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      in Theater

      New York Theaters Are Dark, but These Windows Light Up With Art

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      The Irish Repertory Theater is streaming poetry readings, and Playwrights Horizons and St. Ann’s Warehouse are showcasing art dealing with race and injustice.Like many cultural organizations, the Irish Repertory Theater in Manhattan has streamed pandemic programming on its website.But a few days ago, the theater added a new sort of broadcast to its repertoire, setting up two 60-inch screens in windows that face the sidewalk, installing speakers high up on the building facade and airing a collection of films that show people reading poems in Ireland, London and New York.On a recent morning, Ciaran O’Reilly, the Rep’s producing director, stood by the theater on West 22nd Street, gazing at the screens as they displayed Joseph Aldous, an actor in Britain, reading “An Advancement of Learning,” a narrative poem by Seamus Heaney describing a brief standoff with a rat along a river bank.“These are not dark windows,” O’Reilly said. “They are lit up with poetry, with music, with the words of actors who are performing.”In the past year, theaters and other performing arts institutions in New York have turned to creative means to bring works to the public, sometimes also injecting a bit of life into otherwise shuttered facades. Those arrangements continue, even as the State of New York has announced that arts venues can reopen in April at one-third capacity and some outdoor performances, like Shakespeare in the Park, are scheduled to resume.The panes of glass, though, have provided a safe space. Late last year, for instance, the artists Christopher Williams, Holly Bass and Raja Feather Kelly performed at different times in the lobby or in a smaller vestibule-like part of the building in Chelsea occupied by New York Live Arts. All were visible through glass to those outside.Three more performances by Kelly of “Hysteria,” in which he assumes the role of a pink-hued extraterrestrial and explores what Live Arts’ website calls “pop culture and its displacement of queer Black subjectivity,” are scheduled for April 8-10.The Mexican-American artist Ken Gonzales-Day’s photographs of sculptures are on display at Playwrights Horizons.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnother street-level performance took place behind glass last December in Downtown Brooklyn, where the Brooklyn Ballet staged nine 20-minute shows of select dances from its “Nutcracker.”The ballet turned its studio into what its artistic director, Lynn Parkerson, called a “jewel box” theater; chose dances that kept masked ballerinas socially distanced; and used barricades on the sidewalk to limit audiences.“It was a way to bring some people back to something they love that they enjoyed that they might be forgetting about,” Parkerson said in an interview. “It did feel like a real performance.”She said that live performances were planned for April and would include ballet members in “Pas de Deux,” set to Jean-Philippe Rameau’s “Gavotte et Six Doubles,” with live music by the pianist Simone Dinnerstein.Pop-up concerts have been arranged by the Kaufman Music Center on the Upper West Side, in a storefront — the address is not given but is described on the center’s website as “not hard to find” — north of Columbus Circle.Those performances, running through late April, are announced at the storefront the same day, to limit crowd sizes and encourage social distancing. Participants have included the violinist Gil Shaham, the mezzo-soprano Chrystal E. Williams, the Gabrielle Stravelli Trio and JACK Quartet.St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn is displaying Julian Alexander and Khadijat Oseni’s “Supremacy Project,” public art that addresses the nature of injustice in American society.The word “supremacy” is superimposed on a photograph of police officers in riot gear, and there are images by Michael T. Boyd of Sandra Bland, Elijah McClain and Emmett Till.And at Playwrights Horizons in Midtown, the Mexican-American artist Ken Gonzales-Day is placing photographs of sculptures of human figures in display cases, encouraging viewers to reckon with definitions of beauty and race. Those displays are part of rotating public art series organized by the artist, activist, and writer Avram Finkelstein and the set and costume designer David Zinn.The aim, Finkelstein said in January when the series was announced, was to display work that “makes constructive use of dormant facades to create a transient street museum” and to “remind the city of its buoyancy and originality.”O’Reilly, at the Irish Rep, said the theater heard last year from Amy Holmes, the executive director of the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, who thought the theater might provide a good venue to air some of the short films the organization had commissioned to make poetry part of an immersive experience.The series being shown at the theater, called “Poetic Reflections: Words Upon the Window Pane,” comprises 21 short pieces by the Irish filmmaker Matthew Thompson.“These are not dark windows,” said Ciaran O’Reilly of the Irish Repertory Theater. “They are lit up with poetry, with music, with the words of actors who are performing.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThey show contemporary poets reading their own works as well as poets and actors reading works by others, including William Butler Yeats and J.M. Synge, and were produced in collaboration with Poetry Ireland in Dublin, Druid Theater in Galway, the 92nd Street Y in New York and Poet in the City in London.“I think there is something special about encountering the arts in an unexpected way in the city, especially an art form like poetry,” Holmes said.The readers in the films include people who were born in Ireland, immigrants to Ireland, people who live in Britain and a few from the United States, like Denice Frohman, who was born and raised in New York City.Frohman was on the theater’s screens on Tuesday night, reading lines like “the beaches are gated & no one knows the names of the dead” from her poem “Puertopia,” when Erin Madorsky and Dorian Baker stopped to listen.Baker said he saw the films playing in the window as symbolizing a “revitalization of poetic energy.”Madorsky had regularly attended theatrical performances before the pandemic but now missed that connection, she said, and was gratified to happen upon a dramatic reading while walking home.She added that the sound of the verses being read stood in contrast to what she called the city’s “standard” backdrop of blaring horns, sirens and rumbling garbage trucks.“I think it’s wonderful,” she said. “There’s something so soothing about her voice, it just pulled me in.” More

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      in Television

      For Eddie Izzard, a ‘99’ Ice Cream and a Waterloo Sunset Are Wondrous Things

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      The star of “Six Minutes to Midnight,” opening Friday, tells why Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations, “Great Expectations,” David Bowie and London landmarks hold meaning for her.Eddie Izzard, the British comedian-actor-writer-activist-endurance runner, tends to push herself to the limit. And then some.“I do find — because I had my sort of 10 wilderness years before things took off — that I’ve tried very hard to stay four steps ahead of where I need to be,” Izzard, who is transgender, said in a video interview from London.She performs stand-up in English, French, German and Spanish. She channels 21 characters in a one-person show of Charles Dickens’s “Great Expectations.” She runs multiple marathons for charity — clocking 32 in 31 days in January, each followed by a comedy routine, for her Make Humanity Great Again campaign, which supports global unity and tolerance.And still, Izzard found time to co-write, executive produce and star in “Six Minutes to Midnight,” set in 1939, about a teacher at a finishing school in the south of England whose students include the daughters of high-ranking Nazis. The film, out Friday, based on a true story she learned about from a museum curator in Bexhill-on-Sea, where her family is from, was a 10-year process: five to develop the characters and five to get her acting to a level where she could play a lead, alongside stars like Judi Dench.Catch her while you can: Izzard hopes to go into politics in the near future as a member of Parliament for the Labour party, during which she’ll take a hiatus from performing.With her career in high gear, the timing may not be perfect, but she’s not worried. “There’s the critical momentum you need when you’re going in,” she said, “but that will stick around for when you come out.”Izzard channeled her trademark whimsy into her list of 10 cultural essentials — from the fantasy world of the Narnia books to the simple delights of an ice cream cone — which she wrote herself. KATHRYN SHATTUCK1. Edward Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations My mum used to love to listen to classical music. My mum and dad were married in ‘Adan (Aden) in Yemen and Dad talked of her liking to go up onto the roof of a local hotel and play classical music from a gramophone record as the sun set. I think that, amongst others records, she would have played Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations, as it was one of the classical albums that was often played in the house. My mum died when I was only 6 years old, but I do remember hearing different albums played at home in the years she was alive, and this one stuck with me from an early age. The fact that he was called Edward, and so was I, didn’t hurt.2. “30 Rock” “30 Rock” is just gold dust. If you have a brain and a sense of humor, just buy the first episode. If it grabs you then just do what I did and download the whole box set. The height of great comedy is to be as intelligent as it is bonkers, and this is it. It’s the kind of sitcom that probably only could exist in a post-“Seinfeld” America, and it probably had to fight just as hard as “Seinfeld” did for its own existence over its first few seasons.3. “David Bowie: Finding Fame” The key thing in this documentary to take home to your brain is that it shows the 10 wilderness years before Bowie took off with Ziggy Stardust in 1972. One needs to know that he was in his first band in 1962, when the Beatles were just taking off. So the stamina that 10 years adrift taught him, and also the few times when it looked like things were taking off but then didn’t, must have informed the rest of his career. I didn’t realize until I watched this that he was at times, in the early days, way off course but he kept regrouping and coming back.4. “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” by C.S. Lewis It is a great mystical adventure story to feed the imagination of kids. You have to understand that I’m dyslexic and so read very few books, but I read all of the seven Narnia ones when I was young. I later found out that Lewis was lacing in religion to the series, and this made every feel a little hoodwinked about the whole thing. But later, I realized you could just ignore the symbolism if you wanted to.5. “The Great Escape” A classic war film and one I’ve watched many times. The fact it is based in truth, when a lot of war films in those days were not, makes it even better. I like the film so much, I’ve even watched it in German. As I do my stand-up in German, I was playing Berlin, and I bought the DVD of the film there. If you switch on the German audio track and just have English subtitles, it is a different film. Suddenly they’re all talking German, and so it just becomes a battle between an extreme right regime and people fighting for a return to humanity.6. “Waterloo Sunset” Written by Ray Davies of the Kinks and performed by them. It’s a song that I’ve always thought was accidentally perfect for me as I knew exactly where to see a Waterloo sunset. Waterloo Bridge is my favorite London bridge (we have many). When I was a street performer at Covent Garden, I used to walk across the bridge to perform in front of the Festival Hall on London’s South Bank. And at some point soon after Covid, I will perform inside the Festival Hall. And then I’ll watch another sunset and I will play “Waterloo Sunset” again.7. “Pogles’ Wood” If you search for “Pogles’ Wood: Honey Bees” on YouTube, you can see an episode of this early animated TV series that I was mesmerized by when I was about 5 years old. Normally if you watch back at TV shows that you found entertaining at that age, you will find them tired and old-fashioned in modern times. But “Pogles’ Wood” still holds up with its mixture of animated characters, weirdly beguiling music and short pieces of live-action documentary that showed and taught you things from the real world.8. The “99” Ice Cream What did people do before ice cream? Nobody knows. But the “99” is a staple of the British ice cream world. It is just a basic wafer cone with soft white vanilla ice cream swirled on top of it, but the crowning difference that makes it a thing of genius is a chocolate Flake stuck diagonally (always diagonally) into the side of the vanilla ice cream.Once you buy your “99,” experienced users will have their own eating ritual to perform. Mine is always to push the chocolate Flake with one finger so that you push it down into the center of the cone. Then you close the hole in the ice cream over with your tongue and carry on eating the cone as if it never had a chocolate Flake. Then, when you are down to the final handle part of the cone, you have a heady mixture of wafer, vanilla ice cream and flaky chocolate to feast upon.9. “Great Expectations” Charles Dickens was born on Feb. 7, 1812, and slightly bizarrely, I was born on Feb. 7, 1962, 150 years later. Having never read a great work of literature, I thought I should start with a work of Dickens due to the weird link. I chose “Great Expectations” to firstly read and record it to become an audiobook (which I have now done), and then I thought I should turn it into a solo show. So I commissioned my older brother, Mark, to adapt it down from over 20 hours of book into a 90-minute solo performance.Apart from it being one of Dickens’ more mature books and a great story of Pip, Magwitch, Miss Havisham and Estella, “Great X” is also interesting for me as it starts off down to the South East of London, along the river Thames towards the mouth of the river. This is the Chatham, Kent area of England and was where Dickens grew up, and the book starts here in about the 1820s, which is when he was there as a child. So you hear about “the marshes” direct from his childhood, a place that was barren in the winter and glorious in the summer.10. The Parks of London I do find them a joy. Are they culture? I think so, for they can inspire. Two of our biggest are slap bang in the center of London. They are Hyde Park and Kensington Park. They are essentially one large park, but they have West Carriage Drive running between that separates them. The ancient Serpentine River runs through them, which was long ago turned into a boating lake. Speakers’ Corner, where anyone can pull up and hold forth on any subject, is in the northeast corner of Hyde Park — which is right by the beginning of the old Roman road of Watling Street. I encourage anyone to take a walk from the bottom corner of one park to the top corner of the other park on a warm and sunny day, and it will feel like a walk in the countryside. More

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      in Movies

      The American Academy of Arts and Letters Unveils Expanded Roster

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe American Academy of Arts and Letters Unveils Expanded RosterFor the first time in more than a century, the society is adding new spots for members, with a diverse group of cultural figures.From left, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Joy Harjo, Wynton Marsalis and Betye Saar, who are among the new members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.Credit…John Lamparski/Associated PressMarch 5, 2021, 5:19 p.m. ETThe American Academy of Arts and Letters, an honor society of leading architects, artists, composers and writers, announced 33 new members on Friday as part of an effort to expand and diversify.Among them are the painter Mark Bradford, the poet Joy Harjo, the artist Betye Saar and the composer Wynton Marsalis and the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates.Founded in 1898, the institution had capped membership at 250 since 1908; members are elected for life and pay no dues. In addition to adding 33 members, the academy announced it is going to grow to 300 by 2025. Its move to diversify comes as the arts reckon with issues of race, inclusion and social justice.“The board of directors is committed to creating a more inclusive membership that truly represents America and believes that expanding the Academy’s membership will allow the Academy to more readily achieve that goal,” the organization said in a statement.Early on after its establishment, the organization — which now administers more than 70 awards and prizes, totaling more than $1 million — was mainly made up of white men, like Theodore Roosevelt, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, John Singer Sargent and Mark Twain. Previously, new members could only be elected after the death of existing members.“That the doors of the institution have opened to a more representative membership is symbolic of a cultural shift that is long overdue,” Harjo said in an email to The New York Times.“Every culture has contributed to the restoration, remaking and revisioning of this country,” she added. “Together we are a rich, dynamic story field of every shade, tone and rhythm.”The academy is ushering in its most diverse group as institutions across the nation have reckoned with racial justice, equity and inclusion in the last year. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced a $5.3 million program to distribute curated collections of books to prisons across the country last June and later pledged $250 million to help reimagine the country’s monuments and memorials to include the histories of people who have been marginalized. In January, the Library of Congress also announced a Mellon-funded initiative to expand its collection and encourage diverse outreach for future librarians and archivists.Employees at other arts organizations are also airing their issues with the gatekeepers of high arts: a coalition from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Opera, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and other New York-based cultural institutions issued an open letter on social media regarding the “unfair treatment of Black/Brown people” last year, demanding “the immediate removal of ineffective, biased Administrative and Curatorial leadership,” among other requests.The academy only includes American architects, artists, writers and composers. Among the new additions, who are not in these categories, are honorary members, like Mikhail Baryshnikov, Spike Lee, Unsuk Chin and Balkrishna Doshi.All of the new members will be inducted on May 19 via a virtual award ceremony.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      in Music

      To Express the Sound of a Country’s Soul, He Invented New Instruments

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      The imbaluna, one of the invented instruments by Joaquín Orellana on view at the Americas Society.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexTo Express the Sound of a Country’s Soul, He Invented New InstrumentsThe Guatemalan composer, inventor and writer Joaquín Orellana’s creations are the subject of the Americas Society exhibition “The Spine of Music.”The imbaluna, one of the invented instruments by Joaquín Orellana on view at the Americas Society.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyFeb. 19, 2021, 12:48 p.m. ETIn a short story, the Guatemalan composer, inventor and writer Joaquín Orellana imagines a musician who, dissatisfied with the instruments of Western civilization, sets out to create the sound of hunger. Possessed with a desire to express his people’s suffering, he progressively starves himself, then records his altered, raving voice. In his delirium, he sees sheet music staves come alive with anguished and violent cries — the sound of hunger.Orellana, 90, is one of his country’s most respected composers and the subject of a captivating exhibition at the Americas Society, “The Spine of Music,” which showcases instruments — sculptural, Surrealist and darkly sensuous — he has invented. Like the protagonist of his story, Orellana seeks to express the suffering of a country traumatized by genocide and civil war, while largely shunning the materials of Western music.Orellana with the herroím, one of his “útiles sonoros,” or sound tools.Credit…via Studio of Joaquín OrellanaMost composers write music for instruments that already exist. One exception was Wagner, who created a tuba-horn hybrid for his “Ring” cycle. The experimentalist composer Harry Partch invented instruments adapted to his unorthodox tuning system. In a video interview from Guatemala City, Orellana spoke of his process as one of liberating the musical imagination from preconceived forms.“The composer is imbued with his social reality,” he said. “The composer is a kind of filter, and his social sensibility is integrated into that filter.” When musical ideas flood the composer’s imagination, he added, “in that auditory mind there are the concepts and images of a social context, a sociopolitical reality; and the music is inevitably beholden to these things.”Orellana began experimenting with the materials of sound production in the 1970s. He had studied violin and composition at the National Conservatory in Guatemala City, then won a two-year fellowship at the Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales in Buenos Aires. That center was a magnet for innovative composers from across the subcontinent, with a state-of-the-art electronic music studio that fired Orellana’s imagination.Sebastian Zubieta, the Americas Society music director, playing Orellana’s sinusoido pequeño.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesCredit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesHe didn’t have comparable technical resources when he returned to Guatemala. And he felt alienated from a music scene centered on folkloric traditions expressed through the national instrument, the marimba.Still, the marimba fascinated Orellana. It had most likely come over on the slave routes from West Africa; embraced by the rural population in Guatemala, it had come to resonate with his country’s hopes, pain and injustices. So he pried it apart and twisted it into new forms.Orellana calls his inventions “útiles sonoros,” or sound tools. “By means of the sound tools,” he said, “the marimba extends into acoustic and physical space as in a kind of Big Bang.”The imbaluna, a portmanteau of “marimba” and the Spanish word for moon.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe first sound tool to greet visitors to the Americas Society gallery is the skeletal imbaluna, with a crescent-shaped marimba keyboard backed by spiky resonators. (The names of Orellana’s inventions are often poetic portmanteaus, this one of “marimba” and the Spanish word for moon.)The circumar is shaped like a large kettle with marimba keys suspended perpendicular to the floor. For the sinusoido, he strung marimba keys on a frame shaped like a warped roller coaster. Both are played by running a mallet along the inside in continuous motion — an action that requires full engagement of the performer’s arm and torso and produces tinkling rushes of sound. Sebastián Zubieta, the Americas Society music director, said that in Mr. Orellana’s creations, “it’s the gesture that shapes it.”These instruments — and others shaped similarly, using metal chimes or bamboo canes — can sound uncannily like electronic music. Zubieta said it was no accident that sounds created on a circular or sinusoid instrument resemble those created through electronic looping and sequencing. “It’s like an old tape piece,” he said. “It’s a low-tech solution to an avant-garde desire.”The herroím.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe cirlum pequeño.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe periomin.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe prehimulinho.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe ingenuity of Orellana’s inventions often hovers between playfulness and cruelty. The periomin is a kind of rocking coat rack that, when set in motion, makes wind chimes swing back and forth along strings of plastic beads, sounding like a glassy waterfall. The pinzafer is a large iron sheet, shaped like a lobster tail and suspended from an iron frame. Running a bow, strung with piano wire, through a serrated cutout produces a dark, metallic moan. Drawing a bow (this one strung with acrylic) over the tubarc, a metal chime fixed on a rectangular frame, produces a whistle sharp enough to make teeth fizz.In his compositions, Orellana often uses his inventions alongside choral singing, taped environmental sounds and Western instruments. In 2017, he wrote “Symphony From the Third World” for Documenta 14 in Athens; he flooded the stage with adult and children’s choirs, a symphony orchestra and his sound tools. It was a rejoinder to Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony, subtitled “From the New World.”An instrument called the CF A.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesFor the Americas Society exhibition, he composed a new piece exclusively for his creations. Titled “Puntos y efluvios” (“Outpours and Dots”), it was intended to be performed by four percussionists inside the gallery, and would have invited audience members to participate at certain moments with screams, howls and cries in a language Orellana invented.Because of pandemic limitations, Zubieta recorded each part by himself; the edited piece, with its pinprick tinkles and squalls of booming rushes, now haunts the gallery at regular intervals. An accompanying video alternates between shots of the performer engaged in the music’s ritualistic gestures and images of Orellana’s graphic score — which, with rhythmic squiggles, dot clusters and choreographic diagrams, harks back to the vision in his short story of sheet music staves melting away.Zubieta playing the lenguatón.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesLooking back on his career, Orellana said, “Making music for me was never a determinate process, but rather a way to free myself from obsessions: the obsession to manifest sound and a certain compulsive need to get it out of me.”“I’ve come to the conclusion,” he added, “that what I’m trying to do is liberate sound.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      in Television

      ‘Black Art: In the Absence of Light’ Reveals a History of Neglect and Triumph

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘Black Art: In the Absence of Light’ Reveals a History of Neglect and TriumphAn HBO documentary explores two centuries of art by African-Americans, and the path they forged for contemporary Black artists.Kerry James Marshall’s ‘‘Untitled (Studio)’’ (2014) appears in “Black Art: In the Absence of Light,” a documentary film directed by Sam Pollard.Credit…HBOFeb. 8, 2021Updated 3:56 p.m. ETBlack Art: In the Absence of LightNYT Critic’s Pick“This is Black art. And it matters. And it’s been going on for two hundred years. Deal with it.”So declares the art historian Maurice Berger toward the beginning of “Black Art: In the Absence of Light,” a rich and absorbing documentary directed by Sam Pollard (“MLK/FBI”) and debuting on HBO Tuesday night.The feature-length film, assembled from interviews with contemporary artists, curators and scholars, was inspired by a single 1976 exhibition, “Two Centuries of Black American Art,” the first large-scale survey of African-American artists. Organized by the artist David C. Driskell, who was then-head of the art department at Fisk University, it included some 200 works dating from the mid-18th to the mid-20th century, and advanced a history that few Americans, including art professionals, even knew existed.The HBO documentary recalls a landmark show “Two Centuries of Black American Art” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1976. It was organized by David C. Driskell.Credit…Museum Associates/LACMAThe press gave that survey a mixed reception. Some writers griped that it was more about sociology than art (Driskell himself didn’t entirely disagree). But the show was a popular hit. At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where it originated, and then at major museums in Dallas, Atlanta and Brooklyn, people lined up to see it.What they were seeing was that Black artists had always done distinctive work in parallel to, and some within, a white-dominated mainstream that ignored them. And they were seeing that Black artists had consistently made, and are continuing to make, some of the most conceptually exciting and urgent-minded American art, period — a reality only quite recently acknowledged by the art world at large, as reflected in exhibitions, sales and critical attention.Driskell appeared in the HBO documentary before he died last year. “Isolation isn’t, and never was, the Black artist’s goal,” he said. “He has tried to be part and parcel of the mainstream, only to be shut out.”Credit…HBOThe HBO documentary introduces us to this history of long neglect and recent correction through the eloquent voices of three people who lived both sides of it: Driskell, a revered painter and teacher; Mary Schmidt Campbell, the president of Spelman College in Atlanta, Ga., and former director of the Studio Museum in Harlem; and Berger, an esteemed art historian and curator. (The film is dedicated to the two men, both of whom died from complications related to Covid-19 in 2020, Driskell at 88, Berger at 63.)They’re surrounded by artists, most of them painters, of various generations. Some had careers that were well underway by 1976 (Betye Saar, for example, and Richard Mayhew, who was in the survey). Others were, at that point, just starting out in the field. (Kerry James Marshall remembers being blown away by a visit to the show when he was 21). Still others — Kehinde Wiley (born 1977) and Jordan Casteel (born 1989) — weren’t born when the survey opened but still count themselves among its beneficiaries.The portraitist Jordan Casteel discusses how she finds her subjects on streets.Credit…HBOMarshall in his studio explains the many colors he uses that are “Black.”Credit…HBOThe question arises early in the film — in a 1970s “Today Show” interview with Driskell by Tom Brokaw — as to whether the very use of the label “Black American art” isn’t itself a form of imposed isolation. Yes, Driskell says, but in this case a strategic one. “Isolation isn’t, and never was, the Black artist’s goal. He has tried to be part and parcel of the mainstream, only to be shut out. Had this exhibition not been organized many of the artists in it would never have been seen.”The film refers, in shorthand form, to past examples of shutting-out. There’s a reference to the Metropolitan Museum’s 1969 “Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900-1968,” an exhibition that was advertised as introducing Black creativity to the Met but that contained little in the way of art. And mention is made of artists’ protests of the Whitney Museum’s 1971 survey “Contemporary Black Artists in America,” which was left entirely in the hands of a white curator.A book of essays titled “Black Art Notes,” printed that year in response to the Whitney show, accused white museums of “artwashing” through the token inclusion of African-American work, a charge that has continuing pertinence. (The collection was recently reissued, in a facsimile edition, by Primary Information, a nonprofit press in Brooklyn.) Even before the Met and Whitney shows, Black artists saw the clear necessity of taking control of how and where their art was seen into their own hands. Ethnically specific museums began to spring up — outstandingly, in 1968, the Studio Museum in Harlem.The 1969 exhibition “Harlem on My Mind” resulted in demonstrators picketing outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Credit…Jack Manning/The New York TimesWe’re talking about a dense, complex history. No one film can hope to get all of it, and this one leaves a lot out. (Mention of the Black Power movement is all but absent here.) Still, there’s a lot, encapsulated in short, deft commentary by scholars and curators, among them Campbell, Sarah Lewis of Harvard University, Richard J. Powell of Duke University, and Thelma Golden, the current director and chief curator of the Studio Museum. (Golden is a consulting producer of the film. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is its executive producer.)Rightfully, and delightfully, the majority of voices are those of active artists. Faith Ringgold, now 90, wasn’t in the 1976 show, or in big museums much at all, because, she asserts, her work was too political and because she’s female. (Of the 63 artists in “Two Centuries of Black American Art,” 54 were male.) Her solution? “I just stay out till I get in,” she says. And persisting has paid off: Her monumental 1967 painting “American People Series #20: Die” has pride of place in the Museum of Modern Art’s current permanent collection rehang.)Faith Ringgold said she was excluded from the black and mainstream art movement because she was female. “I just stay out till I get in,” she said.Credit…HBOThe artist Fred Wilson explains his use of objects and cultural symbols to explore historical narratives in sculptures and installations.Credit…HBOParticularly interesting are segments showing artists at work and talking about what they’re doing as they’re doing it. We visit Marshall in his studio as he explains the many, many paint colors he uses that are “black.” We follow Fred Wilson into museum storage as he excavated objects that will become part of one of his history-baring installations. We watch Radcliffe Bailey transform hundreds of discarded piano keys into a Middle Passage ocean. And we tag along with the portraitist Jordan Casteel, who recently wrapped up a well-received show at the New Museum, as she seeks out sitters on Harlem streets.There’s no question that the visibility of African-American artists in the mainstream is way higher now than it’s ever been. (Thank you, Black Lives Matter.) A big uptick in shows is one measure. Landmark events like the 2018 unveiling of the Obama portraits by Wiley and Amy Sherald is another.In an interview in the film Sherald brings up this sudden surge of attention. “A lot of galleries are now picking up Black artists,” she says. “There’s this gold rush.” But where some observers would see the interest as just a next-hot-thing marketing trend driven by a branding of “Blackness,” she doesn’t. “I say it’s because we’re making some of the best work, and most relevant work.”In 2018, Kehinde Wiley, left, unveiled his painting of Barack Obama, alongside Amy Sherald’s portrait of Michelle Obama, at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Credit…Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesThe point of Pollard’s film, which was also the point of Driskell’s 1976 survey, is to demonstrate that, and to demonstrate that Black artists have been making some of the best work and the most relevant work for decades, centuries. But they’ve been making it mostly on the margins, beyond the white art world’s spotlights.The artist Theaster Gates, who appears toward the end of the film, sees the advantage, even the necessity, of that positioning.“Black art means that sometimes I’m making when no one’s looking,” he says. “For the most part that has been the truth of our lives. Until we own the light, I’m not happy. Until we’re in our own houses of exhibitions, of discovery, of research, until we’ve figured out a way to be masters of the world, I’d rather work in darkness. I don’t want to work only when the light comes on. My fear is that we’re being trained and conditioned to only make if there’s a light, and that makes us codependent upon a thing we don’t control. Are you willing,” he asks his fellow artists, “to make in the absence of light?”Driskell, to whom this film really belongs and with whose presence it concludes, also leaves the question of the future of Black art open-ended. Around it, he’s says, “there’s been an awakening, an enlightenment through education, a desire to want to know. On the other hand, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr. : We haven’t reached the promised land. We’ve got a long way to go.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock Resident Artists Are Named

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyKehinde Wiley’s Black Rock Resident Artists Are NamedMembers of the global group share the painter’s passion for using art to explore social change.Kehinde Wiley at the Black Rock artist residence he founded in Dakar, Senegal, in 2019. It is welcoming its second group of artists, filmmakers and writers from around the world. Hilary Balu’s “Voyage vers Mars 5,” explores the flight of populations to other continents.Credit…Jane Hahn for The New York TimesFeb. 2, 2021Updated 2:59 p.m. ETA Congolese painter whose art reflects how globalization and consumerism have transformed African society. A Nigerian-American filmmaker whose work focuses on cultures and experiences of Africans and the diaspora. A visual activist from Texas who forces her viewers to confront issues that are deemed difficult to tackle.These are among the 16 artists selected for the 2021 residency at Black Rock Senegal, the seaside studio in the West African capital city of Dakar belonging to Kehinde Wiley, the painter best known for his portrait of former President Barack Obama.The artists, who will spend several weeks at the lavish studio along a volcanic-rock-lined shore, express themselves in a variety of formats and come from across the globe. But many in this year’s group share Wiley’s passion for using art to explore social change.His most recent works include the stained glass fresco of breakdancers in the Moynihan Train Hall and his “Rumors of War” statue in Richmond, Va. — a Black man with ponytailed dreadlocks on horseback in the style of monuments to Confederate war generals. Wiley is not part of the Black Rock selection committee, which aims to consider the class of artists as a whole and tries to pick a diverse group of residents, including personal identities and nationalities and the medium they work in.Among the residents is Hilary Balu, from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, whose recent brightly colored yet sorrowful series “Voyage vers Mars” explores the tragedy of contemporary migration — in this case the flight of a population to another continent, like astronauts leaving a destroyed earth for another planet.Hilary Balu’s “Voyage vers Mars 5,” explores the flight of populations to other continents.Credit…MAGNIN-AAbbesi Akhamie, who lives in Washington, is a Nigerian-American writer, director and producer whose latest short film, ​“The Couple Next Door” from last year, premiered at the Aspen Shortsfest and won the Audience Choice Award at the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival.Irene Antonia Diane Reece from Houston uses her family archives as a form of activism and liberation, with some of her work exploring family history and racial identity.Other residents include Delali Ayivor, a Ghanaian-American writer; Mbali Dhlamini, a multidisciplinary artist, and Arinze Ifeakandu, a Nigerian writer who recently graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and writes about queer male intimacy. The residents will each spend several weeks at a time in the studio, with coronavirus restrictions in place, in staggered stages, beginning this month.Some might overlap with Wiley, who has spent much of the past year in Dakar, using the global pandemic as an opportunity to pause and paint, sometimes working with Black Rock residents who have helped him in his work.“I’m learning to view, discuss, and critique art that often depicts the Black body from a range of perspectives that span the globe,” Wiley said in an email exchange. “There’s an unending variety of rubrics through which artists are pushing the possibilities of representation.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      What Do Lars Ulrich and A.O. Scott Have in Common? A Lot, It Turns Out

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      @media (pointer: coarse) { .at-home-nav__outerContainer { overflow-x: scroll; -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch; } } .at-home-nav__outerContainer { position: relative; display: flex; align-items: center; /* Fixes IE */ overflow-x: auto; box-shadow: -6px 0 white, 6px 0 white, 1px 3px 6px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15); padding: 10px 1.25em 10px; transition: all 250ms; margin-bottom: 20px; -ms-overflow-style: none; /* IE 10+ */ […] More

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      Martin Luther King Jr. Day: 9 Ways to Honor His Legacy

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMartin Luther King Jr. Day: 9 Ways to Honor His LegacyMarches and parades are on pause this year. But streamed events and exhibitions are still commemorating King’s achievements.The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington in 1963. Credit…Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesJan. 14, 2021Updated 11:55 a.m. ETThe Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, observed this year on Jan. 18, became a national holiday in 1983, 15 years after the death of the civil rights leader. Because the arc of history has a few kinks in it, some states declined to celebrate it until 2000 or adopted names that dilute King’s import. (Alabama and Mississippi observe it in conjunction with Robert E. Lee Day, a symbolic swipe)Nevertheless, King’s legacy endures, and in a moment of national racial reckoning, the holiday offers a timely opportunity to help it onward, through action and contemplation. Marches and parades, the typical forms of remembrance, are mostly on pause this year. But New Yorkers can commemorate King’s achievements with an assortment of events, including a few in-person and kid-friendly options.An annual tributeThe Brooklyn Academy of Music and Brooklyn’s borough president, Eric L. Adams, co-host this event on Monday at 11 a.m. It includes a keynote address from Alicia Garza, a founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network, as well as music and spoken word performances from PJ Morton, Tarriona “Tank” Ball, Sing Harlem! and others. After streaming on bam.org, the event will be available on BAM’s YouTube and Vimeo channels. Online on Monday, BAM will also present William Greaves’s “Nationtime,” a documentary film of the National Black Political Convention held in Gary, Ind., online; and on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, it will host “Let Freedom Ring,” a looping video installation, organized by Larry Ossei-Mensah, that explores what freedom can and does mean. bam.org‘The Art of Healing’Art on the Ave, which connects artists with storefront spaces, sponsors this exhibit that stretches across 11 blocks of Columbus Avenue through Jan. 31. Organized by Lisa DuBois, the founder of Harlem’s X Gallery, the public art gallery crawl includes work from more than 40 artists, many of them from underrepresented communities. Each work centers on the theme of healing. Parents and teachers can download educational materials, or scan QR codes as they walk to hear recorded artist statements. artontheavenyc.comA tour of King’s HarlemOn Sunday, guides from Big Onion will lead participants in a two-hour tour of the Harlem King knew and its earlier history, with an emphasis on local Black cultural figures and civil rights leaders. On this masked, socially distanced stroll, guides trace the neighborhood from colonial days through the Harlem Renaissance, with stops at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, Strivers’ Row and the Apollo Theater. Will it cover King’s most fateful Harlem visit, when he was stabbed with a seven-inch letter opener and rushed to Harlem Hospital? bigonion.comJesse Krimes’s “Apokaluptein 16389067” at MoMA PS1.Credit…Karsten Moran for The New York TimesArt and mass incarcerationThrough April 4, the MoMA PS1 exhibition “Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration” invites visitors to contemplate the rippling effects of the imprisonment of Americans, particularly Black men, on families. More than 40 artists — incarcerated, formerly incarcerated or profoundly affected by incarceration — contributed paintings, drawings and sculpture and, in the case of Jesse Krimes’s astonishing “Apokaluptein 16389067,” a 40-foot-wide work printed onto prison bedsheets. In The New York Times, the critic Holland Cotter wrote that the show “complicates the definition of crime itself, expanding it beyond the courtroom into American society.” moma.org/ps1Serving somebody“Everyone can be great,” King once said, “because everyone can serve.” Instead of taking the day off, consider celebrating King’s legacy by showing up. AmeriCorps hosts an annual day of service on Monday, and offers myriad local service opportunities on its website. While some of them require in-person participation, AmeriCorps also encourages a virtual service, with suggestions like tutoring, hunger relief, suicide prevention and transcription for the Smithsonian Institution and National Archives. americorps.govA radio saluteAt 3 p.m. on Monday, WNYC, in partnership with the Apollo Theater, will air its 15th annual King celebration. “MLK and the Fierce Urgency of Now!,” hosted by Brian Lehrer, Jami Floyd and Tanzina Vega, features guests including event’s guests include Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the Rev. William Barber II, Bernard Lafayette Jr., Letitia James and Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times. The radio version will air on more than 400 affiliates, while an extended video version of the event will be available on Facebook. wnyc.orgWriting a protest songOn Saturday at 10:30 a.m., the Nashville Country Music Hall of Fame hosts an online family program, “Songwriting 101,” with an emphasis on music and justice. Via Zoom, a museum educator will lead the group in the creation of a new protest song, in the model of Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” and Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released.” Figure out form, theme, rhyme scheme. Then wait on the world to change. Pen and paper, and an instrument, are suggested. countrymusichalloffame.orgNew York’s change agentsOn Monday, the Museum of the City of New York will host an intergenerational workshop for families honoring King and New York civil rights luminaries, including Ella Baker, Milton Galamison, Bayard Rustin and Malcolm X. The workshop is delivered in conjunction with the museum’s exhibition “Activist New York,” which charts the city’s participation in social justice movements, fighting for freedom and equality from the 17th century on. mcny.orgKing onscreenIf your schedule can’t accommodate a gallery show or a timed online event, remember King by watching one of the many movies and documentaries devoted to his life and work. Try feature films like Ava DuVernay’s “Selma,” with David Oyelowo as King, or Clark Johnson’s “Boycott.” Some documentary takes include the new “MLK/FBI” and “John Lewis: Good Trouble,” both streaming as part of the Cinematters: NY Social Justice Film Festival, as well as “King in the Wilderness,” “Eyes on the Prize” and “King: A Filmed Record … Montgomery to Memphis,” available online.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More