Kellie Jones, Art History and Archaeology, and Farah Jasmine Griffin, English and Comparative Literature
Introduction by Deborah Cullen, Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery
In South of Pico, Kellie Jones explors how the artists in Los Angeles's black communities during the 1960s and 1970s created a vibrant, productive, and engaged activist arts scene in the face of structural racism. Emphasizing the importance of African American migration, as well as L.A.'s housing and employment politics, Jones shows how the work of black Angeleno artists such as Betye Saar, Charles White, Noah Purifoy, and Senga Nengudi spoke to the dislocation of migration, L.A.'s urban renewal, and restrictions on black mobility. Jones characterizes their works as modern migration narratives that look to the past to consider real and imagined futures. She also attends to these artists' relationships with gallery and museum culture and the establishment of black-owned arts spaces. With South of Pico, Jones expands the understanding of the histories of black arts and creativity in Los Angeles and beyond.
Complex Issues explores difference, visibility, and representation through recent work by faculty of Columbia University and Columbia University School of the Arts in particular. Conversations invite challenging questions of racial, ethnic, gender, economic, sexual, religious, and cultural complexity, and how they are articulated across discipline and genre today.
This event was preceded by a special opportunity to view Living in America: Frank Lloyd Wright, Harlem & Modern Housing, Wallach Art Gallery, 5:30-6:30pm.
Co-presented by the Department of Art History and Archaeology; the Center for Jazz Studies; Columbia University School of the Arts; the Institute for Research in African-American Studies; and The Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery. Books available for purchase by Book Culture.
