Colored Criticism

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Local Westchester Leaders Reflect on Race

Local Westchester Leaders Reflect on Race

I look for a living.

As an art critic, I’ve spent over a decade discussing visual culture. Perception is a tricky thing. What seems reasonable or fashionable one minute can appear out-of-touch the next. I’ve watched with amazement and a fair amount of skepticism as our country’s perceptions changed over the summer. The murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor galvanized my generation in the way that the murder of Emmett Till mobilized generations past. The power of a magazine photograph or cellphone video still surprises. Read more at Westchester Magazine.

Announcing Keep NYS Creating Grant Recipients!

As an extension of its ongoing support of artists who have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) announced today that it has awarded $42,000 to 42 artists statewide through the new “Keep NYS Creating” grant program in partnership with the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). These $1,000 grants are supported by National Endowment for the Arts funding through the CARES Act and will help artists continue their indispensable work within their communities throughout New York.   

Among the Keep NYS Creating recipients is Tiffany Bradley of Westchester, who will create #ArtOffPause, a digital conversation in which artists, curators, and scholars explore how the COVID and structural racism crises are shaping their practice. The series features arts workers with a social practice or public engagement process, with an emphasis on those from LGBTQ and communities of color.

“Communities of color are at the center of the COVID crisis yet remain at the periphery of the art world,” said Bradley. “This pandemic has been a force multiplier on existing financial, health, and housing disparities for people of color in the United States. But it can also be a catalyst for change. During this social rupture, artists need space for advocacy, imagination, and reflection. This is the most important critical work we can do right now.”         

Read more 

Culture To Do From Your Couch

New England Public Media recommends #ArtOffPause for “Culture To Do From Your Couch” during May 2020.

Tiffany Bradley of Colored Criticism hosts #ArtOffPause, which keeps people engaged in art as we look ahead. Hear curators Dr. Emma Chubb and Yao Wu talk about changes at the Smith College Museum of Art, including closing “Black Refractions” on loan from the Studio Museum and preparing for “SCMA100: Then\Now\Next.”

Read more: https://www.nepm.org/post/culture-do-your-couch-week-4-edition

Mead Art Museum receives gift of more than 170 contemporary artworks

“Starting Something New” exhibition and symposium featured in the Boston Globe.

The Mead Art Museum at Amherst College has received an anonymous donation of more than 170 works of contemporary art, including pieces by such well-known artists as David Hockney, Mona Hatoum, Cindy Sherman, Mark Bradford, and Christian Marclay.

Visitors will be able to view many of the recently donated works in a celebratory exhibition, “Starting Something New: Recent Contemporary Art Acquisitions and Gifts,” which opens Sept. 10 and runs through May 31.

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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