Creative Time's Anne Pasternak will lead Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn Museum Picks Anne Pasternak as New Director
by Roberta Smith, The New York Times, May 19, 2015

Triple Consciousness: Black + American + Female

On Saturday, October 18,
Brooklyn Museum hosted
Body Rock: The Politics of Black Female Identity on "Stage,"
the first in a series of three conversations
co-sponsored with 651 Arts and MAPP International Productions.
photo (c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Shay Wafer (l) of 651 Arts
and Lisa Yancey of MAPP International
welcome the audience to Body Rock.
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Panel moderator, Toni Blackman
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

I'm not sure what I expected from an event entitled Body Rock: The Politics of Black Female Identity on "Stage." But what I took away was nourishment to keep me going in the daily struggle as a Black woman surviving and making my contributions. So, thank you to 651 Arts, MAPP International Productions, Brooklyn Museum, Rasu Jilani (MAPP Director of Community Programs), Ebony Noelle Golden (series curator), Toni Blackman (panel moderator) and panelists Pastor Desiree Allen, Charlotte Brathwaite, Karma Mayet Johnson and Shannon Washington.

"Stage," for these multi-talented sisters, means anything from an actual theater (Brathwaite acts and directs) to the pulpit (where Pastor Allen, typically sporting a pair of killer shoes, affirms rebellious personal style) to Shannon Washington's high-tech digital world. "Stage," in the title is all about space, visibility and agency--how Black women occupy environments and possibilities, how we choose to shape space for ourselves and for those around us and coming after us.

It started beautifully with Johnson's song heralding "a new day comin'" when everything would turn over and Golden declaring it "a good day to be a Black feminist." And I'm sure Golden wasn't just talking about this particular Saturday afternoon in the museum's fairly chilly auditorium. She was talking about the intense times we're in and how needed we are. "We are at a crossroads, culturally, politically and socially," said Blackman, hip hop artist and actress.

Charlotte Brathwaite
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Pastor Desiree Allen
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Shannon Washington
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Karma Mayet Johnson
(c)2014, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

The conversation, always grounded in the personal, turned to the very fact of presence as power.

"Our showing up, being here, changes everything, changes the rooms we're in," said singer-composer Johnson who regularly listens and responds to the frequencies within any environment. "There's a gift inside my being incarnated as a woman that makes my listening exponentially [heightened]," she said.

Washington, with her pioneering work as a creative director in advertising and online platforms, takes pleasure in the popularity of the selfie. "Nothing gives me more joy than a good selfie, she said. "We are not used to seeing ourselves happy on a mass media stage. There is so much power in that, so much permission." With her video storytelling project, I'm Feminist Enough, Washington takes that idea to the next level.*

Pastor Allen focuses on making "more space for Black women and girls to find themselves in relation with God" by being authentically themselves. "All of our experiences are Bibles."

The way of feminism--by that or any other name or no name--is not at all foreign to Black women, and the panelists offered up examples from their own families and colleagues. They also acknowledged the many personal and societal barriers that continue to challenge Black women--capitalist institutions, a culture of competition pitting one woman against another, a fear of facing and seeking help for hurt and trauma, and the trap of being the pulled-together, selfless one constantly available for everyone else's needs. There were calls for daily spiritual practice, no matter what form that might take, and many sighs of assent and relief when Washington wisely declared, "By any means necessary, REST!"

Watch Body Rock here.

*Visit Shannon Washington's
I'm Feminist Enough video project here.

About the Triple Consciousness series

Derived from W.E.B. Dubois’s concept of “Double Consciousness”, “Triple Consciousness” speaks more acutely to the experience of black women as both black and American and also female. Through a series of three public dialogs, Triple Consciousness delves into and looks beyond the current representations of Black female identity in mainstream media and culture. Each conversation features a different theme to explore black women on “stage” and in pop-culture, and to reframe black feminism(s) in the 21st Century. Formats and discussants vary for a dynamic conversation with audience participation.

Upcoming Triple Consciousness discussions at Brooklyn Museum:

Triple Consciousness: "Mythologies of the Diva"

Saturday, November 8, 2pm

Triple Consciousness: "Beyond Binaries and Boxes"

Saturday, November 15, 2pm

Click here for information and tickets.

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn
(map/directions)

Brooklyn Museum director Arnold Lehman to retire

Brooklyn Museum’s Longtime Director Plans to Retire
Arnold Lehman to Step Down From His Post
by Carol Vogel, The New York Times, September 9, 2014

In Conversation: Wangechi Mutu and Nora Chipaumire

In Conversation: Wangechi Mutu and Nora Chipaumire

Brooklyn Museum 

Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art

Thursday, November 21, 7pm

Nora Chipaumire
after winning 2008 Bessie Award for Choreography
(c)2008, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

Wangechi Mutu in her Brooklyn studio, 2012.
Image courtesy of Wangechi Mutu
Photo: Kathryn Parker Almanas

Join artist Wangechi Mutu and dancer-choreographer Nora Chipaumire as they meet at the intersection of visual art and performance. 

moderated by Performa’s Adrienne Edwards

presented in conjunction with the Performa 13 biennial

Brooklyn Museum

200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn

(map/directions)

Seeing. Not hiding.

HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture--which sparked homophobic backlash and a lamentable act of self-censorship when it opened at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery last fall--has come to the Brooklyn Museum for a run through February 12, 2012.

Cass Bird

 I Look Just Like My Daddy, 2004

© Cass Bird

A survey of around one hundred works ranging from the late 19th Century to the contemporary era, the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition marked the first acknowledgement by a major museum of the significance of gender and sexual identity in the shaping of American portraiture. Co-curated by NPG historian David C. Ward and Jonathan D. Katz, director of the public program in visual studies at SUNY Buffalo, HIDE/SEEK's historic achievement was temporarily obscured by uproar over the inclusion of an unfinished video project by the late gay artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz. That video, A Fire in My Belly, is a furious cry for a world of ignored, unrelieved suffering. Its montage of images includes ants streaming over the body of Jesus on a plastic crucifix. That drew the wrath of the self-anointed Catholic League and a slew of right-wing politicians and pundits. The gallery quickly caved, withdrawing the video from the exhibition--a move stirring controversy of a different sort.

[For a good rundown of all of this, see the New York Times' Holland Carter here and WNYC's Carolina A. Miranda here.]

The Brooklyn Museum's subsequent action (taken in collaboration with the Tacoma Art Museum, which will host HIDE/SEEK from March 17 through June 10, 2012) greatly extends the reach of this show. So, thank you, homophobes, for making it possible for so many more people to see A Fire in My Belly--now back where it belongs--and the rest of this important art!

AA Bronson

Felix, June 5, 1994, 1994 (printed 1999)

©AA Bronson, courtesy Esther Schipper Gallery, Berlin

I can't show you the Berenice Abbott photo of writer Djuna Barnes--I've represented Abbott, below, by her intriguing portrait of journalist Janet Flanner who called herself Genêt--but I can tell you that the Barnes portrait and the AA Bronson work above are my two favorite pieces in HIDE/SEEK.

I love the the Barnes portrait for its nearly 3D radiance that places the woman in question in the room with us today. Abbott poses Barnes within layers and tones of sumptuous theatrical camouflage--the snugly-embracing dark overcoat, the rich tweed jacket, crisp white shirt, strands of pearls, a gleaming wrap of fabric dipping low over almond-shaped eyes with a commanding audacity to them, a frankness that escapes all embellishment or disguise. 

Bronson's Felix, June 5, 1994, is the polar opposite, the deathbed portrait of his friend and colleague from the Canadian art collective General Idea. Felix Partz died of AIDS on the date in that title. Bronson wrote:

I made this photograph of Felix a few hours after his death. He is arranged to receive visitors, and his favorite objects are gathered about him: his television remote control, his tape-recorder, and his cigarettes. Felix suffered from extreme wasting, and at the time of his death his eyes could not be closed: there was not enough flesh left on the bone.

With Felix, June 5, 1994, Bronson also documents an elaborate surface that, nevertheless, cannot distract us from the eyes of his subject. Like Djuna Barnes, Felix Partz emerges out of his busy context to look right at us and will be looking at us that way forever.

Berenice Abbott

Janet Flanner, 1927

© Berenice Abbott/Commerce Graphics, New York

HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture

now through February 12, 2012

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway

For exhibition and public program information, click here.
For general visitor information, including travel directions, click here.

The art of Kehinde Wiley

In With the Old
by Ann Landi, ARTnews, September 2011

Museums embrace social media

Museums Pursue Engagement With Social Media
by Carol Vogel, The New York Times, March 16, 2011

More hours at Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn Museum to Extend Hours
by Kate Taylor, The New York Times, August 19, 2010

Advice for the Brooklyn Museum

Pondering Brooklyn Museum’s Mission and Future
by Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, August 5, 2010

City fest to celebrate Muslim culture

Festival for New York, That Muslim City
by Felicia R. Lee, The New York Times, June 5, 2009

Dance on Target!

Tonight: Dancing with the Arts at Brooklyn Museum's Target First Saturday

From 5-11pm, the museum's free events are devoted to Dancing with the Arts, featuring contra dance and West African dance circles; a performance, Q&A and book-signing with Lori Belilove's Isadora Duncan Dance Company; a screening of Mad Hot Ballroom and much more. For complete details, click here.

Crowd curation?

‘Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition’ - Brooklyn Faces Are Chosen by Collective
by Ken Johnson, The New York Times, July 4, 2008