Field Notes:
On Justice & Practice
Date: 10th May, 2018
Location: The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York
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Framing the Work: Philanthropic Partnerships
Featuring:
Dana Zucker / Exec Director Gray Foundation
https://www.grayfoundation.org
Dorian Brown / Assistant Exec Director The William R. Kenan, Jr Charitable Foundation
http://www.kenancharitabletrust.org
Chair: Sandra Jackson-Dumont Frederick P. and Sandra P. Rose Chairman of Education
https://www.metmuseum.org/press/news/2014/sandra-jackson-dumont
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Sandra:
- This is a time to be appropriately agitated. We are developing a community of thinkers to critically engage with their lives.
- To those who much is given much is expected
- BE ACCOUNTABLE AND RECIPROCAL
- The Met talks of an ‘Ecosystem Practice’
- ECOLOGY > ECOSYSTEM > CONSTELLATION
- Q: How should we ‘show-up-and-care’ for the people we work with?
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Dorian:
- Art is the way in which we speak to one another …it’s not an add-on. It is core to the culture of who we are.
- We have to re-position where philanthropic institutions are situated by shifting from thinking about broken individuals to working on the broken systems that serve those individuals.
- This is not about creating new structures to impose upon a community. It is about find the community tables that already exist.
- From an infrastructure perspective: It’s about bringing a good programme into a good policy so that you can scale-it-up.
- It’s about OWNERSHIP > EQUALISING THE PLAYING FIELD (racially / socio-economically) > RIGHTING HISTORICAL WRONGS
- Empathy is required for JUSTICE TO FLOURISH.
- First Responders are Artists
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Dana
- We weren’t interested in creating a bureaucracy or another set of rules …we were interested in making changes to the communities we serve.
- It’s really difficult to dis-aggregate the arts from anything we do.
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The Artists Voice
Three socially engaged artists discuss their varying practices, the role of the public in their work, and their relationship with institutions and communities
Moderated by Maricelle Robles
Educator in Charge, Public Programmes and Engagement, The Met
Artists:
Chloe Bass:
- Everyday quotidian dynamics
- CITY def: ‘More people living better together’
- Sustaining relationships > scales of intimacy > WAR is very intimate
Rashida Bumbray:
- Call and Response work
- The Art worlds systems and philanthropy do not support sustainability.
Miguel Luciano:
https://www.miguelluciano.com/bio
- Representation and Absence
- Challenging military borders by flying kites over boundaries
- Projects as ‘exercises for deeper connections’
- Cultural Pride as an Expression of Resistance
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Hank Willis-Thomas / Keynote
https://www.hankwillisthomas.com
- Employing imagination as a tool
- Ambiguity is what makes art legible and eternal
- There is a network but most of our network doesn’t seem to know each other.
- Thinking as artists as Civic Leaders
- ‘Moving’ the world through COURAGE and SENSITIVITY
- **** IN EACH OF OUR LIVES WE HAVE A DAY WHEN WE HAVE BEEN ‘OTHERED’ ****
- Integrity is always in balance when we make work and when we work with other people
- As if the air and water care about the borders people have been crossing for millennia
- ‘LIVE IN TOMORROW BEFORE YOU GET THERE, BECAUSE THAT WAY YOU WON’T BE SURPRISED WHEN YOU GET THERE’ Nicholas Hlobo
