The first half of the symposium will feature a conversation from 12:30 to 2 pm PST about Policing, Mass Incarceration & Racial Justice with Mychal Denzel Smith (The Nation), Rinku Sen (Colorlines), Isabel Garcia (Derechos Humanos) and Reverend Osagyefo Sekou (Fellowship of Reconciliation & King Research and Education Institute). Moderated by H. Samy Alim.
The second half of the symposium will feature a conversation from 2:30 to 4 pm PST about The Arts, Racial Justice & Cultural Equity with Favianna Rodriguez (CultureStr/ke), Jasiri X (1Hood), Jonathan Calm (Stanford Department of Art & Art History), Deborah Cullinan (Yerba Buena Center for The Arts), and Rita Gonzalez (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Moderated by Jeff Chang.
Race & Aesthetics: A British Society of Aesthetics Connections Conference ran the 19th and 20th of May, at the Leeds Art Gallery. Fourteen speakers and several dozen more participants gathered to share thoughts on any of the points of intersection between the philosophies of race and aesthetics. Topics ranged from sexual attraction to humour to Brett Bailey’s Exhibit B. In what follows, I’ll try to present short but effective summaries of each of the conference talks.
The first immigrants to Europe arrived thousands of years ago from central Asia. Most pre-contact Europeans lived together in small villages. Because the continent was very crowded, their lives were ruled by strict hierarchies within the family and outside it to control resources. Europe was highly multi-ethnic, and most tribes were ruled by hereditary leaders who commanded the majority “commoners.” These groups were engaged in near constant warfare.
Pre-contact Europeans wore clothing made of natural materials such as animal skin and plant and animal-based textiles. Women wore long dresses and covered their hair, and men wore tunics and leggings. Both men and women liked to wear jewelry made from precious stones and metals as a sign of status. Before contact, Europeans had very poor diets. Most people were farmers and grew wheat and vegetables and raised cows and sheep to eat. They rarely washed themselves, and had many diseases because…
With Angola for the first time a sub-Saharan African country has won the Leone d’Oro/Golden Lion prize for the best national pavilion of the Venice Biennial. This distinction for an African national pavilion during this year’s 55th Venice Biennial has been greeted with inappropriate prejudice by “ART – Das Kunstmagazin”, the leading art magazine from Germany. “ART” commented the jury’s decision with the question “Angola! Where is Angola?” It claimed that hardly any visitor actually saw the work of the photo artist Edson Chagas in Palazzo Cini and speculated about “successful lobbying and networking” by curator Stefano Rabolli Pansera. The only reason which was given for these vague conjectures was the fact that Stefano Rabolli Pansera had already curated Angola’s contribution to the architecture biennial a year ago. The German article is available here:
I ask myself what kind of “networking and lobbying” had preceded the Leone d’Oro/Golden Lion prizes which were previously awarded to the national pavilions of the U.S. with Bruce Nauman in 2009 and of Germany with Christoph Schlingensief curated by Susanne Gaensheimer in 2011? Was there also speculation happening back then about the reasons for these successes? Were those winning countries, artists and curators maybe too established and influential so that there was no reason to worry about illegitimate manoeuvring? Are only the Africans again considered prone to cronyism and patronage which “ART” more stately translated with “networking and lobbying” to make it fit to the aristocratic environment of Venice’s palazzos? “ART” dutifully speaks about detractors spreading such rumours, but the question remains why an influential German art magazine provides ample space for vague suppositions by obviously resentful competitors.
“ART” is issued by the largest German publishing house Gruner & Jahr which itself belongs to the media conglomerate Bertelsmann. It is primarily financed by advertisements of major galleries, museums, art fairs and auction houses and it would be very interesting to find out which hidden agendas “ART” is pursuing with its lopsided coverage of Angola’s success in Venice. Maybe some disappointment about the showing of its own major business clients during the event in Venice played a role as well.
The article was written by Ute Thun who calls herself “Senior Editor” at this magazine. Ute Thun mocked the choice of Angola’s national pavilion to mirror the motto of the main exhibition “Encyclopaedic Palace” by calling the Angolan presentation “”Luanda – An Encyclopaedic City”, instead of ignoring the main exhibition’s theme as allegedly all the other national pavilions did. The question is: What is wrong with picking up and variegating the main exhibition’s motto? Does it mean that the artistic quality of Angola’s contribution is inferior just due to its decision to artistically interpret the Venice biennial’s central theme? Or does she want to tell us that the other national pavilions’ decision to deliberately ignore the main exhibition’s theme proves their independence and intellectualism?
All in all it is somewhat disappointing to see Ute Thun’s narrow-minded, almost stereotypic viewpoint on this year’s winner of the Golden Lion contrast with the magazine’s aspiration to cover the art scene from a global perspective.
Safia Dickersbach, an art market practitioner, born in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, currently based in Berlin, Germany, is the Public Relations Director of Artfacts.Net, a British company which is the leading online database for modern and contemporary art.
It’s time for a little history. Museums have been around for almost as long as recorded history, used as historical resources for the educated elite, like the Musaeum of Alexandria (which included the famous Library) dating from around the 3rd century BCE. Art museums, however, have a significantly shorter history, art having been almost exclusively kept in private collections and archaeological museums until the 15th century. The Pope, of all people, ushered in the era of “public” art collection – primarily sculpture – during the Renaissance and was followed by an influx of public University art collections. The 18th century brought about the golden age of the familiar art museum in the form of a free-standing building with its own collection, Board, and funding. This era brought us the British Museum, the Uffizi Gallery, The Hermitage Museum, The Louvre, and even the Charleston Museum two years before…
This post is about the show Girls, but the title is very problematic. The author is not dealing with the racial polemics that have been raised with regards to this program, rather she reiterates the very problem with no self-awareness of the racial attitudes embedded in her statement.
On paper, Girls and I are perfect for each other. People whose opinions I trust rave about it. It wins awards. I worship everything else that Judd Apatow has touched. I constantly find myself in awkward situations. And, just like the characters, I spent my 20s scraping by in Brooklyn.
Girls should be my jam.
But, its not.
If we’re being truthy, I can barely stand to watch it. The characters alternately infuriate and repulse me. I want to smack all four of them upside the head, show them what a flattering outfit looks like, teach them some basic manners and courtesy, and then put them on a train out of my beloved Brooklyn because, even more than the mustachioed mandolin-toting hipsters who flooded my hood and drove up my rent, they do not deserve to be there. And…
Lately I’ve been revising my Pinterest boards so that they engage key concerns I have about art history. I began using Pinterest, an online customizable set of bulletin boards, last summer when I taught History of Photography. The boards for arth318snapshot served as a resource for my undergraduate students and broader publics. I later started my own artstuffmatters‘ set of boards. Initially it focused mainly on books about various subject areas. I didn’t really do much with it. However, I recently had a “eureka moment” that sparked a different, more passionate direction.
Last fall at the Imagining America October 2012 conference, I heard a presentation that continues to inspire and challenge me. Dr. Marta Vega, Executive Director and Founder of the Caribbean Cultural Center and African Diaspora Institute, centered her address on “inquietudes,” things that make one feel ill at ease, in relationships between academia and the…
ACRAH 