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Maybe treat Black Americans like citizens that have a 300+ year relationship with their country and you wouldn’t be asking us to help you “diversify” your curriculum or “decolonize” your syllabus.
A thread.... /1
A thread.... /1
Rujeko Hockley and Catherine Morris put together WE WANTED A REVOLUTION: Black Radical Women 1965-85 almost 4 years ago. That show traveled and they even worked with the artists to create a Sourcebook of documents and statements. /2
https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/we_wanted_a_revolution
https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/we_wanted_a_revolution
Kellie Jones did NOW DIG THIS: Art and Black Los Angeles back in 2011 and there is a catalog for that show and it maintains a presence on the Hammer Museum website./3 https://hammer.ucla.edu/now-dig-this
Valerie Cassel Oliver did RADICAL PRESENCE: Black Performance in Contemporary Art at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2013 and there is a catalog for that show. /4 https://studiomuseum.org/exhibition/radical-presence-black-performance-contemporary-art
Mark Godfrey and Zoe Whitley did SOUL OF A NATION: Art in the Age of Black Power in 2018 and there is a catlalog for that show. /5
https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/soul_of_a_nation
https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/soul_of_a_nation
Teresa Carbone and Kellie Jones did WITNESS: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties back in 2014 and there is a catalog and that show traveled. /6
https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/touring/witness_civil_rights
https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/touring/witness_civil_rights
Bennett Simpson did BLUES FOR SMOKE at MoCA Los Angeles back in 2012. /7 https://www.moca.org/exhibition/blues-for-smoke
In 2013 Naima Keith and Zoe Whitley did THE SHADOWS TOOK SHAPE at the The Studio Museum in Harlem and there is a catalog. /8 https://studiomuseum.org/exhibition/shadows-took-shape
Thomas Lax did WHEN THE STARS BEGIN TO FALL at the Studio Museum in Harlem back in 2014 and that show traveled and there is a catalog. /9 https://studiomuseum.org/exhibition/when-stars-begin-fall-imagination-and-american-south
So a lot has happened since Thelma Golden’s BLACK MALE show in 1994 at the Whitney. (There is a catalog for that show, too.) /10 https://whitney.org/Events/LookingBackAtBlackMale
The curators and thinkers in this list-a list rife with the brilliance of Black women-have done research, documentation, analysis, and history on HUNDREDS of Black artists and aesthetics of Black American culture. Our shared culture. /11
They have presented their findings at the highest standards of American museums. They have produced a forest full of scholarly articles and done interviews. Do you KNOW how crazy making it is every time you ask “hive mind” to recommend “artists of color?” /12
The work has been done and is currently being done and it is not hidden from you and it is not in spaces that you do not know. /13
Stop treating Black Americans like they are ancillary to the canon and some subset of American culture. Stop acting like they are hard to discover or that there is no scholarship about them. /14
Stop bringing Black people’s work into your class rooms to talk about “identity” when you don’t talk about identity in the work of Mary Cassatt and everyone else. Talk about Kerry James Marshall and color theory. Talk about Emma Amos and Intimist painting. /15
Talk about Cauleen Smith and Futurism. Talk about William Pope L. and Arte Povera. Talk about Charles Gaines, MacArthur Binnon and the grid. Talk about LaToya Ruby Frazier and documentary. Talk about Dawoud Bey and social engagement. /16
Brilliant people have delivered all of this information to you at the highest critical and aesthetic level. Please engage with their work. Please stop asking people to guide you to something that is available to everyone. /end
