still with his eyes closed, concentrating deeply, smiling occasionally, and then opening his eyes at the end as if he'd seen the Rapture itself. I was too young and unschooled at the time to understand my cousin's reactions. But upon getting my first set of drums at the age of fourteen, I began to give the album a more serious listen. What struck me first and foremost was the robust and invigorating drumming that accompanied the improvisations of Miles Davis and the other band members. In the company of young veterans like Davis, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and George Coleman, Williams made his presence aggressively felt. Throughout the album Williams plays with an authority and unbridled audacity that through sheer virtuosity simply redefined and expanded the role of the drummer in the small jazz ensemble, musically responding, pushing, and brashly commenting on the music at hand, often pushing it in unexpected directions through his inventive sense of time. What I didn't know at the time was that Tony Williams was all of eighteen years old when he was playing on that album! Indeed, by the tender age of eleven he had already been playing in clubs, and at fifteen had shared the bandstand with Max Roach and Art Blakey, not to mention playing in the bands of reed men Sam Rivers and Jackie McLean among others. Davis called Williams, "the fire, the creative spark in the band. Man, just hearing that little motherf*cker made me excited all over again. Like I said earlier, trumpet players love to play with great drummers, and I could definitely hear right away that this was going to be one of the baddest motherf*ckers who had ever played a set of drums."<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>In 1997, when my survey exhibition from the Walker Art Center was traveling to various museums, I told the curator of the exhibition Kellie Jones that when the exhibition opened at the Newark Museum, I wanted to talk about Tony Williams during our public dialogue that evening, since Williams was one of my earliest and strongest creative inspirations. Williams had just passed away quite recently, and he was very much on my mind. That night I didn't want to only talk about "art," I wanted to talk about how a creative spark was lit for me upon hearing Williams for the first time, and how such a creative spark can then go on to inform and inspire a range of creative work. Later that same month I was at the opening for another exhibition of mine at the Addison Gallery of American Art. Standing in the gallery where my work hung, an older black woman walked straight up to me without so much as glancing at the work on the walls, and asked me, "Did you know Tony Williams?" My face went flush for a minute, and I then told her that while I didn't know him personally he had made a big impression on me as a young musician. I further told her that I just spoke about Williams a few nights before. I asked her if she has been to the Addison before, and she responded that she hadn't; someone she knew thought she might want to see the shows. When I finally asked her who she was, she said, "I'm Tony's aunt, and I'm just coming back from his funeral in Japan. I wanted to talk to someone about him, and thought that someone here might have known him." You can imagine the look on my face at that point, since the likelihood that someone on the campus of Phillips Andover knew Williams would not have been my first impulse. As it turned out she lived on the Cape, not too far from my mother, and I dropped her a letter some time later, telling her about my early encounter years all those years ago with Tony and his music.<br /></div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSgFsq1gTE7VZ3YSG2sSazNH5PnZV-ey08FiyLjWU1j22l2C_ig42g9gSiOEidmespQyOvfAgqBQ5dLWiagcLtyflKTjIrFPIFNbfDcSXSYftY6qn3xpOB4OBtyzMifmn412r7z9D45cF8/s200/Jan+Lievens,+Self+Portrait.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303540473627266850" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I recently visited the Milwaukee Art Museum to meet with the photography curator Lisa Hostetler and other curatorial and education staff in preparation for the opening of my exhibition <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Class Pictures</span> there at the museum in April. Entering the museum's dramatic lobby, I spotted the special exhibitions gallery, where various exhibition graphics and signage announced the presence of an exhibition of work by Jan Lievens, a 17th century Dutch painter whose works were unknown to me. Being a long time admirer of Rembrandt van Rijn's paintings (another early and lasting influence of mine), and recognizing some affinity in Lievens' work, both stylistic and thematic, I made a mental note to take a sustained look at the show after my meeting.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>As it turns out, Lievens was indeed not only a contemporary of Rembrandt, but a close friend, and the two artists shared a close and long symbiotic relationship and conversation about their respective work. Lievens appears as the subject in several of Rembrandt's work and vice versa. While theirs was a relationship of mutual engagement and respect, ultimately Rembrandt achieved a more sustained success and notoriety that soon eclipsed Lievens, though Lievens had actually begun his career some years before Rembrandt. The title of the current exhibition <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered </span>is intended to finally bring him out of Rembrandt's very large shadow. Lievens considerable talent is apparent from the first piece one encounters on entering the gallery. Believed to be the artist's grandmother, this painting, with its wildly expressive brush work, dramatic lighting, and heightened psychological presentation was made when the artist was all of fourteen years old. He was highly sought for his commissioned portraits while still a teenager, and by the age of twenty-five was in even greater demand as a portraitist.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Lievens and Rembrandt were born in Lieden just over a year apart, studied with the same master teacher, and lived near one another. So close was their association, that some of Lievens best work ended up being falsely attributed to Rembrandt. The exhibition contains room after room of stunning paintings as well as various drawings and etchings that Lievens made over his long career. Like Tony Williams, Lievens' work suggests that across a broad historical span of centuries, young people have always been capable of far more rigorous creative utterances than they are often given credit for if one provides them with the necessary tools of expression. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Photographs: (top) Leonard Bernstein with a group of young children; Tony Williams, © Francis Wolff; Album Cover, "Miles Davis in Europe;" Jan Lievens "Self Portrait," circa 1629-1630 (private collection) Courtesy of the Milwaukee Art Museum</span></div>Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-11039701995929705232009-01-28T06:31:00.000-08:002011-06-30T11:47:13.741-07:00The Other Shoe Drops<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4dweKMbBp2lOWUzdX9Xzy8xRfl7_SDj2H-4ZjR-R0DElVGjF2NqMp9LK9h1ab6FM7Ce0YpFBiwFByV0f3a4NXJj_nGuV7EmwSE8qYhPzP2SOq4sqDjh5S4VqyyK3c2sb7q7XGbh076M_m/s1600-h/Rose.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4dweKMbBp2lOWUzdX9Xzy8xRfl7_SDj2H-4ZjR-R0DElVGjF2NqMp9LK9h1ab6FM7Ce0YpFBiwFByV0f3a4NXJj_nGuV7EmwSE8qYhPzP2SOq4sqDjh5S4VqyyK3c2sb7q7XGbh076M_m/s320/Rose.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5296353272636556674" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">University Moves to Close Rose Art Museum</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>That sound you may have heard the past two days rippling through the art world was the sound of a collective shudder, as Brandeis University's trustees unexpectedly announced that it would sell off some 6,000 modern and contemporary artworks in the museum's collection and then shutter the venerable Rose Art Museum. So unexpected was the announcement that the Rose's director Michael Rush didn't have a clue that it was coming when he was summoned to the office of provost Marty Krauss and given the news that in light of the university's increasing fiscal difficulties (its initial endowment has shrunk by an estimated 20-25%) the University would need to shutter the museum. "I didn't know anything about this," Rush is quoted as saying. Not incidentally at least one university trustees--and major Rose benfactor--was bankrupted by the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scam, losing an estimated $145 million in personal wealth. These same benefactors are patrons of other cultural institutions as well, so there is almost certain to be a ripple effect.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>What is particularly chilling, of course, is that the university's art institution and objects seemed to be the most expedient place the trustees looked to for quickly raising much needed funds. Jehuda Reinharz, the university's president, said, "The Rose is a jewel. But for the most part it's a hidden jewel. It does not get a lot of foot traffic and most of the great works we have, we are not able to exhibit. We felt that, at this point given the recession and the financial crisis, we had no choice." Such pithy resignation bespeaks a serious breach of faith. Further comments suggsted that the university would now turn to fulfilling its "core academic mission." An academic mission bereft of art and culture is not a good harbinger for the future; don't build the audience and further even engage students, close the museum! The response from both those blind sided at Brandeis and those in the field has been loud, immediate, and appalled. Says Yale School of Art Dean and art historian Rob Storr, " This sets a terrible precedent. The Rose Art Museum has been known for four decades as a hospitable place to show serious and challenging art in an academic context. They are throwing away one of their prime assets." This certainly goes far beyond the proposed sale of individual pieces that other beleaguered institutions have attempted. Indeed the sale of one of the Rose's Warhols, Lichtensteins, or Johns would quickly close the budget gap...at least temporarily. This proposed closing constitutes a wholesale dismissal of the entire institution and its larger mission. As Rose director Rush points out in a recent interview (see second link below) the Rose itself is fiscally sound; indeed, aside from covering the expenses of the physical plant, i.e. heat and electric, the university does not even fund the museum. It is the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">university</span> that is in a fiscal crisis, not the Rose. And so the university administration hopes to raid (and close) the museum as an answer to their own monetary problems.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Brandeis students are staging a sit-in at the museum today, a petition is circulating (<a href="http://www.thepetitionsite.com/3/in-opposition-to-the-closing-of-the-rose-art-museum"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">http://www.thepetitionsite.com/3/in-opposiition-to-the-closing-of-the-rose-art-museum</span></a>), and no doubt a court challenge looms on the horizon, given the level of outrage among donors, benefactors, and the public. But in the current climate this is no doubt yet another loud and clear wake up call to all institutions as they struggle with continuing dire economic forecasts and their relationships to their various constituencies.</div><div><br /></div><div>You can read more about this debacle here:</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "><a href="http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2009/01/26/brandeis_to_sell_schools_art_collection/">http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2009/01/26/brandeis_to_sell_art_collection</a></span><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">and here:</span><a href="http://www.artsjournal.com/man/2009/01/qa_with_rose_art_museum_direct.html"> http://www.artsjournal.com/man/2009/01/qa_with_rose_art_museum-direct._html</a></span><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div>Updates: </div><div>• Roberta Smith wrote an incisive article about the proposed Rose closing in todays (2/2/09) New York Times. Read it here: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/arts/design/02rose.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/arts/design/02rose.html</span></a></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); ">• A Statement to the public from Rose Art Museum director Michael Rush: </span><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" "><a href="http://www.brandeis.edu/rose/rushstatement.pdf"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">http://www.brandeis.edu/rose/rushstatement.pdf</span></span></a></span><br /></span></div>Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-53866612289980596352009-01-24T11:22:00.000-08:002010-04-18T22:23:01.175-07:00Towards A New Inclusiveness in the Arts or How Will It Be Different This Time Around?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWY3TvYtFDevzX4sjkmwrL1X4tM5yI7n7s3xEDX-yDUJHxDiKcWOsENEkGJFLFf24ZMyVCHihpAD5lp5AIp-h3GXgfcbFVMPrNNMuZb1DfOfNLp-TBdLM9XypM4sGyY0qCYQYiGjMSH7LA/s1600-h/RS-obama-cover.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 166px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWY3TvYtFDevzX4sjkmwrL1X4tM5yI7n7s3xEDX-yDUJHxDiKcWOsENEkGJFLFf24ZMyVCHihpAD5lp5AIp-h3GXgfcbFVMPrNNMuZb1DfOfNLp-TBdLM9XypM4sGyY0qCYQYiGjMSH7LA/s200/RS-obama-cover.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5295065711117872946" /></a><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Barack Obama's historic ascendency as the 44th president of the United States certainly signal a huge paradigm shift, one that has numerous national and global implications. But what exactly will be its implications for the arts community and for the relationship between art/culture and the larger social community? This question is one that I believe needs some serious and sustained attention, particularly in light of how this moment of greater inclusiveness in the social fabric might translate in the arena of art and culture. I think we need to take a look back in order to make sure we take full advantage of this opportunity to shape a new set of relationships and paradigms, and not just try to recreate some aspects of the "good old days," however you define that from your respective side of the street. It <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">is</span> a new day indeed.</div><div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span>I have been spending a bit of time in Baltimore recently, since I currently have two exhibitions there. I was there most recently to do a public dialogue with my long time friend artist Carrie Mae Weems on Martin Luther King, Jr. day, which was also the eve of Obama's inauguration. I can't imagine a more potent moment in which to have a conversation about ones practice as an artist and the role of institutions in the promulgation of art and culture.</div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJBsH3RyWhw7A8aNiVlV7Rl_ah_FIZTHn2oQVjLQpg8Ekj3YDnBWn11lBTN0TzjN0DLj14Pa4qBxgNqUxCq7CZrhGI2WK9TEYO7-aE3ouTLx-E6TbO1GO6sGqQzyk6ZVpXsgPJXBtBJjb7/s200/Baltimore+Opera+House.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5294969079601868034" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span>This question of how the arts--and by extension art institutions--can extend this moment of inclusiveness is worth looking at, since I believe it is going to be the essential issue of the moment as the economic crisis impacts everyone: artists, museums, cultural institutions, and others in the larger social community. Clearly no one will escape the need to come to grips with the changed socioeconomic landscape. Indeed, the first week I was in Baltimore happened to coincide with the announced closing of the Baltimore Opera, a turn of event that shook the arts community there, as the Opera is a venerable and long standing anchor in the cultural community of that city, having first appeared in 1930 and then incorporated in 1950.</div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxt9UK2XwABOt1vBvIXha9_PN47JA3V1CbONcfFffTPi13-tae4z57xEmBBlNS6jC5Xmbtyj-tVUSNEmB4UX7ULNlHGWSpTfNuUVkHc8lHiIE-VKQ71_sJX4d_SmBrrwrftXGHlCRZDEyg/s200/Bey2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5294985189496870930" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span>My own exhibition at the Walters Art Museum was a curatorial project undertaken with twelve Baltimore area teens; I had conceived this residency project and exhibition to address the issue of institutional inclusiveness head on. It was designed to stretch the institutional paradigm of this historical museum, while also addressing the issue of how to bring yet another audience to the museum through a conceptually engaging process and project. For it to work required the museum to do something it had never quite done before: to open itself up to intimate participation on the part of a group of people one normally doesn't see as being deeply engaged in the institution, and to trust that something meaningful would result for everyone, artist, institution, teens, and museum goers old and new. I actually believe that institutions that fail to engage in this paradigmatic reexamination are slated for eventual obsolescence. Which, of course, brings us back to the fate of the Baltimore Opera, where the institution has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy law protection; season subscribers and other ticket holders will not receive refunds on purchased tickets, and performers have had their contracts terminated. It is, of course, enough to send chills through other institutions, which are now or soon may be be facing their own perils due to this period of financial instability and the resulting diminishing patronage. Not that the Baltimore Opera is alone in this profound dilemma. Hardly.</div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 116px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDjn7t7qjYPa3-xZhV34TX_XfXKieOTewY1YMduJctGfe1vFue_ilLBP4ThrLL2s2dc0grLYuoiVana0DGye4pe17_EnKFlOMACeedWnQ6aAIyLgl-1B_xfcqKVS8hLyGRVOmNyvDypbA6/s200/moca600.2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5295077931186950466" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span>While I don't know all of the specifics of the Baltimore Opera's closing, it's dwindling ticket sales and contributions suggest that its audience was 1) either dying off (and a new one to replace it <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">not</span> being developed) or 2) that it had outlived its institutional usefulness. How else does a once vital institution go belly up? Fiscal mismanagement can often play a role, as it did in Los Angeles with the recent crisis at the Contemporary Art Museum, where the director (with the complicity of the board) depleted its considerable endowment by using it as operating capitol, without bringing in funds to shore up the disappearing endowment. But fiscal crisis or no, I believe we are at a moment of extraordinary possibility that behooves us to closely and critically examine the role of cultural institutions in this country, and how those institutions do or do not go about engaging in a conversation with its various constituents. Indeed the question of just who constitute the audiences for museums and cultural institutions is one that is now more pertinent than ever. In the current climate I don't know that there is any safe or enduring place to hide. Over dinner after my opening, one friend lamented whether institutions like the Baltimore Opera had to fundamentally change their programming, or whether the issue was how to sow appreciation for opera as it exists among a newer audience. I don't think there is, in fact, any easy answer. But I do know that institutions need to be seriously asking themselves these questions and coming up with the answers, wherever those answers may lead them. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> </span>It is interesting to contrast this moment with the moment of the early 1980s. Then as now the country was deep in a recession. Business bankruptcies in 1982 had risen 50% over the previous year. Upon being sworn in as president Ronald Reagan began slashing spending for a wide range of social programs, under the belief that government should not attempt to be the answer to all social problems. Along with this, there was the attendant cutbacks in public funding for museums. During the Reagan presidency such funding dropped by 15%, with private funding increasing exponentially. Until the current economic crisis, half of American museums had shown a growth in their endowments, while museums running at a deficit actually increased by one third. That was then. Along with the decrease in public funding came a creeping social dissension which when it finally blew up came to be called "The Culture Wars."</div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 126px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYimQzZL0_5R7Omw5IbCAlBYWsmOFUHVaSqqdMnbhhF1SLnu2bDN0zvd9Cd61ix2fAQluVO_CCejvHM4Fvl0XjHqnk6LBerchjamKa3lXbnwtFi1BTwcDPSyl5Aivav-SXp20htjYtlfnm/s200/tilted+arc,+david+aschkenas+1985.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5295000685990835394" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span>"The Culture Wars" were, to my mind, the culmination of increasing cultural and fiscal conservatism on the one hand, and the increasing sense of insularity with which arts institutions began (or continued) to function on the other. The two combined created a kind of social "perfect storm." And sadly a whole lot more people than those on the immediate radar paid the price. This struggle between civic discourse and engagement (or lack of same) and a kind of absolute aestheticism was embodied by public art projects like Richard Serra's "Tilted Arc," a 120 foot long and 12 feet high length of Corten steel that effectively bissected the Federal Plaza in downtown Manhattan. Complaints arose almost immediately from those who worked in the building and now had to take a long detour around the piece to get both in and out of the building (not to mention causing them to lose precious minutes doing so during their lunch break). </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span>Commissioned by the Arts-In-Architecture program of the U.S. General Services Administration. The sculpture was immediately controversial, and generated an effective letter writing campaign which led, after a divisive court hearing, to its being dismantled and removed to a scrap heap in 1989. Serra maintained that as a site specific work it could not be relocated to any other location but that one. Throughout the long and heated controversy advocates from the arts community framed the issue as strictly a first amendment one, dismissing those who objected to its placement as no more than a group of philistines, uniformly and foolishly unappreciative of the hulking rusted steel object gracing their midst. (And I <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">am</span> being something of a devil's advocate here; in other contexts I deeply appreciate Serra's work.)</div><div><br /></div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 188px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv8UCjQrG_CjOXNtisPrKvXcZ-18t254TDFM0uqiQRtBLyv96e-eq4XZWk6br5BPlIlnRML1GdtRdOCT88voz8SKOkmirbzIzV7NjO3dE06AiKttaowj0z_WO-PIHAJMoX2WLEjfxCMufQ/s200/RMappl4.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5295006640912198578" /><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span>But things were just getting heated up. The same year that "Titled Arc" was dismantled, "Robert Mapplethorpe - The Perfect Moment" opened at the WPA, an alternative art space in Washington, DC. Upon arriving in Cincinnati the following year at the Contemporary Art Center, the same exhibition was shut down for being "criminally obscene," and the institutions's director Dennis Barrie was placed under arrest, precipitating a major crisis for CAC's board. Mapplethorpe's survey exhibition contained a wide range of subjects, most provocatively his photographs of male homo-eroticism and sadomasochism. This exhibition begged the question of how these institutions were serving both their respective communities and artists at large. And what, if any, was the relationship between them? How had those larger communities been engaged prior to these controversies that Jesse Helms and Robert Byrd, then chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee so expertly exploited? How did the institutions (and there were more than a few during this tumultuous period) engage and establish a dialogue with their constituents prior to the moment of inflamed crisis? Obviously the opportune time for a getting to know you--"how do you do?"--is not while the building, so to speak, is burning down.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span>These are, of course, only two example and two artists whose works were caught in the various crossfires of cultural and social outrage on the one hand, and an art community that seemed caught off guard and relegated to a knee jerk first amendment response on the other, without looking at any of the broader social implications and nuances. Is that art world any different today than it was twenty years ago? Are institutions engaging in the work of forging meaningful dialogues with their communities and various constituencies in ways that they previously hadn't? Are they ready to rethinking the notion of institutional prerogative, privilege, and exclusivity, or is the current institutional climate as insular as ever? I have a strong feeling that how museums and cultural institutions answer these questions will determine whether they remain viable or end up in a state of crisis, or worse yet, shuttered.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 195px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT2T9LkDiLTwhvBq-WNVqKbCxFC-JmRuPqYZrNH6VBi0C9nfLG-yYSgubqW0HMrcfKnKSRTx-rwgqQykFVs19A-dOakDLHxVXGvgLe5SqFbf6gYHpeTv_P7aUw-J4_2rvC_bJrE66GPvPP/s320/Cosby-Jordan-Obama.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5295066842299768306" /></div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">From Cliff Huxtable to Barack Hussein Obama</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></span>Much has been written attempting to discern the various social and cultural shifts and changing racial attitudes that made Barack Obama's candidacy and then election possible. Some, like author Jabari Asim, assert that it was the cinematic and televised presidential personages of actors Morgan Freeman in "Deep Impact" and Denise Haysbert in "24" who were the psychic precursors to Obama, while others point to Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice as real time black presences in the Washington, DC loop of power that prepared the reassuring way for the current president. You could probably throw in Tiger Woods for good measure. My son says Eminem was a major influence in allowing white Americans to blur the color line and comfortably inhabit the black persona. Harvard psychologist Dr. Alvin Poussaint lays the laurel at the feet of Bill Cosby as Clifford Huxtable as being the breakthrough image that began to comfortably lay to rest racial stereotypes about black social and class norms. To each his or her own analysis. The fact is however it happened, we <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">did</span> it!</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Photographs: (from top) Barack Obama on the cover of Rolling Stone, AP Photo/Rolling Stone; Baltimore Opera; "Portraits Re/Examined: A Dawoud Bey Project," Courtesy Walters Art Museum; Contemporary Art Museum, LA, Photograph © Monica Almeida/NYT; Richard Serra, Tilted Arc, 1981, Photograph © David Aschkenas; Robert Mapplethorpe, Self Portrait, © 1978</span></div></div>Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-90484792149581995002009-01-15T10:26:00.000-08:002011-10-21T13:32:44.690-07:00Obama and the Arts - Looking Back to Look Forward<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA-0ooXT_dypvx2FtNQAab55wy12Xp3jlbrO8B5idwggPakpogEv38yzJPVDetw1dPi9kS7PgeNb3xXxScB7WBoqv9WsIDCDdbRsV8FUoAnS-0yKqeKWtZsH7L9wht1SJk3lIck-yPQht0/s1600-h/shepard-fairey-barack-obama-11.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 301px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA-0ooXT_dypvx2FtNQAab55wy12Xp3jlbrO8B5idwggPakpogEv38yzJPVDetw1dPi9kS7PgeNb3xXxScB7WBoqv9WsIDCDdbRsV8FUoAnS-0yKqeKWtZsH7L9wht1SJk3lIck-yPQht0/s400/shepard-fairey-barack-obama-11.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5291590449276717330" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTClNZRTMZHvIVAfh8qOohIfLHYAr0gG_Ln9KU78bFYpD6p5na2IFQruZdtWA1keGxnHFPQByP6s-6G3CHMda5K7AwIoEuRUgpfhCwqUnQqaoXsKvcwFAmAolZ_2LIuI6ga7Ivx62Yl3Hz/s1600-h/shepard-fairey-barack-obama-11.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><br /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>With Barack Obama's inauguration as the nation's forty-fourth president a scant five days away, excitement and anticipation are building as we enter a moment of profound change and potential paradigm shifts. Just as the Obama campaign was the country's first truly 21st century campaign, utilizing both technology and the lessons gleaned from Obama's years as a community organizer, so is there the hope that his presidency will usher in a new moment of cultural renaissance and revival. As much a public intellectual and publicly introspective individual and memoirist as he is a politician, Barack Obama has single handedly reclaimed the high ground of intellectual engagement for a country starved for such over the past eight years. One can only imagine the depths to which we have plunged in a McCain/Palin administration. Indeed, if you caught "Joe the [unlicensed] Plumber" recently holding forth as an inept on camera journalist a few days ago, reporting from Israel in the midst of the current conflict with Gaza, while adding nothing but uninformed incompetence to the mix, you got a sense of what the future might have looked like. </div><div><br /></div><div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 133px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcCEtnqKYhNA7VjFH3YL-PscsgpGOaFR3ywebiplwfzz9_BOBeOQPJ_L_Y5ORIih7Kg50-AzobJHoxp7uxw754p8XUmZ_AzLZgD2vCDDTdaHfhGTAfzIPXLl3cw4RfbzF0Y0VWP1WgpHhd/s200/alexander_300dpi.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5291596053765537570" /></div><div>Certainly Obama's inclusion of poet and Yale professor Elizabeth Alexander in the inaugural ceremony signals a heartening respect for art and culture not much in evidence for the past eight years. There's been much talk throughout the recent campaign about the Kennedy years, with parallels being drawn between the two young presidents, Obama and Kennedy. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline, of course, were the last president and first lady to turn the White House into a cultural as well as political space, with performances there early on in the administration by the young African American mezzo-soprano Grace Brumby, and later master cellist Pablo Casals, and Paul Winter's jazz sextet. The actor Frederick March did a reading of works by Ernest Hemingway and Sinclair Lewis, and performance of Shakespeare and ballet were given by notable American companies, among other events. It was the the Kennedys' intention that the White House be seen as promoting the best of American culture to the various visiting dignitaries and others. I am sure we can expect to see a continuation of this kind of cultural ambassadorship, appreciation, and advocacy as well from the Obamas once they are settled into the White House.</div><div><br /></div><div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 132px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkVxsfoyj2z6OTKaHP2cgjtda1n_kIZhNw7vAdcCu3SYAm042iVjfnr78xtUNn1Kq_LaxZcrysBpf9ce66EshX-aUEtf1frFYNbTSyrLwGBac5W0QQKrTu82ilf8eMY3hBK3BLTsXO4FVY/s200/quincy_jones_001_210408.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5291603688225888242" /></div><div>In anticipation of this political and likely cultural sea change, a number of individuals have been wasting no time in vying to get Obama's attention, hoping to have an early influence on his administration's policies regarding the arts. The Obama-Biden team early in the campaign did in fact release a fact sheet, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Barack Obama and Joe Biden: Champions of Arts and Culture</span>, in which they announced, "Barack Obama appreciates the role and value of creative expression...The arts embody the American spirit of self-definition...," and goes on to outline "A Platform in Support of the Arts. It is a deeply affirmative document. Among those hoping to influence the incoming administration is producer/musician/bandleader/cultural impressario Quincy Jones, who called on Obama to create a Secretary of Arts position in his administration that parallels the Ministry of Culture in other countries. Said Jones, "...next conversation I have with President Obama is to beg for Secretary of Arts..." Jones has been promoting this idea for some ten years now. One individual, Jaime Austria, took Jones' sentiment as an opening to create an online petition calling on Obama to create just such a position. The "Petition for A Secretary of the Arts' currently has some 119,000 signatures at this writing. Sign it.</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">(</span><a href="http://www.petitiononline.com/esnyc/petition.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">http://www.petitiononline.com/esnyc/petition.html</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">)</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Additional indications of Obama's intent to focus on the arts in his administration can be gleaned in his formation in 2007 of the Obama National Arts Policy Committee. The committee consists of a vast range of arts related individuals, from musician Wynton Marsalis, to Yale Art School dean Robert Storr, NYU Tisch School of the Arts dean Mary Schmidt Campbell, arts patron and MoMA chair emeritus Agnes Gund, artist Chuck Close, director Harold Prince, Chicago arts patron Joan Harris, painter Moe Brooker, and others. Presumably this distinguished body will indeed have the ear of the incoming president, and speak for the broad set of needs and concern facing artists in the current moment.<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">(</span><a href="http://www.artsactionfund.org/pdf/artsvote/Obamaarts4.pdf"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">http://www.artsactionfund.org/pdf/artsvote/Obamaarts4.pdf</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">)</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Now if you're an artist you might be excused for saying to yourself, "What exactly does this have to do with me where I am? How does Wynton Marsalis performing in the White House change my situation? Is this a trickle down kind of deal, where attention paid to the cultural cognoscenti is supposed to then reflect onto the hoi polloi ?" Reading the names of what might be considered some of the art and cultural elite probably does little to reassure your own sense of wellbeing as you struggle to pay your bills, hope you don't get sick because you don't have health coverage, buy supplies when you can afford them, pay your rent, keep your small dance company together, and engage in the day to day struggle of being creatively productive in a climate of increasingly diminishing returns. And you would be right. A recent article in <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Art in America</span> indicated that some of the members of the Arts Policy Committee were focused on reviving the individual artists fellowships program of the National Endowment for the Arts. That would indeed benefit a few artists, but certainly not the many. The advisors themselves would certainly inform the selection of panelists for this process, which certainly would also influence the ultimate recipients of this largesse. The much more inclusive--and only recently implemented--Unites States Artists fellowship program (which awards $50,000 fellowships to fifty artists annually) seems to be a fine model for this kind of program, rewarding both recognized as well as unsung and under recognized artists of a very broad stripe .</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">(<a href="http://www.unitedstatesartists.org/Public2/Home/index.cfm"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">http://www.unitedstatesartists.org/Public2/Home/index.cfm</span></a>)</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Others have focused on art education, which is also a very important and much needed piece of the picture. But something much more ambitious that casts a much broader net--while putting money into artists pockets <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">and</span> providing support for institutions, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">and</span> fostering arts education <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">and</span> civic engagement--is called for if the Obama administration is to have a serious impact on the lives of artists in this country. I think we need something along the lines of the Works Project Administration of the 1930s, or even more recently, the CETA Artists Project. Both of these Federal programs were a response to a set of economic circumstances that echo our current national dilemma. To focus on simply cherry picking a handful of artists for NEA fellowships in this drastic climate seems, frankly, demoralizing. These times call for a different focus entirely, one that is as inclusive in its impact as possible. There is a way to think about this that could actually benefit everyone, individual artists, institutions, and the larger social community. And the answer lies in plain view with at least two successful efforts from the past that were designed to address the very issues we are currently faced with.</div><div><br /></div><div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 232px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-m3jYRtidceC-TPuifBXNs49qh_E0J3wMdyx_qhHqY8oTVsbGx0HVW9UW1isJpOHwXfMa0jT-HtmhyVvB_CF8udrZQMSEPG1iFATn2kNDu92T4TWLaxoUkOs8wvnP3XC0tf02gG_GOT0K/s320/groupartists-large.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5291633466215078962" /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(204, 102, 0);"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">The PWAP (Public Works of Art Project) and</span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);">WPA (Works Progress Administration)</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 153, 0);"> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>While the arts community works to define its current needs and expectations from its government, a look back to two previous federal projects designed to address artists (and institutions) in need would seem prudent, if for no other reason than to glean the lessons that generally lurk within history. In 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, the Public Works of Art Project was brought into being by president Franklin Roosevelt. Conceived as a program to employ artists, it ran from December 1933 - June 1924, at which point it was folded into the WPA program, which was more broadly inclusive, employing some 8 million people. These included artists as well as a wide range of workers employed on a range of federal projects including construction of public buildings and roads, in addition to large programs in the arts, drama, media, and literacy efforts. Indeed, no American community was left untouched by the efforts of the WPA, which continued from 1935 - 1943. Artists as different as painter Alice Neel and actor Orson Welles found much needed work through the Federal Artists' Project of the WPA.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);">WPA Redux: CETA Artists Project</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Created in 1973 as a means of organizing under a singular governmental umbrella the vast web of manpower programs created in the 1960s, CETA (Comprehensive Employment Training Act) was brought into being during the administration of president Gerald Ford. Originally under the direction of the Department of Labor, when CETA was formally launched in 1974 control was given to state and localities to determine how they would distribute the budget, which started at just under $2 billion, growing to $12 billion in five years. The first CETA artists' project was the brainchild of John Kreidler, a former administrator for the Department of Labor and Office of Management and Budget before going to the San Francisco Art Commission. Kreidler had a clear vision of how the creation of public murals, art classes, and public performances, for example, fit into the legislation's definition of public service. The requirement for a public service component to CETA employment created an opening to incorporate the arts into this framework. He received support from the local manpower (employment) office. With this support, Kreidler crafted a proposal for a CETA artists' project that employed 113 artists. More than 3,500 had applied. This initial project became the national model. When Jimmy Carter became president in 1976, he significantly increased the allocation for the program, which by then was firmly entrenched in numerous cities.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>In New York, where I am from, this resulted in the formation of the Cultural Council Foundation CETA Artists Project, which officially began in 1978 under the direction of banker/businesswoman turned arts consultant Sarah Garretson, who then hired Rochelle Slovin to run the project while she helmed the organization. Subcontracting out positions to a wide range of cultural organizations, as diverse as the Black Theater Alliance, Association of Hispanic Arts, and the Brooklyn Philharmonia Orchestra, the CCF CETA Artists Project ultimately employed 138 visual artists, 134 performing artists, twenty-two literary artists, five artists-coordinators, and one archivist in service to a broad range of institutions. The salary was $10,000 per year <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">plus benefits</span>. Uniquely, the NY project also contained a stipulation that the artists were to spend one day a week as studio time. So not only did the artists get to practice their craft and provide much needed labor to the institutions (which didn't have to foot the bill for instructors, performers, directors, muralists, etc.) they were also encouraged to continue to pursue their own independent work. The artists ranged from the very experienced such as painters Joseph Delaney, Vincent Smith, and Herman Cherry, to master West African drummer Ladji Camara, as well as younger artists such as dancers Jane Goldberg and Blondell Cummings, painters Willie Birch, Candida Alvarez, and McArthur Binion, sculptor Ursuala von Rydingsvard, poets Bob Holman, Pedro Pietri, and Rose Lesniak, photographers Daniel Dawson, Louis Faurer, and yours truly. It's hard to imagine now that $10,000 a year was a princely sum, but it was. I remember my rent then was $175 a month for an eight room apartment in Brooklyn! So you have to figure we were doing alright. And all of us were given a reprieve from the instability that comes with being perpetual freelance labor. Additionally, because we all had to come to one central location to pick up our checks each week, and to receive project updates from the administrators, a community was formed that endures to this day.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The CCF CETA Artists Project continued for two years in cities throughout the country, and proved to be a pivotal experience for both artists and cash strapped institutions. In these days when more and more cultural institutions are feeling the pinch, cutting back on staff or public hours, or even ultimately closing their doors in response to increasing economic pressures, and artists of all types remain vastly underemployed, President Barack Obama need look no further than the recent past for a model to put artists back to work and cultural institutions on surer economic footing. A contemporary version of the CETA Artists Project, complete with much needed health coverage, seems to fit the bill to a "t."</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Photographs: (from top) Shepard Fairey's Barack Obama posters; poet Elizabeth Alexander; Quincy Jones; artists gathered in front of the Harlem Art Center, a WPA project)</span></div>Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1804133195673148497.post-50386106063834684202008-12-20T17:36:00.000-08:002009-01-05T20:44:33.622-08:00Advice to A Young Artist<div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhghsjtqY4iYEYaNJOA3pwIdl5n8zhQA9R7Eq38fxXSxTbwxaPcUfeWq0R8ruPxj5m38ZRA2LuLkutyZhjj9hqwVHugzUxIi2mnPALmSzIksLRGatYN2V4YypjRCpmXpZHfSQ8dWYQy5rX8/s1600-h/car0124.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 157px; height: 170px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhghsjtqY4iYEYaNJOA3pwIdl5n8zhQA9R7Eq38fxXSxTbwxaPcUfeWq0R8ruPxj5m38ZRA2LuLkutyZhjj9hqwVHugzUxIi2mnPALmSzIksLRGatYN2V4YypjRCpmXpZHfSQ8dWYQy5rX8/s400/car0124.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282685854357602146" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:'Trebuchet MS';font-size:13px;"><b><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; font-family:georgia;">I particpated in an Artists at Work panel discussion at the Chicago Cultural Center three nights ago. The hall was packed with people (presumably artists) who had come to hear me, Joyce Owens, Tony Fitzpatrick, Juan Angel Chavez, and moderator Paul Klein hold forth on "Turning Your Art Into A Career." I am always a little hesitant about participating in these kinds of events, not being sure what will ensue, and if one and a half hours is indeed enough time to say everything that needs to be said to an audience that presumably has a a wide range of experiences, but perhaps still feels lacking in that one or two crucial pieces of information that will perhaps move them forward in their careers. I honestly wasn't looking forward to trying to explain my thirty year career as a series of "how tos" which are, at best, unique to my own set of experiences and circumstances, even as I realize that I <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">have</span> learned a thing or two along the way to the career I have had. At any rate it did turn out to be a variably interesting evening, with a wide range of viewpoints and experiences being presented. I am posting here the comments I read for readers of my blog. They will also, at some point, be posted on the Chicago Artists Resources Website, an invaluable source of professional information.</span><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal;font-family:georgia;">(<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">http://</span><a href="http://www.chicagoartistsresource.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">www.chicago artistsresource.org</span></a>)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">• Make good work!</span></span></span></b><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> Be self-critical and informed enough to know if the work you are doing stacks up to the work you would like to be hanging next to. Through constant engagement with work that is being shown, know where and if your work fits into a particular area of current discourse. Nothing else matters more than this, and nothing else will make up for this if you are not doing it.</span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">• </span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Put in 10,000 hours (see Malcolm Gladwell’s book </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Outliers. </span></span></i></b><span style="font-style: normal; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Gladwell posits that successful people—across a wide range of fields--have put in 10,000 hours of practice to reach their level of success.) </span></span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Like any other profession, being an artist requires physically getting up and “going to work.” The sooner you begin your professional journey the more time you will have to put in the requisite number of hours.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; "><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">• </span></span></i></b><span style="font-style: normal; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Hang around people who are better than you think you currently are. </span></span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The longer you hang around them and have conversations with them, the better you are likely to become. Be sure to actually <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">listen </span>to their feedback and figure out how you can use it.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; "><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">• Assuming you are doing the above, </span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">show your work to as many people as possible.</span></span></b><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> If you show the work to friends and associates, show it to those you think are doing work that is at least as interesting or more interesting than your own, who have even more experience than you do, so you can establish an ongoing critical dialogue with them. </span></span></span><b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It is impossible to do good work, show it to a lot of</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">people, and nothing happens. </span></span></u></b><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">You have to believe this. If you <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">are</span> showing your work to informed viewers and no on is responding or talking your work up to other people, you need to take a long, hard look at your work. Do not be foolish enough to think that everyone else is wrong and that you are right! People that I know who look at work—even with very different interests and tastes—tend to agree when something interesting comes along. And if any one of them sees something interesting, they will usually tell someone else. I </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">always</span></span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> talk to curators I know about interesting new work that I have seen, encouraging them to take a look at it as well. Usually we agree, and even if they are not able to do anything right away, they keep the work and the artist on their radar.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">• Be informed.</span></span></b><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> Know what part of the marketplace your work fits; both the marketplace of ideas and the marketplace of certain kinds of objects. Making art is not only about being creative, but understanding the broader context in which you are making your work.</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; "><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">• </span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Cultivate a community of support,</span></span></b><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">and keep in touch with people, even when it doesn’t look like they are going to do anything for you right away.</span></span></b><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Form a community, don’t just “network.” </span></span></b><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I have had numerous exhibitions that were the result of keeping in touch with people for up to ten years. People can often be interested in your work, but it takes time for the right situation to develop for them to be able to do something with it. They also want to know that you, too, are in it for the long haul. The last thing they want to do is make an early commitment to someone’s work who then decides to give it up and go work for Verizon!</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">• Join those professional organizations</span></span></b><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> that can provide a community, network, and professional information, such as College Art Association, Society for Photographic Education, and others. Attend their events and conferences and expand your knowledge and community.</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">• </span></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Become an information junkie.</span></span></b><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> Know about everything and everybody who might be interested in what you are doing. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">All</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> information is useful at some point.</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">• Be prepared to make work for the long haul.</span></span></b><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> Be a long distance runner. The great novelist John Oliver Killens gave me this advise thirty years ago, and it's true. Your work should be something that you would be doing regardless of whether the larger market ever responds or not. Making art has to be your own particular obsession.</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; "><b><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">• Develop good communication skills.</span></span></b><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> The ability to speak and write articulately and concisely about your work is absolutely essential, unless you have someone who will constantly transcribe and edit your thoughts for you, and also act as your press secretary so you never have to actually confront anyone or talk or write about your work yourself. The ability to write and think well is directly related to how much you read and absorb information. I would suggest that you read a lot in order to understand what a well crafted statement (about anything) looks like. Good writing tends to follow entirely conventional patterns and forms.</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">• Get a good education,</span></span></b><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> whether from a good art or photography program or from your own obsessive seeking out of knowledge. They weren’t joking (whoever </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">they</span></span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> were) when they said that “Knowledge is Power.” You need to know how to DO something; how to skillfully and consistently make something. This requires a respect for craft, knowledge and the necessary training to execute. If you choose to do it through an art school or program, it DOES matter where you go. Some places are better at this than others. Others are good at teaching a narrow range of conceptual theory and jargon, but may leave you unsure about how to give coherent and interesting form to those ideas. Art is a serious endeavor, and much like any other field requires training. You wouldn’t let a doctor with no training operate on you</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">just because she was feeling ”inspired,” or because he or she had good intentions and some interesting theories about medical science. Unless you think art is a less serious pursuit, it should also require some serious skills and measurable competencies. </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">• Don’t be afraid to create new paradigms for how you can exist and function as an artist.</span></span></b><span style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> A lot of the old paradigms were never meant to serve artists well in the first place. I don’t know any other field in which you can bear the full expense of production, then give someone 50% to sell the object or product, then pay the IRS the requisite 33% tax rate, and say you are doing "good business." This is the “normal” paradigm of the commercial art world, and at a certain level it <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">does</span> work, particularly at the mid to upper levels. It doesn't mean its the </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">only</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> way, and in the early stages your work will not be priced high enough to cover your costs of production, let alone pay your rent every </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">month, under this structure at any rate. Other paradigms and strategies </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">are</span></span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> possible. Much</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> the way that musicians are finding ways to profitably get their work into the hands of their audiences without label support, so should other artists be devising ways of getting their work out there and truly supporting themselves. There </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">are</span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> artists doing this with real success. Find out what they are doing and how they are doing it.</span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal;font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal;font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">What do you think? What advice would you give? Or is advice something that "the wise don't need and fools won't heed?"</span></span></div></b></span>Dawoud Beyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17536346991511470491noreply@blogger.com41