Colored Criticism

A fresh take on art.

Tiffany Bradley

5+1 Birthday Timeline

2015

Colored Criticism launches as a home for people of color to be seen and heard in the arts.

[Video] Release of Digital Natives, the first episode in our signature series on YouTube. Our coverage of Indigenous art is filmed on location at Metropolitan Museum of Art.

[Event] Release of Free Blacks, the next episode of our signature series, with a conversation around African diasporic dance at Brooklyn Community Foundation.

[Video] Release of Museum of Impact episode, first media partnership.

2016-2018

Colored Criticism becomes a fiscally sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA.)

[presidential election]

[Video] Release of Colored Criticism trailer to celebrate the first season of our signature series.

[Media] Principal photography begins on Carnival Queens, our first documentary. The long-form project explores Caribbean cultural heritage and art through the West Indian Day Parade.

2019

Event] First Work-in-Progress screening of Carnival Queens at Guild Hall, along with panel discussion on Caribbean history.

[Video] Whitney Biennial episode launches on YouTube, the last production before the pandemic.

[Event] First events held for college students at Multicultural Resource Center and Mead Art Museum, Amherst.

2020

[Pandemic]

[Event] Black History Month program at Grace Church White Plains is our first faith-based partnership, and last event before “NY State on Pause” closes non-essential businesses.

5 year birthday of Colored Criticism. No celebration.

[Media] Launch of Art Off Pause, our livestream conversation series in response to the disruption of the pandemic.

[presidential election]

2021

5+1 Birthday! Celebrating five years of Colored Criticism plus pandemic!

Colored Criticism welcomes new Board members.

[Event] Discussion with Middle East Librarians Association program links academics on multiple continents.

[Media] Launch of new Colored Criticism website!

→ Next: a bright future!

We’ve got big dreams for our future.

This year, Colored Criticism is celebrating our 5+1 Birthday! That means that we’ve worked through five years and one pandemic to center people of color in the arts.

Last year was not celebratory for obvious reasons (COVID-19, we’re looking at you!) So this year, we’re looking back and dreaming forward.

From now until Thanksgiving, we’ll be revisiting and sharing some of our favorite highlights of the past 5+1 years, and asking for your support as we grow!

To kick off our celebration, here’s a timeline of our progression over our first six years.

Yours in 5+1 birthday fun,
Tiffany.

Donate

Patrick Mulryan

Photo credit: David Noles

Patrick Mulryan is a queer director, actor, teacher, and voice and dialect coach based in New York City. The focus of his work is on expanding one’s expressive palette and sense of self through freeing one’s authentic voice and through that process expanding our capacity for empathy.

Patrick recently joined the Voice and Speech faculty at the Juilliard School. He also serves as Dialect Associate for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Broadway. 

Past coaching credits include Lost in Yonkers at Hartford Stage (co-directed by and starring Academy Award nominee Marsha Mason) and Sweat at the Huntington Theater Company for which the cast received the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Ensemble.

Directing credits include a production of Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink in Brooklyn. Previously he served as director and adaptor for a production entitled Raison d’être: an Evening of Pirandello which ran at Theatre 71 on New York’s Upper West Side (JJewell Productions). An interview with him on the subject of adaptation was published in the Journal of the Pirandello Society of America. Other credits include Goblin Market (JJewell Productions) which he directed in New York at 59E59 and abroad at the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival. He also directed the MFA Acting Showcase at Brooklyn College from 2019 to 2023.

As an actor, he appeared in Fiasco Theater’s acclaimed production of Into the Woods in London at the Menier Chocolate Factory as well as in New York at The Roundabout Theatre (Lortel Award for Outstanding Revival) and on tour, for which he received an LA Drama Critics Award.  Other performance credits include: Relentlessly Gay Brunch (EST); Fiasco’s Cymbeline (Barrow Street, TFANA); Bum Phillips All-American Opera (La MaMa); As You Like It (Happy Few Theatre Company, NYIT Award Nomination); Fiasco’s Into the Woods (McCarter, Old Globe); Cabaret and Importance of Being Earnest (Trinity Rep); and Chain of Fools (Guthrie). 

Patrick has been a lecturer/guest artist in Voice and Speech at Brooklyn College, the New Group, NYU, Wesleyan, Pace, SUNY Purchase, Fordham, and the Tom Todoroff Studio.  He has developed work with Tectonic Theater Project, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Page 73, Ma-Yi, TFANA, Fiasco, Bay Street, Lark, New Georges, and at the O’Neill Center (NMTC).  

Patrick received his MFA in Acting from Brown University/Trinity Rep.  Other training includes: Moscow Art Theatre (NTI), Oberlin College (BA), and Guthrie Experience for Actors in Training (GEx 13).  

Patrick is a member of the Actors Center workshop company, the National Alliance of Acting Teachers, VASTA, the Dramatists Guild, and Phi Beta Kappa. He is a certified teacher of the Miller Voice Method (mVm) and is a student of Knight-Thompson Speechwork.

Pride In Many Colors

Summer is finally in the streets. With the solstice behind us and restrictions lifting, I’m so glad that we can gather again. It seemed like we might not make it to another season of celebration, but we’re here for Juneteenth and Pride. From city streets to county fairs, our communities are coming alive, with parties open to all.

One of the brightest, biggest celebrations in New York has to be Pride, along with the Puerto Rican Day Parade and West Indian Day Parade. In our city, we’re still combining digital and in-person parties as we recalibrate post-pandemic. Whatever your speed, there’s a way to honor our LGBTQ+ friends and family whether you’re on a float, hosting a cozy kickback, or digging into some critical theory (and yes, podcasts count!)

Here are my picks for Pride online. Full disclosure, all of these artists and curators are Colored Criticism friends:

  • Close reads: Lambda-award winning poet and performance artist Rosamond King does not mince words. Her latest collection “All the Rage” channels the righteous anger and unflinching hopes of living in America right now. Her incandescent, pointed and playful voice is always in style. Enjoy the book launch at Rutgers here.
  • The kids are more than all right: APA Out Loud brings us young spoken word artists Jireh Deng, Lauren Bullock, and Caitlyn Clark in virtual performance. I’m looking forward to more from their strong spirits and thoughtful reflections. Watch their work here, directed by Alberto Morales of Human Rights Campaign.
  • Teach it like you preach it: Professor and scholar Bimbola Akinbola redefines diaspora through her Queering Belonging mini-series. Her advocacy reminds us that “belonging is continuous work” and not a rigid legacy. Explore the dimensions of Nigerian diaspora artists via Northwestern University online.
  • It’s lit: Kevin Seaman illuminates the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco this weekend. Their public art commission draws from the iconography of the Transgender, Lesbian Labrys, and Leather flags this month. If you can’t visit in person (like me), check out this supercut set to Planningtorock’s Transome.

Image Credit: Meg Emiko brings their candy-colored affirmations to the APA Out Loud campaign. Meg shares “I had spent so many years trying to push the two most important parts of my identity aside, that I knew I wanted to create a platform and safe space for other AAPI and LGBTQIA+ folks so they could feel represented in some way.”

Run It Back

“If American progress is recursive, then studying the past is a form of moral vigilance, an effort to better navigate the nation’s continual cycles of violence and oppression, and perhaps help guide the country to calmer waters when the next crest hits.”

Victor Luckerson

Victor Luckerson’s Run It Back is essential reading on Tulsa, race riots, and historical memory. Subscribe now!

Audience Outlook Monitor

As part of the founding communications team for the Audience Outlook Monitor initiative, we evaluate and share how audiences feel about going out again and what will make them feel safe in order to stage a successful comeback. WolfBrown’s Audience Outlook Monitor is an international collaboration between top researchers, funders, service organizations, and hundreds of cultural organizations that want to make informed decisions about how and when to re-start programming based on rigorous research data. 

Watch the Deep Dive: “Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Audience Attitudes about Covid-19”

April 5, 2021

This 60-minute session foregrounds research findings through the lens of race/ethnicity. Because of the very large sample sizes, were are able to examine differences between racial/ethnic groups within the pool of respondents (i.e., arts and culture members and ticket buyers). Following an initial presentation of research highlights, Tiffany Bradley moderates a discussion with Chandra Stephens-Albright, Managing Director of Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company, a participant in the first phase of the research.

Gina Gibney

Gina Gibney is a choreographer, director, and the Founder, Artistic Director, and CEO of Gibney. Gibney emerged in 1991 as an arts organization dedicated to social action, and today the organization has rapidly emerged as a cultural leader operating 23 studios across two Lower Manhattan facilities. With the mission of tapping into the vast potential of moment, creativity, and performance to effect social change and personal transformation, Gibney works through three interrelated fields of activity—Company, the acclaimed resident dance ensemble; Community, a highly respected and impactful social action program, and Center, two beautiful spaces at 890 and 280 Broadway.

Gina Gibney’s repertory of works and community outreach programs have received wide acclaim and support. Beyond the stage, Gibney is dedicated to using the transformative power of dance to give a voice to individuals in need. Considered a pioneer in connecting the arts with the broader community, her organization’s work has impacted the lives of thousands of domestic violence survivors. In 2008 she was inducted into the Vanity Fair Hall of Fame for “making art and taking action.” 

Gibney is serving her second terms as a Trustee of Dance/USA and has received the organization’s Ernie Award, given annually to a changemaker in the field. She is a Founding Member of the Board of Directors of Dance/NYC, serving the organization since 2012. She is a member of The Women’s Forum of New York is an invitation-only organization of more than 500 women representing all professional sectors and spheres of influence in our city.

Gibney was included in Dance Magazine’s 2017 list of The Most Influential People in Dance Today and was named to the Out100 2016 list of influential members of the LGBT community.

In 2018, she received the Distinguished Alumni Award from her alma mater Case Western Reserve University. In 2019 she received the Floria Lasky Award from the Jerome Robbins Foundation and the Plus Factor Award from the string quartet ETHEL.

Gibney is a frequent panelist and speaker on topics of dance, entrepreneurship, and arts-community partnerships. She holds a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Fine Arts from Case Western Reserve University where she graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.