Kerry James Marshall: A Creative Convening

Jackson-Dumont, Sandra, ed., with the participation of Toshi Reagon, Kerry James Marshall, Helen Molesworth, Alondra Nelson, Joe Hall, Michael Shadlen, Robert O'Meally, Ian Alteveer, Fred Eversley, Monique W. Morris, Michelle Carter, Rashida Bumbray, Kimberly Bryant, imani uzuri, Hank Thomas, Mario Gooden, Arthur Jafa, Greg Tate, and William C. Rhoden (2018)

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Description

This volume documents a groundbreaking convening on January 28, 2017 in The Met’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, inspired by the exhibition Kerry James Marshall: Mastry on view at The Met Breuer October 25, 2016–January 29, 2017. During the daylong event twenty noted thought leaders and creative practitioners considered the role of creativity, hard work, social justice, and imagination in art history, performance, science, and other disciplines inspired by visual artist Kerry James Marshall’s practice and work. The event was a mix of rich extended conversations and exciting nine-minute performances and presentations.

The program and this publication were made possible by the generous support of the Ford Foundation.

Table of contents

Foreword
Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation

Introduction
Sandra Jackson-Dumont, Frederick P. and Sandra P. Rose Chairman of Education, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Performance
Toshi Reagon

Session 1

Conversation
Kerry James Marshall and Helen Molesworth

Alondra Nelson

Joe Hall

Michael Shadlen

Robert O’Meally

Session 2

Remarks
Sheena Wagstaff, Leonard A. Lauder Chairman, Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ian Alteveer

Fred Eversley

Monique W. Morris

Michelle Carter

Performance
Rashida Bumbray

Session 3

Kimberly Bryant

Imani Uzuri

Hank Thomas

Mario Gooden

Conversation
Thelma Golden, Arthur Jafa, and Greg Tate

Closing Remarks
Kerry James Marshall

An Evening with Kerry James Marshall
December 15, 2016

Introduction
Elizabeth Alexander, Director of Creativity and Free Expression, Ford Foundation

Conversation
Kerry James Marshall and William C. Rhoden

Exhibition Overview: Kerry James Marshall: Mastry (October 25, 2016–January 29, 2017)

About the authors

Sandra Jackson-Dumont is Frederick P. and Sandra P. Rose Chairman of Education, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Toshi Reagon is a one-woman celebration of all that’s dynamic, progressive, and uplifting in American music. Since first taking to the stage at age 17, this versatile singer-songwriter-guitarist has moved audiences of all kinds with her big-hearted, hold-nothing-back approach to rock, blues, R&B, country, folk, spirituals, and funk. Her current project is an opera based on Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower.

Kerry James Marshall is an artist, educator, and author. He earned a BFA in 1978 from the Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles. After being an Artist in Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem (1985), Marshall moved to Chicago, where he continues to live and work. Working across a wide range of media, Marshall has exhibited both nationally and internationally.

Helen Molesworth is the Chief Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles. From 2010 to 2014 she was the Barbara Lee Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Boston. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Artforum, Art Journal, Documents, and October. She is currently at work on a survey exhibition of Anna Maria Maiolino and a largescale commission with Adrián Villar-Rojas.

Alondra Nelson is an award-winning author and Dean of Social Science at Columbia University in New York City. She is an interdisciplinary social scientist, whose lectures, articles, and books explore the intersections of science, medicine, and social inequality.

Joe Hall is founder and president of Ghetto Film School (GFS), an award-winning nonprofit that educates, develops, and celebrates the next generation of great American storytellers. He’s collaborated with 21st Century Fox, The Frick Collection, Google, the New York City Department of Education, Wieden + Kennedy, and many others to support GFS’s diverse creative talent. Hundreds of graduates work throughout the film and creative industries.

Michael Shadlen is a neuroscientist, neurologist, and jazz guitarist. He studies the brain mechanisms that underlie decision making, visual perception, and timing. His research combines neurophysiological, behavioral, and computational techniques. He is professor, Department of Neuroscience, Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Columbia University, New York City, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Robert O'Meally is Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English, Department of English and Comparative Literature, and Director, Center for Jazz Studies, Columbia University. His books include Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday (2000), The Craft of Ralph Ellison (1980), and Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey (2008). In recent years, O’Meally has served as art curator for Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Ian Alteveer is Curator in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. He is a cocurator of Kerry James Marshall: Mastry.

Fred Eversley is a Brooklyn native and engineer by training who moved to Los Angeles in 1963 to work in the aerospace industry. Four years later, inspired by the bohemian culture of Venice Beach, he decided to shift careers and become an artist. Since that time, Eversley has pushed the boundaries of sculpture, bringing his technical expertise and keen aesthetic sensibility to bear on the remarkable objects he produces.

Monique W. Morris is an author, educator, and social justice scholar with nearly twenty-five years of experience in the areas of education, civil rights, and juvenile and social justice. Her most recent book is Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools (2016).

Michelle Carter is the American Shot Put Record Holder. A three-time Olympian, she is the 2016 Olympic Gold Medalist as well as the 2016 IAAF World Indoor Champion, 2016 Brussels Grand Prix Winner, and 2015 World Championships, Bronze Medalist. Carter is a 2007 graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and daughter of former San Francisco 49er, Pro Bowl, Michael Carter.

Rashida Bumbray’s choreography draws from traditional African American vernacular and folk forms, including ring shouts, hoofing, and blues improvisation, in order to interrogate society and initiate healing. Bumbray was nominated for a Bessie Award in 2014 for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer. She is a recipient of the Harlem Stage Fund for New Work, and her work has been presented by Harlem Stage, the New Museum, Project Row Houses, SummerStage, Tate Modern, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Kimberly Bryant is the Founder and Executive Director of Black Girls CODE, a nonprofit organization dedicated to “changing the face of technology” by introducing girls of color (ages seven to seventeen) to the field of technology and computer science with a focus on entrepreneurism.

imani uzuri is a vocalist, composer, and cultural worker who was a 2015–2016 Park Avenue Armory Artist-in- Residence. She is a recent MAP Fund grantee for her contemporary opera Hush Arbor. In 2016, uzuri made her Lincoln Center American Songbook debut and was also a featured performer on BET for Black Girls Rock. She is currently a 2016–2017 Jerome Foundation Composer/Sound Artist Fellow.

Hank Thomas is a community activist, musician, and scientist. As a physicist, Thomas worked in research at Bell Labs. A member of the NAACP Youth Corps, and later the Philadelphia chapter of the Black Panther Party, he helped organize the Mark Clark Free Medical Clinic in the early 1970s. Most recently he contributed to the book All Power: Visual Legacies of the Black Panther Party (2016), edited by Michelle Dunn Marsh.

Mario Gooden is a principal of Huff + Gooden Architects and a Professor of Practice at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP) of Columbia University, where he is also the Codirector of the Global Africa Lab (GAL). His most recent publication is Dark Space: Architecture, Representation, Black Identity.

Thelma Golden is Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she began her career in 1987 before joining the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1988. She returned to the Studio Museum in 2000 as Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs, and was named Director in 2005. Golden’s many achievements include the 2016 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence.

Arthur Jafa is best known for his work as a director and cinematographer, having worked on such films as Daughters of the Dust (1991), Seven Songs for Malcolm X (1993), and Crooklyn (1994). Jafa directed the films Slowly This (1995), Tree (1999), and Deshotten 1.0 (2009). He has also published essays on black cultural politics and speaks frequently on the complexities of a black aesthetic as well as the potentialities of black cinema.

Greg Tate is a writer and musician who lives in Harlem. He was a staff writer at The Village Voice from 1987 to 2003, and his writings on culture and politics have also appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Artforum, and Rolling Stone. In 1999 he formed Burnt Sugar with Jared Nickerson. His most recent book is Flyboy 2: The Greg Tate Reader (2016).

William C. Rhoden is an award-winning journalist and author. The former New York Times sports columnist and author of Forty Million Dollar Slaves is currently writer-at-large for ESPN's The Undefeated. During his more than four-decade career, he has also been a jazz critic and a social commentator. His work is distinguished by its clear-eyed commentary on the issue of racism in sports and society.

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Sandra Jackson-Dumont

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Kerry James Marshall

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Alondra Nelson

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William C. Rhoden

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