Colored Criticism

A fresh take on art.

Articles

Coronavirus Cancels Everything

Hi friends,

I’m writing from my home, surrounded by the fallout of coronavirus. Our county is referred to as the “Westchester cluster,” which sounds vaguely like an old-timey candy instead of an outbreak. The National Guard is helping out the good people of New Rochelle, schools are closed next to my writing spot in Scarsdale, and our streets get quieter as the diagnosed cases tick up. We’re already community distancing as our schools, cultural institutions, and houses of worship try to contain the damage.

Museums are a great place to spend ideas, culture, and germs. I’ve been watching closely as #CancelEverything becomes real – every hour brings a cancellation or postponement. I’m not saying you have to stay home, but you can’t go to a museum or theater in NYC. Of course, we can still love up on art in the time of coronavirus. I’m clearly not a doctor, so I can’t help you with testing or public policy. But I can suggest how to make the best of a (mandatory? requested?) Covid-19 staycation:

  • Read a book: This is the time for independent study – your public library is full of arts expertise. Librarians are like a search engine or the internet, without conspiracy theories and #sponcon. I’m selecting my books online so that I can hit the circulation desk, wash my hands, and be back home.
  • Take a hike: Lace up your boots and see some outdoor art. We can definitely maintain a healthy distance from each other in a sculpture park like Socrates or Storm King. And let’s be honest, you’re going to be spending even more time sitting if you’re working from home. Get some fresh air!
  • Give generously: If you can’t buy a ticket at the door, make a donation. Smaller organizations are going to be hard hit by any reduction in visitors. The mandatory closures mean a significant drop in attendance for cultural institutions. That money isn’t coming back when the situation improves.

It’s no secret that there are plenty of low-wage and contingent workers in the arts. Teaching artists, security guards, cleaning staff, and art handlers tend to be under or uninsured. They also deal the most with the public. Boards and executives, this is the time to be creative in your duty of care. The Rauschenberg Emergency Grants program is a great start, but it won’t be enough. Supporting our most vulnerable colleagues will have a huge impact on our communities. Remember, Typhoid Mary was a service worker. She infected others because she couldn’t afford to stay at home.

Black Art History (and Future)

Black art has been part of America for over 400 years. Last year, our country remembered the first enslaved Africans brought to the U.S. in 1619. Although much of their first-hand history can never be recovered, the culture that they embodied flourishes in our communities. As we celebrate Black History Month, museums across the country are exhibiting artists of African descent in an attempt to honor our contributions.

If art is the place where our cultural and social discussions are unfolding, we need to center Black artists now more than ever. For far too long, Black artists have been left out of crucial conversations about their own work and its place in contemporary culture. At the same time, communities of color have not been engaged as arts audiences because they take place in elite and exclusionary spaces.

So many arts institutions implicitly continue the legacy of segregation, unable to engage communities of color. Compounding this problem is the lack of Black staff in the arts, and the lack of Black voices in arts media. Our goal is to connect viewers with art that represents and expands their understanding of the diasporic experience.

There are Black cultural institutions that you can support across the nation. Some of our NYC favorites include Weeksville, MoCADA, Sugar Hill Museum, CCADI and The Studio Museum (their collection is on the move at Smith College Art Museum!) Our friends at Museum Hue have put together a map of museums presenting artists of color. Find your new favorite now!

Image credit: I love me a quilt, but a painting will do in a pinch! Faith Ringgold, Early Works #25: Self-Portrait (1965), courtesy of Brooklyn Museum. We know and love Faith Ringgold as a quilting superstar, but this self-portrait shows her hand is just as strong in other media. I dare you to find a better use of aqua!

Florals & Frida Kahlo

Spring is creeping forward slowly on the East Coast. A stealthy seasonal cold took most of my household down. Laid out for weeks, I thought about the image of wellness. On Instagram, we recognize it as a slender white woman doing headstands on a beach, or a perfectly framed matcha latte. In real life, it feels like avoiding a steady diet of coffee and candy is enough.

This month, my vision of radical healing tends toward the Brooklyn Museum. Frida Kahlo’s iconic portraiture is on display, but the show’s real value is in her composite strength. Her braces, liniments, and clothing show all of the supports that made her studio practice possible. Her life was visited by pain, illness, and trauma. But her work reveals the courage evolving from her circumstances. Spring is a time when growth peeks out from every crack in the pavement. We celebrate renewal with religious observances like Easter or Passover. The more secular ring in the season with the return of brunch.

It’s a comfort to remember that wellness is not the absence of trauma, but the embrace of resilience. I asked Catherine Morris, Sackler Senior Curator at the Brooklyn Museum, how Kahlo’s physicality framed this exhibition:

“Kahlo’s own lived experience with disability is fully present in her art. One of the most remarkable things about her, to me, is the way that she was who she was. And I think it’s a really important conversation to reframe disability in relationship to Kahlo away from the narratives that you primarily see about brokenness, about fragility. I think that Frida Kahlo must certainly have been one of the strongest people going to do what she did.

This current disability theorizing frames disability in relationship to the problems that normative people have with disabled bodies. I do not think, as is often portrayed, that Kahlo was trying to hide her disability with the clothing she wore. She was clearly very intent on making her presence known, her physical self part of the world, taking up space.”

Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving is on view from February 8–May 12, 2019 at the Brooklyn Museum.

Photo credit: Nickolas Muray, Frida with Idol, 1939. Courtesy of Nickolas Muray Photo Archives.

Congress Brings Palestinian Realness

It’s been four years since we started Colored Criticism on Museum Mile. We’ve reached 4,000+ participants so far, and are ready for much, much more. I’ll keep y’all updated on the special projects and surprises coming this year! 

I can’t lie, Rashida Tlaib melted my heart. She made Palestinian culture a trending topic with 4,000+ posts on Instagram. While media outlets from Elle to the New York Times noted the hashtag #TweetYourThobe, it was all coverage and no context. There was little discussion of why this was the ultimate heritage flex, resonating with fashion, art, and Palestinian pride. The 116th Congress brought the most racial and ethnic diversity, and the most cultural heritage our country has ever seen! 

Cliff notes history: a thobe is an ankle-length gown, usually hand-embroidered in vibrant colors across the chest, sleeves, and neck. The embroidery patterns, called tatriz in Arabic, are as regional as can be. The different patterns represent different locations, in this case Palestinian villages before 1948. With this Instacall to action, Tlaib illustrated the art that generations of aunties have carried throughout the diaspora, from Dubai to Detroit. From refugee camps to posh mansions, this needlework pops up in the darnedest places.  

Fabric art is portable, private, and often female (although the Resistance Museum in Abu Dis highlights embroidery from men incarcerated in Israeli prisons.) No wonder it gets no love in the art world. But from Emily Jacir’s refugee tents at Documenta 14, to the traditional thobes displayed at the Birzeit Museum, to the floor of United States Congress, the Palestinian diaspora keeps on moving, one stitch at a time.

Photo credit: The late Elia Kahvedjian captured this portrait of a girl embroidering. His studio, Elia Photo Service in Jerusalem, contains archives of Palestinian life before and during the British Mandate (1923-1948.) See more vintage images in their photographic history “Jerusalem Through My Father’s Eyes”, or during a studio visit (get those frequent flier miles ready!) 

The Art of Politics

How do we talk politics? Many months away from the presidential election, I’m already tired of our current discussion. The news is full of conversations that don’t work: recaps of overcrowded debates, endless fact checking, and GIFs of candidates’ faces. Also not helpful for political inspiration: long policy papers that no one but reporters and political junkies will read. And certainly the least useful: the screaming and shouting led by reality-show candidate Donald Trump.

Read more at The Nation

How to Talk About Race Without Getting Stuck in ‘Clybourne Park’

clybournepark

Bruce Norris’ play “Clybourne Park” picks up the conversation about race where Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” left off. Nominated for four Tony Awards, this drama is set in fictional Clybourne Park–the Chicago neighborhood that represents the American dream to the Younger family of “Raisin.” The first act of the play simmers as the all-white community comes to terms with the idea of blacks moving into their midst during the 1950s. The second act explodes as the same neighborhood, now all-black and neglected, is “rediscovered” in the 1990s. Two affluent couples, one black and one white, face off over zoning laws. What begins as a negotiation over building codes develops into a screaming match about race, gentrification, and identity.

Read more at Colorlines