The Grapevine

What does diversity look like?

seacole_photo
Photo of Mary Seacole by Maull & Company (c. 1873). Photographer’s name not known. Source: Wikimedia Commons

On top of the Brexit vote, there’s another pitched battle being waged in the UK right now—it’s over a commissioned statue of Mary Seacole (1805-1881), a recognition for her aid and service to the wounded during the Crimean War (1853-1856).

Martin Jennings’s Seacole sculpture is scheduled to be installed at St. Thomas Hospital in London later this month. Opponents say it doesn’t belong at that hallowed site where Florence Nightingale established a nursing school. The opponents double-down when accused of racism by the artist Jennings and other supporters of the monument: Seacole, they claim, wasn’t a nurse nor did she–the child of a free, black Jamaican woman and a white Scottish solider–identify as “black.”

This is a row of great proportions. In the interest of Critical Race Art History, my raised question is “What does diversity look like?”

Amy Fleming, “Sculptor Defends His Mary Seacole Statue–‘If She Was White, Would There Be This Resistance,'” THE GUARDIAN, Jun. 21, 2016

Patrick Vernon, “Rubbishing Mary Seacole Is Another Move to Hide the Contributions of Black People,” THE GUARDIAN, Jun. 21, 2016

Patrick Usborne, “Mary Seacole v. Florence Nightingale: Who Should Have the Taller Statue?” THE GUARDIAN, Jun. 20, 2016

Jonathan Jones, “So Many Causes, So Many Heroes: Why Defame Them with a Statue?” THE GUARDIAN, May 11, 2016

Sandra Gunning’s essay of 2001, “Traveling with Her Mother’s Tastes: The Negotiations of Gender, Race, and Location in WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OF MRS. SEACOLE IN MANY LANDS,” is a serious consideration of Seacole’s life and times.

Bringing black British histories to the theatre: an interview with Dawn Walton — Media Diversified

by Sabo Kpade The Artistic Director of Eclipse Theatre Company talks about the Arts Council-funded project Revolution Mix, and reflects on her eighteen years in the industry. Tell us a bit about Revolution Mix. What does the project hope to achieve? It’s about inclusiveness. It’s about legacy. It’s about trying to tackle the sort […]

via Bringing black British histories to the theatre: an interview with Dawn Walton — Media Diversified

Correcting Yellowface: Asian American blogger reworks film images – in pictures | Film | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/film/gallery/2016/jun/12/correcting-yellowface-michelle-mimi-villemaire-in-pictures

Call for Paper Abstracts: August Wilson Society Conference (June 30, 2016 deadline)

August Wilson Society Paper Abstracts information

 

Call for Abstracts

MoMA 12-month Internship for African American & African Diaspora graduate students (MAs)–applications due Jun. 24, 2016

Aimed at diversifying the institution and helping students historically underrepresented in the visual and cultural arts, this position is open to outstanding African American and African Diaspora graduate students, or recent graduates looking to gain experience and knowledge within the field of Media and Performance Art.

Department of Media and Performance Art Internship

Begins September 12, 2016; concludes September 8, 2017.

This internship is supported by MoMA’s Friends of Education, a Museum affiliate group dedicated to supporting African American and African diaspora artists and audience development at the Museum.

Description: The intern will primarily work with the department’s chief curator and curatorial assistant on two projects: artist Adam Pendleton’s residency at the Museum, culminating in a new, large-scale, multimedia performance; and an exhibition that will include a publication on the occasion of a new acquisition of work by the artist William Pope.L. The intern’s tasks will include support with exhibition planning, bibliographic research, image sourcing and permission requests, editing and design assistance, liaising with the artists’ studios, event support, working fluidly across the Museum’s departments, and other tasks as assigned.

Requirements: The ideal candidate has an art history and/or media and performance art background (MA candidates preferred), strong research skills, reading knowledge of one foreign language, the ability to multitask and prioritize, and the ability to communicate effectively especially under pressure. Previous experience working with artists in a museum setting, or specifically with media and performance art, preferred.

How To Apply: The application deadline is June 24, 2016.

Complete applications include an application form, a resume or curricula vitae, and two essays (no more than 500 words each).

Please see the following links for the application form and instructions. Internship listing and instructions:http://www.moma.org/learn/courses/internships#12month.

Application: http://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/about/application_12_month_2016-2017.pdf

For more information, contact:

Cerrie Woodner Bamford
Sr. Program Coordinator, Affiliate Programs
The Friends of Education
The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street
New York, NY 10019
T: 212-408-8517   E: cerrie_bamford@moma.org

Terra Foundation for American Art International Publication Grant

Terra Foundation grant info 2016

Inge Hardison’s Realist Sculpture– ” more in-depth scholarship needed”

37343216_1_x“A Sculptor of Black Heroes Leaves a Legacy”

 

 

HIDDEN FIGURES and the genre of “race” film

Taraji P. Henson’s question at the end of this preview feature piece, “Rocket Science, Race and the ’60s,” published in today’s Times is provocative:

“I hate when I do a film, and it has a lot of African-Americans and they call it a black film,” Ms. Henson said. “I don’t wake up and go, ‘Let’s see, this weekend, I’m going to see a Chinese film, I’m going to see a black film, no I’m going to see a while film with a black person in it.’ Who does that?”

(Hmmm, everyone.)

Cara Buckley, “Rocket Science, Race and the 60s: ‘Hidden Figures’ Lifts the Veil on NASA’s Female Scientists” 

Malevich’s BLACK SQUARE–race/racialization as underpinnings of modernism

In Making Race: Modernism and “Racial Art” in America, I wrote that “race was discursively central to modernity” and that “modernism depended on the the conceptualization of race in ethnocultural, social, and national terms.” Moreover, I argued that “the idea of the essential subject, as a construct, allowed for the preservation of racist and limiting terms used by admirers and detractors.”

The book’s focus were the conditions of early twentieth-century American modernism. Yet, it’s well-established that some of the ethno-racial preoccupations of US modernism had parallels in Europe. Christian Weikop’s and Esther Schreuder’s research, published in The Image of the Black in Western Art: The Twentieth Century—The Impact Images of Africa, are recent additions to the scholarship as it concerned the modernists of Western and Northern Europe and the modern images of those regions.

But what of Russia and Eastern Europe during the same period? The time is now.

“Russia Discovers Two Secrets Under Avant-Garde Masterpiece”

Art Historians Find Racist Joke Hidden Under Malevich’s BLACK SQUARE

Profile: J. A. Rodgers, Historian

by Patrick Vernon After my recent article on the absence of black historians and the growing network of independent black scholars, I felt I wanted to share one of my personal heroes who embodies the characteristics and challenges that black historians face today. This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Joel Augustus Rogers, […]

via Celebrating the life and times of J A Rogers – one of the leading Black historians of all time — Media Diversified