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Museums Take up Civil Rights, Immigration Issues and Their History

Jun 24, ’11 5:14 PM

Museums Take up Civil Rights, Immigration Issues and Their History

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Do the issues of civil rights and immigration intersect? According to the mission of the Civil Rights Sites of Conscience Network, they do. The group of museums from the Southeast recently met over four days in Charlotte. Emily Zimmern, president and CEO of the host Levine Museum of the New South, lamented “what passes as dialogue” in the immigration debate, words that don’t acknowledge “the long sweep of history.” But she was hopeful that the stand-off can be advanced with informed community engagement. “That’s what museums do.”

At the Levine, that means pairing African-American and Hispanic groups to discuss two museum exhibits: “Courage,” which explores the Carolina roots of the Brown v. Board of Education decision that outlawed segregated schools, and “Para Todos Los Niño,” which chronicles the landmark legal anti-discrimination struggles of Latino families in Southern California almost 10 years before Brown. Another program aimed at high school and college students will ask: “Where is courage needed today?”…

 

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Text: Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture

Mar 22, ’11 9:05 PM

Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture. Karp, Ivan, Christine Mullen Kreamer, and Steven D. Lavine.

From Library Journal:

This companion volume to Exhibiting Culture (Smithsonian Pr., 1991) contains a series of essays that illustrate both the struggles and the collaborations between museums and the communities they aim to serve. Despite the essay format, common themes emerge. As America makes the transition from an industrial age to an information age, museums must review and revamp philosophy, mission, practices, and services; attempt to reconcile frequently incompatible aims; and alter programming to accommodate more diverse constituencies. In this context, forming a strong communicative circle linking exhibits and viewers is seen as vital to restoring wholeness to our pluralistic cultural arena. The range of voices heard to great effect in the preceding book continue to speak out here. Strongly recommended.
- Vicki Gadberry, Harris Media Ctr., Mars Hill Coll., N.C.

 

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Glen Ligon: America

Mar 22, ’11 8:34 PM

Glenn Ligon: America

Glenn Ligon: AMERICA is the first comprehensive mid-career retrospective devoted to this pioneering New York–based artist. Throughout his career, Ligon (b. 1960) has pursued an incisive exploration of American history, literature, and society across a body of work that builds critically on the legacies of modern painting and more recent conceptual art. He is best known for his landmark series of text-based paintings, made since the late 1980s, which draw on the writings and speech of diverse figures including Jean Genet, Zora Neale Hurston, Jesse Jackson, and Richard Pryor. Ligon’s subject matter ranges widely from the Million Man March and the aftermath of slavery to 1970s coloring books and the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe—all treated within artworks that are both politically provocative and beautiful to behold.

 

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