CAPTURING A MOMENT IN TIME
Black Artists — Asking Questions, Seeking Answers
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” So said author and cultural anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston. When we look back on the year 2020 it will be hard to tell which this year was. The long-simmering cauldron of Black anger and resentment toward an America that has ignored our grievances came to a rolling boil this year in answer to questions that have been posed by Black America for over 400 years.
Exacerbated by COVID-19, the global flu-like killer virus, the world was forced to stop and really, really, listen as protests against the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis were broadcast across the world. When an officer pinned Floyd to the ground with his knee for over eight minutes resulting in his death it brought flooding back the deaths, indignities, and dismissals from those who said Black people should just get over it. Now the world was watching and frankly, it couldn’t turn away. Protests spread first across this country and then around the world. As of this writing, a siege by federal troops is underway in Seattle. And just like pulling a scab from an as yet unhealed wound, every sector of our lives was found to be raw from the constant irritant of systemic racism. The confluence of events –Covid-19, a quarantined public, unemployment, a tanking economy, failures of the 45th U.S. president — conflated as never before.
Led by the Black Lives Matter Movement the streets became the public square for our grievances, our anger, and frustration, sometimes manifesting itself in violence and looting. And, we’ve seen the iconography of racism — statues idolizing the confederacy, colonizers and slave owners — toppling across the country. Now the floodgates have opened, and we are hearing about race-based indignities from all quarters. Those who’ve held their tongues for decades are sharing the aggressions — both micro and macro — they’ve endured in corporate America, healthcare, economics, sports, media, entertainment, and government.
In the 2007 documentary Colored Frames, artists reflected on the place of Black fine art and artists since the civil rights movement, and riffed on their experiences, inspirations and influences. Self-described ‘people’s painter’ and activist Benny Andrews (1930–2006), to whom the film is dedicated, spoke of having to ‘go out and fight’ for mainstream recognition of black artists. The events of today could well be the response to their grievances.
Andrews was the co-chair of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC) which protested a 1969 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art entitled Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968 (18 January to 6 April 1969). The protest resulted from conflicts between the Met and the Harlem art community after the Met’s decision to exclude black artists, and the Harlem community, from an exhibit about Harlem.
Two years later in 1971, fifteen black artists withdrew from the Whitney Museum exhibition, Contemporary Black Artists in America (6 April to 16 May 1971), opening. Their action was in sympathy with a BECC’s boycott and demanded, among other things, that “black art experts and consultants and‐or institutions must be involved in the preparation and presentation of all art activities presented by white institutions and involving the black artist and the black community.”
Today racial disparities in the arts are being brought to the fore, leading to the apologies, resignations, and or firing at some of the most recognized bastions of art and culture here and abroad.
15 Met staff members sent a letter urging the museum’s leadership to acknowledge “what we see as the expression of a deeply rooted logic of white supremacy and culture of systemic racism at our institution.” The Guggenheim Museum’s curatorial department in a letter described a work culture of “racism” and “white supremacy.” Current and former employees accused the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art of “racist censorship” and “discrimination.” The director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland for 23 years, resigned after having apologized to the artist Shaun Leonardo for canceling his exhibition dealing with police killings of black and Latino boys and men.
Art Newspaper wrote that “Indeed, the silence of most galleries and museums about the protests has been as deafening as the sirens that have echoed through major cities across the nation — which is curious since they have been banging a loud drum about art’s relevance to society lately.” Gallery owners, curators, museum staffers of color have been emboldened to speak the truths around the indignities they’ve held on to for far too long.
Artists will be the ones to document these experiences in a truthful and unvarnished way and we’ve checked in with artists across the country to gauge their mood during this time. We are proud to share their words and their work with you. One thing we know for sure is that artists will be the documenters of this time just as they’ve always been. It is their work that gave generations insight into the Jim Crow South, the Great Migration, and the Civil Rights Movement. Today, a new generation of artists are documenting what we felt during this time. And a generation from now when a young person picks up a back issue of Time Magazine with Charly Palmer’s work, or Kadir Nelson’s cover for the New Yorker, they will know that these were complicated times, fraught times, and that our one goal was to move us closer to an ideal — one nation indivisible. It remains to be seen if we’ll get there.
Story reprinted from the Fall/Winter Pigment Magazine. Get your copy by visiting www.pigmentintl.com
