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.

Truth to Power

Imagine that you get to see the manuscript of Abraham Lincoln's 1864 Victory Speech which just happens to be on display at the Corcoran Gallery of Art for one day. The words that Lincoln wrote with his own hands echo (or maybe pre-echo - is this a word?) the words that our new President spoke a few days earlier when he took his oath of office and hopefully ushered in a new era of US government for ALL of us.

Then - imagine that you visit Richard Avedon's Portraits of Power, a compilation of his stunning photos of the famous and the unknown which ends with a close up of none other than Barack Obama, Illinois State senator and keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic Convention, taken in 2004.

Just imagine the connection between life and art that settles in your heart!

Other than the fact of the Avedon exhibit, and that I needed to get to it quickly since it was closing on Sunday January 25, all of this was unexpected.

I've been at my DC house since last Friday, having arrived in time to experience Inauguration Weekend, MLK day and the Inauguration itself. But until yesterday, no Internet had arrived. That lack was my excuse to delay the start of MAD. The cable guys showed up yesterday morning and I was on my way after lunch.

The exhibit displayed Avedon's straightforward portraits of political activists, politicians, government officials, and labor leaders, artists, using their selection and juxtaposition to explore their relationships and influence with the community.

Particularly affecting to me was the group portrait of the Chicago 7 and especially of the Civil Rights workers (shown above), which triggered memories of the active hopefulness of those times and our wearing down by the most recent 8 years. And looking at the faces of power from especially the earlier decades during which Avedon worked made me realize how male, white and middle-aged those faces were.

What an appropriate way to start museum going in DC in 2009!