Art/History

Whew! A busy week. Good thing MAD will be out of the District long enough to catch her breath.

Which is a good thing since my breath caught in my throat looking at the Road to Freedom exhibit presented by the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the International Gallery in the S. Dillon Ripley Center of the Smithsonian. A mouthful, eh? And a lotta links.

I got to see these Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1968, with just one or two
people around me. Frequently at an exhibit you need to see the labels to know who and what are in pix; these resonate with my memories of the times and my gratitude for what the people in them did to help create the country I hope we are becoming. Among them are Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Floyd McKissick and Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman. From the burning of a Greyhound bus in Anniston, Alabama to the culmination of the Selma-Montgomery March as well as the March on Washington and the Poor People's Campaign, they are indelibly imprinted in our history. The images are iconic and arrestingly (npi) lovely.


After 1968 - Contemporary Artists and the Civil Rights Legacy is a smaller exhibit of photographs, digital video, prints and site-specific installations in the next gallery. Interesting to see these works by artists whose sensibilities were engendered by the work done by the people who led us on the Road to Freedom - in some cases years before the younger artists were even born. Nadine Robinson's sound sculpture Coronation Theme: Organon is composed of audio speakers arranged (in what appeared to me) in the form of an altar playing many kinds of sounds: choral, organ, shouting, water - you could hear it throughout the exhibit of photographs, adding a totally appropriate dimension that intensified the experience of both exhibits.

And so did a totally unanticipated interaction on the way out of the little gazebo-like ground level entrance to the Ripley Center. Well, maybe not so unanticipated; you know - MAD loves to talk to everyone. Saying good-bye to the security guard, I asked if she had seen the photos. Nodding yes she said, "And I lived them." A middle-schooler in Meridian, Mississippi during the Freedom Rider years she remembers the fear and the burning of the buses in the early 60s."What does it feel like to see those pictures now?" "Well", she said, "It's sad, but it doesn't do any good to look back - we just need to look ahead and do the best we can for each other. God loves me and if God can love the people who do evil in this world, I can love them too."

Thank you, Sarah Ashely. Thank you, everone who walked the Road to Freedom.

Elementary, dear Scurlock

Remind me not to go to anything on the Mall on a weekend. I guess I've been pretty spoiled by the smaller museums I've visited and also by the low volume of weekday visitors. Having taken a sick day yesterday, today MAD went to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Maybe not one of its busier days, but it was way too crowded for me.

Whatever. The exhibit I saw The Scurlock Studio and Black Washington - Picturing the Promise - was just terrific. The Scurlocks were THE photographers of black Washington DC from the time Addison set up his studio in 1911 until the last son in the business closed it down in 1994. This exhibit is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Museum of American History and the National African-American Museum of History and Culture - which will open its own building on the Mall in 2015. You can be sure that MAD will visit there.

Scurlock was known for portraits of middle- and upper middle-class families as well as luminaries. Also the official photographer of Howard University for many years. And son Robert was also a photojournalist, shooting with a camera from his studio at U and 9th during the riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., when much of the shooting was being done with guns.

My DC home is very near the corner of New Hampshire and U; many of the street photographs were taken quite nearby and seeing them reminded me of the not very long-ago history of the neighborhood. Who was living in my house during those years?

The husband of MAD joined me today and after the Smithsonian we went to Politics and Prose to hear Lonnie Bunch - director of the NMAAHC, Michelle Delaney, Paul Gardullo and Jacquelyn D. Serwer talk about the meaning of Preserving the Promise and sign copies of the book. Gardullo told the story of meeting Dorothy Height and her recollections of the events shown in a particular picture. Serwer spoke of a day she spent in Highland Beach (instead of in school) when visiting her cousins - a memory evoked by the photograph of a group of young girls at the Beach. The are hoping to be able to identify many of the anonymous subjects of the photographs and to hear their stories as well. Fortunately for us and the community, the Scarlock collection was acquired in 1997 by the Archives Center in the American History Museum. So take a look at some of these 4000 photos that can be viewed online. Maybe you'll see some one you know.