Self-Portraits of African-American artists included in the National Portrait Gallery exhibition Eye to I: Self-Portraits from 1900 to Today

According to Kelly Richman-Abdai, "Throughout the course of art history, self-promotion has remained a tried and true practice among leading artists. Transcending techniques and style, self-portrayals are prevalent in every major movement from the inspired Renaissance to the Post-Modern and Contemporary period" (Iconic Artists who have Immortalized Themselves Through Famous Self-Portraits, My Modern Met, 5/1/17).

But it is not only the leading practitioners of this trade who have taken advantage of this vehicle for self-promotion, as the National Portrait Gallery shows in its current exhibition titled Eye to I: Self-Portraits from 1900 to Today (November 2, 2018 -August 18, 2019). The exhibition features more than 75 works from the museum's vast collection of of self-portraits.

I have excerpted from this exhibition previously when I posted on the self-portraits of friends/associates of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. In this post I dip into the exhibition once again, this time to highlight African-American artists on display therein.

James A. Porter
Oil on canvas, 1957

Of the paintings covered in this post, this is one of the two that are oil on canvas. Both paintings utilize those characteristics to present brightly colored self-portraits and/or surrounds.

James A. Porter, according to the museum notes, created the foundation for the field of African-American art history. Porter graduated from Howard University in 1927 and then spent the next 10 years studying art and art history in Paris and New York, eventually earning an MA from New York University in 1936. He returned to Howard to teach art, eventually rising to become head of its Art Department and Director of its Gallery.

Porter championed African American artists, including those from the Caribbean. His influential book Modern Negro Art (1943) was the first to place the contribution of African American artists in the context of the history of modernism. 

Porter's own art was exhibited at major institutions to include the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.

In the painting, Porter is shown in his studio in front of an image of Howard Hall, one of the oldest buildings on the Howard campus. The painting shows a small-boned man -- bright-eyed and with the hint of a smile -- staring directly at the viewer. Color is applied liberally with a somewhat impressionistic feel on the sweater and vest and more robustness on the trousers.

Lee Simonson
Oil on canvas, c. 1912

Lee Simonson graduated from Harvard in 1909 and traveled to Paris shortly thereafter to pursue his dream of becoming a muralist. He spent three years in the City of Lights, forming friendships with other American expatriates such as the writer Gertrude Stein and the painter Stanton MacDonald-Wright.

This self-portrait may have been painted while he was still in Paris. It shows a handsome, nattily attired young man with Kahloesque eyebrows, a pencil-thin mustache, and prominent eyes and ears. He looks out of the scene confident, unsmiling, and determined. He stands off-center to afford a view of the brightly colored still life, flowers and backdrop. According to the Museum notes, "The painting shows his mastery of patterns and composition and the areas of pure, bright color reveal his interest in Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and the French contemporary painters known as the Fauvists."

Aaron Douglas
Red Conte crayon on paper, 1925

Aaron Douglas became one of the leading figures in the flowering of modernist African-American culture in the early 20th century. This self-portrait was drawn months after he had left his job teaching high school art in Kansas City, Missouri to live in Harlem.

The work shows an angular face, topped by wavy hair, with an interrupted mustache and light reflecting off the chin, cheekbones, and forehead. The subject is unsmiling, staring off into the distance over the viewers left shoulder. It is as though by averting his gaze, he prevents the viewer from capturing the full essence of his soul.

Ralph Ellison
Graphite on paper, 1941

This was one was a surprise for me as I never thought of Ralph Ellison within the context of the non-literary art world. It was PTSD-like in some sense because I have stubbed my toe massively on his 1952 book Invisible Man. A few years ago I had seen a list of the 100 Essential Books and had begun reading from the top down, beginning with, of course, War and Peace. Mr. Ellison's book was #8 on the list and when its turn came around I bought it and settled in for another notch on my belt. I found the book difficult to read. I am a duty-bound reader; that is, if I start a book, I will finish it. I deserted my principles on this one. I will revisit it at some future date to see if the passage of time has been agreeable to both of us.

Ellison created this self-portrait 11 years before publishing Invisible Man, "a semi-autobiographical story about a young black man's frustrating attempts to find his own identity, both in the segregated South and during a volatile era in Harlem." He gave this image to Burt Britton -- a collector who worked in a bookstore and requested self-portraits from the famous personalities with whom he came in contact --in 1971.

John Wilson
Lithographic crayon on paper, 1944

John Wilson was initially taught to draw at the local boys' club, after which he enrolled in the school of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. He graduated with highest honors and received a prestigious travel grant which enabled him to study modernism with Fernand Léger in Paris.

The artist stares out of the scene directly at the viewer, unsmiling, and with a hint of sadness in the lower part of the face. Restrained application on the forehead and on the left side of the face gives the impression of illumination. Even though still a young man, there is an implication of thinning hair just above a prominent forehead.  There is an unexplained small white object on his right eyebrow. I love the architected strokes associated with the shirt.

Hayward Oubre
Etching, 1948

Hayward Oubre earned an MFA from the University of Iowa in 1948. While in attendance there he lived in segregated housing because, even though he was light enough to pass as white, he proudly refused to do so. His career revolved around teaching until he began making wire sculptures in the 1960s, sculptures which have recently begun to gain attention.

The subject looks away from the viewer with somewhat-hooded eyes His hairline is recessive and his caricatured head rests upon an elongated neck.

Jacob Lawrence
Ink and gouache over charcoal on paper, c. 1945

Lawrence began this self-portrait in 1965, by which time his reputation had been firmly established by his epic series The Migration of the Negro. Lawrence finalized the portrait in 1996 "... adding bands of black around the face and changing its contours to a single sweeping curve." The face is framed by the bands of black and convey senses of age and anxiety.

*****************************************************************************************************************************
This exhibition is both interesting and instructive and lends itself to being sliced and diced by the viewer according to his/her interests. I have excerpted tranches bounded by Frida Kahlo linkages and African-American origins and other views are probably lurking in plain sight. I am not very familiar with African-American artists but this subset of the exhibition provided some bread crumbs that I intend to follow.

©EverythingElse238

Book Review: Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens is subtitled A Brief History of Humankind and that brevity is accomplished by limiting the scope of the book to the coverage of tectonic events in human history. Historians have developed a facility wherein the history of mankind is partitioned into four discrete, time-based categories -- Cognitive Revolution, Agricultural Revolution, Scientific Revolution, and Industrial Revolution. Yuval has incorporated those characterizations and, within each, identified developments which, in retrospect, have proven to be inflection points in human history. This book is the reader's tour, with Yuval as guide, through that history.

Organisms are first noted on earth 3.8 billion years ago and that, according to Yuval, signals the beginning of biology. These single-celled organisms evolved into more complex and diverse structures, eventually giving rise to the flora and fauna that have occupied the world since. Humans, one of those complex organisms, had its most recent branching on the family tree when it split from a common ancestor with Chimpanzees approximately 6 million years ago.

The genus Homo evolved in Africa and spread to Eurasia 2 million years ago, resulting in the evolution of different Homo species. Homo sapiens evolved in East Africa approximately 200,000 years ago and lived there until a breakout 70,000 years ago.

And that is where the "march of the Sapiens" begins. In the chart below I have provided a timeline, based on the book, of the path that mankind has trod between the start of the Cognitive Revolution and today. In the chart immediately following, I have presented some more details on each of the revolutionary periods.

Prior to the Cognitive Revolution, biological systems determined mankind's destiny. That is, changes to practices and methods only came about as a result of genetic mutations. The Cognitive Revolution resulted in a wave of innovations and new ways of thinking about the world. Other human species could not compete, with Homo Floresiensis finally succumbing 13,000 years ago.

Yuval's position on the Agricultural Revolution is quite unique in the scholarly realm. He sees it as a fraud of epic proportions perpetrated on the neolithic forager. Agriculture promised him stable food supplies but instead delivered: more time spent working; harder work, with a body that is unsuited to that type of labor; less time to spend around the campfire telling tales of the hunt; exposure to diseases that result from living in close proximity to animals and large numbers of other humans; and exposure to the travails of the "luxury trap." He raises a valid question as to whether humans domesticated wheat or wheat domesticated humans. Wheat he said, went from a nondescript, wild, no-prospects member of the neolithic flora to a pampered elite in the plant kingdom who was cared for by humans, protected from birds and animals who may want to do it harm, and most importantly, was able to spread its progeny to the ends of the (at that time) known world. 

The fundamental event of the Scientific Revolution was, according to Yuval, the discovery of America. And it was not obvious that Europe would be the region to make this leap as that era was a "golden age" for the Ottoman (Mediterranean), Safarid (Persia), Mughal (India), and Qing (China) Empires. In 1735 Asia accounted for 80% of the world economy and the combined economies of India and China represented 2/3 of global production. "Europe was an economic dwarf."

At this time the Americas were not known to the world. But soon they were. And they had been discovered by the Europeans, who brought them into the European Empires, delivered large swaths of their inhabitants to the Catholic Church, and extracted enormous wealth from the territories over an extended period of time.

The global center of power shifted to Europe between 1750 and 1850 when they used the wealth from the Americas to conquer large parts of Asia. "By 1900, Europeans firmly controlled the world's economy and most of its territory" and "Today all humans are, to a much greater extent than they want to admit, European in dress, thought, and taste."

There are three key threads running through the book: cooperation as a key building block for human success; "reduction"; and human impact on any environment into which we are introduced.

As relates to the first of these threads, the author describes the use of myths as a means of establishing cooperative networks. Research has shown that, among humans, groups larger than 150 people lose the ability to cooperate based on knowing each other. Getting larger groups to cooperate requires the building of a sense of shared identity. According to Yuval, "The ability to speak about fictions is the most unique feature of Sapiens language. Fiction has enabled us not merely to imagine things, but to do so collectively. We can weave common myths ... such myths give Sapiens the unprecedented ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers."

The author cites our acceptance of the concept of corporations, the concept of money, the building of the pyramids, etc., all as examples of myth-making and shared beliefs in these myths have been key to Sapiens success.

As it relates to the reduction thread, on the eve of the Agricultural Revolution there were between five and eight million foragers living in Eurasia in thousands of separate tribes, speaking thousands of different languages, and nurturing thousands of different cultures. The Agricultural Revolution itself served as the leading edge of this unifying pressure as it forced a more sedentary lifestyle and the need for interaction to trade surpluses for the things you could not make or the meat you no longer had the time to hunt. 

By 5000 years ago, we had the first Kingdoms, we had seen the introduction of money, and the introduction of polytheistic religions. And these are the three key unification factors. We have gone from Kingdoms to Empires, with incorporated peoples eventually losing their former identities and identifying with the empire. The author uses as an example the fact that at the fall of Rome, all of the peoples that Rome had subjugated did not crawl out from under rocks and seek to reclaim their past heritage. Rather, by this time, their descendants considered themselves Romans.

Humans have moved from polytheistic religions to four religions (two of which are monotheistic) which are dominant in the world. And most of the world today operates under some form of a capitalist system.

The third thread has been Sapiens' impact on the world's flora and fauna. As I have pointed out in a prior post, Sapiens entry into Europe coincided with the demise of a number of other Homo species plus megafauna. The same situation occurred when humans first settled Australia. The megafauna in the Americas died out and so many of the region's inhabitants perished that it is posited that their demise contributed to the Little Ice Age in Europe.

That trend continues even today as many wild animal species are on shaky ground as a result of habitat encroachment, over-fishing, whale-boat collisions, and the potential use of under-water sonic booms in oil exploration.

In each of the areas identified as inflection points on the above timeline, the author identifies the driving factors associated with the issue, the solution set/response, and the impact. His treatment of fire (not on the timeline) illustrates this approach.

In cases where academic consensus on a specific topic has not been attained, Yuval provides the reader with the range of proffered arguments and then identifies his choice and uses that as the jumping-off point for a thread that he wants to pursue.

In a twist to the typical history book, the author uses our current conditions as a launching pad for a discussion as to the potential questions facing us. And while the trip so far has been unmanaged, the risks of continuing along that path are exponential. As we stand on the divide between natural selection and intelligent design, can we allow a Chinese scientist working in a lab in an industrial park to be making genetic changes to humans on his own? As we look to space to create new opportunities, can we allow a world leader to blow up a satellite in space, creating a bunch of potentially dangerous space junk, just to help him in an election?

I would have liked to see more consequential tables and charts than the ones included in the book as they mostly repeat material that is already provided in the text. There are a lot of numbers spread about in the text that would lend themselves to being captured in a table or two. It also would have been interesting to see meaningful comparisons between the Revolutions.

This is not an effort aimed at the halls of academia. It is well researched, and is fully footnoted and bibliographed, but has too much of the authors personal feelings and advocacy positions included to meet the rigid standards of the typical "just-the-facts-ma'am" academic historian. 

This is an engaging and approachable book which undertakes the complex task of delivering a multi-disciplinary history of the world and does so with panache and aplomb. 

@EverythingElse238

Children's Book Review: Little Frida by Anthony Browne

I am currently taking a class on Frida Kahlo so I could not resist when I saw this book.

Frida Kahlo has been "a thing" in the art and marketing environments for a number of years now and it seems as though the powers that be have determined that our kids should be included in this phenomenon. Mattel has offered a Frida Kahlo Barbie Doll to market and now Walker Books is introducing a Children's Picture Book titled Little Frida which was authored and illustrated by Anthony Browne.

Anthony Browne is a British writer and illustrator of children's books with fifty books to his credit. He won the biennial international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2000 for his lasting contribution as a children's illustrator and two Kate Greenaway Medals from the Library Association recognizing the year's best children's book illustrator.

Anthony grounded this effort in  Frida's lived experience as a child. According to the book's inside back cover:

Around the time she had polio, when she was about 6 years old, Frida invented an imaginary friend who could dance without limping. In her diary, she described her first meeting with this companion, from flying through a door she drew on her window, and descending into the earth under the dairy, to sharing secrets with a friend who danced and laughed without making a sound.

The book opens with a poignant first page which describes Frida contracting polio, the physical pain in the aftermath, and the emotional pain from the other kids calling her "peg leg." She was the other. The associated illustration is very Frida with animated cacti dancing with up-thrust arms on an earth whose surface is rent with deep gashes. And there is Frida in her Mexican outfit, flowers in her hair, and one leg markedly different from the other. The sun is low in the sky and casts a long shadow. The houses of the village are in the background.

The illustrations in this book are magnificent, either hewing to a Frida painting or looking like something that Frida would have done. One of his illustrations is of Frida dreaming of piloting a plane: her fuselage is a pear; the nose cone is one-third of an orange; the wings are the bottom halves of two bananas with each end pointing in opposite directions; the front landing gear is represented by two cherries while the rear is represented by a single grape; strawberries and a water melon make up the tail assembly. A parrot is the co-pilot. This is not surreal; it is sur-fruity.

Another two-page illustration shows the gashed earth with mountains in the background. The sun (early Diego) is bright orange on the right page with a shimmering silver moon on the left. Way in the distance, as Frida runs across the rent earth, is a dairy. Frida crawls through a door into the dairy and falls down a pink tunnel which has either two red ribbons, or two blood tracks, along the side; again, evocative of the adult Frida.

And then she meets this girl -- the imaginary friend -- who is wearing clothing that tags the illustration as a precursor of the Frida Kahlo painting titled The Two Fridas. And then they sit and it is a "mini-me" version of The Two Fridas as they join one set of hands and, in the other, hold opposite ends of a string which is colored 1/2 red and 1/2 white.

Frida flies back home to a blue house whose courtyard is bedecked with flowers of all types and colors.

The final illustration has Frida drawing an eye on a notepad. The background is filled with all kind of trees and leaves upon which the Frida Kahlo menagerie roams.

This is a great book. It has a storyline that will appeal to the kids but also has a sophisticated Kahlo presentation which will appeal to the parent who will be reading the book to the child.

@EverythingElse238

The Buju Banton Long Walk to Freedom Concert, National Stadium, Kingston, Jamaica

Do not have a plan when you go to Jamaica. It will be shredded by the time the sun comes up. Our original plan was to head into Kingston from the North Coast around 11:00 am, hang around at Uncorked ( a downtown wine bar) for a while, head up to the stadium parking lot around 4:00 pm to do some tailgating, and then enter the stadium for the Buju Banton Long Walk to Freedom concert around 6:00 pm. By the time I began moving around in the house that morning, that plan had been discarded and replaced by breakfast in Ochi ... and a void.

Buju Banton singing at the Long Walk to
Freedom concert

We had breakfast at a hole-in-the-wall on the White River (the border between St Ann and St Mary Parrishes), just to the north of the A3 Highway bridge. We were joined there by our regular chauffeur (recently injured in a serious auto accident), his wife, and two Florida-resident friends. We ate a hearty local breakfast and downed a few Red Stripes to set the tone for the day.

Flora and Fauna of White River

Breakfast brews

We had had fun but we were now behind the eight ball. We scrambled back to the house to get our overnight bags -- we never got hotel rooms so we would be staying over in Kingston with a friend (Dave).

We headed out to Kingston (remember that for a Kingstonian, every other part of Jamaica is "country" -- rural, that is) and the party continued at Uncorked. I love the wine offerings there and the flatbread that I ate was to die for. We were joined there by a number of friends.

By this time the talk of the town was about the news swirling around Buju. There had been some kind of altercation between him and one of his sons and that son had come out with some harsh, negative statements on social media. Radio programs were discussing the issue and the rumor mill was operating overtime but no one really knew the genesis of the event or what actually occurred therein (The son has since come out and apologized to his father via social media but has exhorted his father to be a better parent for the benefit of the younger kids.).

My daughter (Karen) was in town for the event and began texting me at this time as regards the traffic situation and the fact that they had to park at a second location and be bussed in to the concert venue. Once at the stadium she was disappointed at the lack of awareness of the officials tasked with order and crowd control. The official program began at 8:00 pm but DJs and dancers performed on stage all afternoon long to keep these early arrivers entertained.

Selina and Karen

Up to this point Paul and I had no specific plan as to how we would get to the stadium. David, one of Paul's friends, queried us as to how we were getting there. We shrugged. He said, "Come along with me." So we all went to his house where Rachel (his wife) began pouring us drinks. I was becoming worried . It was getting late and no one seemed in any hurry.

Eventually the bus showed up. We boarded but, after a short while, stopped at some condos. We were picking up David and Rachel's friends. These guys were obviously close friends who have shared a drink -- and a conversation -- or two and were in no hurry to go anywhere.

We finally got underway and when we got to the stadium, I saw the reason for their nonchalance. They affixed multiple stickers to the windshield and this allowed us to transit multiple perimeters and park directly within the stadium surrounds.

We entered the arena at 7:45 pm ... and what a sight. People as far as the eye could see.

Someone on the loudspeaker was assuring the crowd that the event would begin at 8:00 sharp and I am thinking that he is pulling our legs. I have been to many of these events and (i) they never start on time, (ii) they never proceed according to schedule, and (iii) they end whenever.

We found a space that was large enough for our group and then set about looking for lubricants. We started off with two bottles of Appleton and two bottles of Grey Goose.

And damn it if the show did not begin at 8:00 pm sharp as they had promised. The MC welcomed the crowd and introduced the first performer on the night's card, Wayne Marshall. And the show was on. For the next three hours we were treated to virtuoso performances by the likes of Jahazeil, Delly Ranks, Ghost, LUST, Coco T, Etana, Christopher Martin, Romain Virgo, Agent Sasco, and Chronix. This was a lineup befitting a music festival; definitely not a run-of-the-mill opening act.

Each of these artists were stars in their own right. Coco T had been scheduled to go on tour but held back so that he could perform at his good friend's "welcome home" party. During his set he had Koffee, one of the hottest new Reggae acts around, do a brief stint. It was electric.

I have loved Etana and her songs from the time I first heard her on the radio but have never had the opportunity to see her live. She sang beautifully and, in so doing, reassured me that my fandom was not misplaced. Chris Martin seemed somewhat diminished and restrained by the setting (or it could have been early-onset Appleton syndrome on my part).

Etana

I have previously heard a lot of the songs Ghost sang but was unsure as to the artist; it was nice to put a face -- battered though it was -- to the songs. He did a great job. Chronix had the longest set of these acts with 20 minutes allocated for his performance.

Our crew

Paul resting, David drinking, Rachel smiling

There was a 20-minute intermission and then the moment we were all waiting for. Buju strode slowly on to the stage dressed in white. The crowd exploded.

He began with Not an Easy Road and then did about four songs that lowered my enthusiasm. Then he turned to standards such as Hills and Valleys and Destiny and Dancehall favorites like Champion and Too Bad. Now we were cooking with gas.

The sound went off twice during the course of his performance -- the only blemish on an otherwise stellar night. You knew that the crowd was non-local in that they waited patiently for the sound to be restored rather than heaving a few bottles onto the stage.

The second half of his performance was focused on bringing close friends on to the stage to sing with him: Stefflondon, Marcia Griffits, Beres Hammond, Wayne Wonder, and Gramps Morgan. The set with Beres reprised some of their past collaborations and was at once playful and inspirational. I felt as though, in that set, Beres stamped his passport for re-entry into the fold of Reggae legends.

He closed with Gramps Morgan and Psalms 23. And then the fireworks began and the show was over. The highest quality, timeliest, most orderly Reggae concert that I have ever attended in Jamaica. The Long Walk to Freedom has ended. Buju you are now free to to do as you wish. You have earned it; in more ways than one.

Officials estimate that 30,000 people attended the concert but I have also seen estimates that go as high as 40,000. Music insider Copeland Forbes, in an interview with Loop News, stated that the Buju concert carried the largest audience ever at the National Stadium. "... it was bigger than Nelson Mandella's visit and ... Bob Marley's One Love Peace Concert in 1978."

Airport authorities saw a 143% increase in Kingston Airport traffic on the Friday before the concert over the traffic on the same day one year ago. Montego Bay Airport experienced a 58% traffic increase over the same period. Buju is magnetic.

©EverythingElse238

Buju Banton's Long Walk to Freedom concert: Anticipation

Members of the Jamaican diaspora, and Reggae fans from around the world, poured into Kingston, Jamaica for the first concert of the Buju Banton Long Walk to Freedom Tour. This one-time event brought thousands of fans from around the world to Jamaica to venerate and lift up this fallen warrior who once stood astride the Reggae throne but was unceremoniously hauled into the shadows when he ran afoul of the law. Paul and I made that journey with fellow fans; a journey I will recount in this post. But first, context.

Buju Banton -- born Mark Anthony Myrie -- rode a career, beginning in 1987, to the top of the Dancehall and Reggae charts and, ultimately, a Best Reggae Album award at the 2011 Grammy Awards for his 2010 album Before the Dawn. Focused, as they were, on his music, it came as a shock to his fans when it was announced that he had been arrested in 2009 by US authorities on drug-related charges.

After a couple of trials he was found guilty of drug trafficking and sentenced to 10 years and 1 month in prison. He was released in December 2018, after serving approximately 7 years and 7 months behind bars, and immediately returned to Jamaica.

Prior to his release, word had begun to circulate that he would hold a number of concerts in the Caribbean once able to do so. Speculation was rife as to where the initial concert would be held with the front runners seeming to be Jamaica and Trinidad. There was a strong feeling that, regardless of where that initial concert was held, fans would turn out in full force to welcome him back after the long absence. He had apparently done the crime and had most definitely done the time. We wanted to say welcome back. We missed your music, we missed you, and we want to be there in person to let you know that.

When the Buju team finally announced, we learned that the tour would be called Long Walk to Freedom and that the initial concert would be in mid-March at the National Auditorium in Kingston, Jamaica. Tickets would be sold on the Buju website only, beginning on a soon-to-be-announced date. Paul and I checked around our close-in circle to see who wanted to go. No takers. Fine by us. We were going.

We got our first indication that this would be a giant event when the ticket site crashed early on the first day of sale due to the demand. It did not fully recover until the following day. In addition to the server issue, other "ominous" indications were: (i) our inability to get a direct flight from Orlando to Montego Bay and (ii) no availability of hotel rooms in Kingston for the day of the event (Both of these searches were initiated within a week of the announcement of the concert date.). We eventually found a connecting flight through Fort Lauderdale and left the room open to a later solution.

We had a 6:00 am flight on the Friday of the concert weekend and compounded the short night by getting to the airport in enough time to have a sit-down breakfast at Cask and Larder. We went to the gate after breakfast and there began to see the stirrings of the exodus. Paul ran into a number of friends and, yes, they were heading to the concert.

When we disembarked in Fort Lauderdale it seemed as though the entire plane walked over to the terminal and gate from which the Montego-Bay-bound flight would launch.

We had spent a lot of time laughing and talking and our throats were becoming parched. We consulted about the propriety of alcohol at 8:30 am and decided that we were not hurting anyone. So we went for it.

We landed safely in Montego Bay and spent the remainder of the day fortifying ourselves for what we knew would be a hard concert day on the morrow. I will cover the concert (and the day of) in my next post.

©EverythingElse238

A tour of Gracie Mansion (Official home of the Mayor of New York City) and its current art installation titled She Persists: A Century of Women Artists in New York

I was scheduled to travel to New York City on March 4th to do a tour of Gracie Mansion in the morning and the Frida Kahlo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in the afternoon but Mother Nature was not being cooperative. New York City was projected to receive between 4 and 8 inches of snow and, as a result, Mayor de Blasio had ordered all NYC schools closed on Monday.

I checked with my airline before going to bed, and again when I woke up. There were no delay or cancellation notices. I had received an email from Brooklyn Museum indicating that their show was going on but the Gracie Mansion Conservancy had not provided any guidance. After noting that the City had received 3.5, rather than the expected 8 inches, I headed out to the airport hoping for the best.

The plane took off and landed on time. That was promising. I took a taxi over to Gracie Mansion (97 East End Avenue, NYC) and hung around outside waiting for the appointed time (They would not allow me inside earlier.).

I was frozen stiff by the time a woman came and checked my name off on a clipboard. After that initial check-in, we were shepherded through a physical security screening process after which we were allowed to enter the building.

As we were escorted inside (due to weather conditions, only five of us showed up), Paul Gunther, the Executive Director of the Conservancy, was coming up a set of stairs from the basement offices. He was leading the tour and was visibly disappointed by the low attendance. He launched into his discourse without pause, though, and welcomed us to the Mansion and the installation.

The history of Gracie Mansion is summarized in the timeline below.

The art installation, titled She Persists: A Century of Women Artists in New York,

… brings together women and women-identified artists and the artworks they have created to spark a desire to see the world more deeply and perhaps even empathetically. The 60 artworks, objects, and archival ephemera on view, ranging from the earliest years of the 20th century to the present … tell the story of tenacious endurance across modern history, even in the face of great adversity.

Paul had been addressing us in the entrance foyer which itself is home to the initial works in the installation -- The Cathedrals by Florine Stettheimer, and American-born, German-influenced painter, poet, and designer whose modern style "defies categorization."



Florine Stettheimer
The Cathedrals of  Art
1942

Florine Stettheimer
The Cathedrals of Fifth Avenue, 1931
The Cathedrals of Broadway, 1929

Florine Stettheimer
The Cathedrals of Wall Street
1939

From the Foyer we ascended a short stairway into a ceremonial hall and off, that entered the Peach Room (Rooms in the Mansion are designated by their color.), a small sitting room wherein a number of artworks reposed. Two noteworthy pieces were Haven, a fictional painting of a couple overlooking the Brooklyn-based neighborhood of Weeksville, and a Penelope Jacobs sculpture of Eleanor Roosevelt.

The Peach Room with Betty Blayton-Taylor's Ancestors
Bearing Light (2007) to the left and her Sound Intruding
(1980) to the right

Paul Gunther, Executive Director,
Gracie Mansion Conservancy

Elizabeth Colomba
Haven
2015

Penelope Jencks
Eleanor Roosevelt
2003

The Blue Room was initially renovated in 1981 and was further renovated at the behest of Michael Bloomberg during his three-term stint as Mayor of New York City. The standout effort in this room was an Alice Neel portrait of her son Hartley's wife with their first daughter.

While portraying motherhood, Ginny is not depicted as a serene Madonna. She appears tired and overwhelmed by her new role as she tries to keep her baby from moving. Wide-eyed Elizabeth seems fascinated by her grandmother, who made little noises to get her attention as she watched Neel paint.

Alice Neel
Ginny and Elizabeth
1975

Simone Leigh
The Village Seires #7
2019

Betty Parsons
Brick in the Sky
1968

Ruth Orkin
Mother and Daughter at Penn Station
1948

The Grace Room was the exception to the rule of color nomenclature. This room was notable for the presence of a chandelier that dated back to the time of the original owners as well as memorabilia from the Presidential campaign of Shirley Chisolm who was initially a member of Congress from the New York City area. This was especially poignant as Kamala Harris had just recently launched her campaign for President on the anniversary of the day that Shirley Chisolm had launched hers.

The Grace Room

The Grace Chandelier

Theresa Bernstein
Flower Piece
ca. 1943

Jennifer Packer
Say Her Name
2017

Exhibit of Shirley Chisolm Presidential Campaign memorabilia

The rooms that have been described to this time, are in the public-facing portions of the mansion. Official ceremonies and meetings are held in those spaces. This public area is connected to the living quarters by a passageway called the Hyphen.

On the other side of the Hyphen we enter the Dining Room, the walls of which are bedecked with wallpaper that would be an horticulturists dream. According to Paul, this wallpaper was introduced in 1981.

The Library is the closest of the rooms to the way things looked back in 1799 with the exception of the mantel which was replaced by Robert Moses. Robert Moses features again in this room  as Dorothy Eisner, in her painting Washington Square Park, captures the neighborhood spirit that drove the defeat -- after a seven-year battle -- of Moses' proposal to cut a road through the Square's green space.

Lauren Kelley
Lindy Lane
2010

Dorothy Eisner
Washington Square Park
1938

Cecily Brown
The Bay of Opal
2018

Betty Woodman
Grey Stripe Diptych
2016

The color in the Yellow Room was initially brought from France by Thomas Jefferson. Mayor Bloomberg wrote a check for the changes that he instituted in this room. We also run into another one of Faith Ringgold's quilts here (I discussed two of her quilts in my post on the Deland museum exhibition of African-American Artists.).

Beverly Buchanan
Yellow Yard
2003

Faith Ringgold
Tar Beach II
1990 ED 1

Grace Hartigan
Coffee Pot and Gladiolas
1954

Kaveri Raina
Vortex to Hover
2018

I had lived in New York for almost 20 years and had never visited Gracie Mansion. As a matter of fact, I did not even know where it was located. So it was a great to combine an art and historic home tour in one. I enjoyed this thoroughly, especially given the depth of knowledge and enthusiasm of Kurt. The art installation posited to be focused along four broad themes but those themes were not evident, even with the benefit of time. But that takes nothing away from the effort.

The tours are open to the public at three separate times on Mondays. Pre-registration on the Gracie Mansion website is required.