 I know folks are trickling in here. Good afternoon. Welcome to our final half of our symposium and this panel discussion is going to consist of arts administrators in the field and we're going to hear from them their thoughts and the work that they do on art criticism curating both public and private spaces. So our first presenter is Rujeko Hockley and I'll let her share more about her work with you all. Thank you guys for coming and for coming back if you were here in the morning and thank you Kalolo for inviting us and for organizing this. So I'm just going to jump right into it. I'm the assistant creator of contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum in New York and I've been there for about three years and I'm starting with this image. This is the cover of a catalog for an exhibition called Frequency which was at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2005 and this is the first exhibition that I ever worked on in my life. And I'm starting there because I think as I move forward I realize more and more how critical of a moment that was in my life both being at the Studio Museum because of the place that it is, because of the work I got to do, because of the artists I got to meet, but also because of the mentors that I had, the people I was surrounded by. And I think this question of blackness in the arts in the art world, whatever art worlds, whatever that is, so much of it comes down to I think mentorship and so much comes down to the people that are in positions of power and what they do for the people that are coming up behind them. And so that's something that I learned and continue to learn and try to practice in my own life from people like Thelma Golden, from Christine Kim, from Rashida Bumbray, and the list really goes on. And so that is just something I really wanted to say very explicitly as far as kind of an ethos for myself around creative work, around curatorial work, around institutional work, all of the above. So I've been at the Brooklyn Museum for three years, as I said, and the first exhibition I ever worked on was a hometown girl for you guys, Latoya Ruby Frazier, a haunted capital. And this is a project she did. I'm going to go very quickly. I have a lot of slides, but I just wanted to show it here in this space where she's from because the Carnegie is so much a part of the work that she does. This wallpaper actually is from archives, photographic archives in the Carnegie's collection of workers in the Pittsburgh region in the 19th and 20th century. So she made this wallpaper, that's her objects on top of it. These are her photographs of her family who live in Braddock. And so I really wanted to show those here and talk about this idea of how a community, a person can be connected to a community and how we can show that in a totally different place. So Brooklyn is not Braddock, Brooklyn is not Pittsburgh. We don't necessarily know these people, but we know these stories. And that was something that was incredibly important to Latoya, which makes it important to me as a curator, but also as myself with my own politics and my own beliefs. And it translated to our audiences. So that kind of chain from her to me, to the institution, to the public and how we kind of complete that circle is also very much at the center, always kind of no matter what exhibition you're working on. Another exhibition, also a single artist, which was earlier, oh no, it was a year ago now, we're into 2016, was Kehinde Wiley in New Republic. So Latoya at that time was kind of a younger artist. She's since obviously won the Guggenheim, won a MacArthur, Ted Fellow. He's blowing up very much deservedly. Kehinde, this was kind of a retrospective. Latoya, that was one body of work, an ocean of family over, completed over the course of 10 years. Kehinde, this was many, many bodies of work completed over the course of actually maybe not that much more time, perhaps maybe 15 years. But it was a very different kind of experience as a curator. This is a show that traveled, it's currently at the Seattle Art Museum. Prior to that it was at the Fort Worth Museum. From Seattle it's going to go to Richmond, to Oklahoma City, to Phoenix, to, I want to say Columbus. So it's a very different sort of experience working on an exhibition like that. He has three galleries all over the world. He has collectors. You know, it's a very, very different experience. And so the single artists show the monographic, if you will, very much a kind of, I don't want to say the bread and butter, but as a curator at an institution you do a lot of shows like that, but they can be incredibly different, as you can obviously imagine. So we can talk more if you have questions about specifics, but I have a lot of slides as I say, so I'm going to keep going. The other two shows I'm going to talk about were both group exhibitions. So this was this before, right back to back before Kehinde actually, Crossing Brooklyn Art from Bushwick Beds Sign Beyond. So this is a group exhibition. Latoya and Kehinde obviously are, well, maybe not obviously, they are both African American. This is something the Brooklyn Museum very much is not a culturally specific institution akin to the studio museum, but it is an institution that is very attuned to questions of the culturally specific. In this case, it's a museum that's in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, which is a Caribbean neighborhood, but also a Jewish neighborhood, a gentrifying neighborhood in New York in 2016, so an international neighborhood. And so this show was really trying to think about some of the complexities of Brooklyn in this moment. Thinking through for this, I always put this slide in because a huge amount of the work as a curator that went into this exhibition was the programming, which meant I worked very closely with my colleagues in education. This is something that if anybody works at a museum in education or in curatorial, like never the twain shall meet, which is ridiculous. And so I always, this exhibition would not have happened in its fullest realization because the artists, the kind of way that we picked them, the way that we thought through the concept of the exhibition was artists whose work exceeded the studio, artists who worked in the world, artists who were thinking beyond the kind of, this is not a value judgment, but thinking beyond kind of what's right in front of my eyes in terms of the studio wall, in terms of what I really want to do. And so whether that is people who are working in social practice, somewhat akin like this person, Paula Ramirez Jonas the horse, this was kind of an interactive piece with the public where people could add to it. And as you can see, people added really awesome things like their sonograms. And it kind of became a collection over the course of the exhibition of our visitors. And so this is another way of thinking about moving beyond the studio, interacting with the public, inviting the public to kind of complete the work of art in this case. Dina Lawson, a photographer, she, working in a very different way with the public, but thinking about staged photography, but also working in different African diaspora communities across the world actually at this point. Video installations, it was a multimedia exhibition and so that's kind of also why I'm going through this, people, being cute. Also artists who kind of delve literally into the built landscape, Marie Laurent, she has a boat, this is her. Her video installation documented her from three different vantage points, she travels around New York City's waterways. So also thinking about the built environment. One of the programs that we did open to the public was she kind of conceived of a boat tour with, in partnership with the North Brooklyn Boat Club, who are an amazing organization. And we went on boats on the East River under the Williamsburg Bridge, like one of the most profound experiences of my life actually, that is her. We came back in the dark, it was terrifying, but also again one of the most profound experiences of my life. And I think that thinking about what museums can do, what institutions can do, the ways in which curators can support artists, you know, I think that this is a non-traditional quote unquote art experience, one that many people then and still question whether it was an art experience. But I think that at the end of the day what I want to do as a curator and what I think many artists want to do is touch people and move people and cause people to think about things in different ways, encourage abstract thinking, encourage not, you have to think what I think, but encourage how do we exercise the ability to think more about things. And so just, she's amazing, look her up. Marie LaRonce, she has a show right now at Recess, which is a space in Lower Manhattan in New York. But this is also an exhibition, pieces that exist as a static object in the gallery but actually have a real life as something that is to be activated. So this is Miguel Luciano, that's the artist. This is his Piragua Cart that he makes, it's obviously very beautiful, kind of stemming off of kind of Puerto Rican bike culture, but it actually lives really as a mobile purveyor of piraguas, which are like snow cones. And so this was outside the Brooklyn Museum, that's my colleague, Alicia Boone, behind him who is our education maestro extraordinaire. I'm going to keep going. These are other pieces, Heather Hart piece that looked at bartering, exchange, kind of, they get people actually being able to pick things up and replace them in the gallery with something of equal or greater value. It was very complicated to facilitate. But an interesting exercise. This is a video that I'm not going to show you right now, sorry, you can talk about it later. An artist named Linda Good Bryant looking at kind of the intersection between community activism, community organizing, urban gardening. This is her space in East New York. She has a thing called Project Eats. This is what we did at the Brooklyn Museum. They created these gardens on the side. That is the museum, which are still there actually. And had a weekly farm stand of the work. And so again, this question of like what is art, what is an art experience? How do you kind of touch people? How do you reach people? I think it was very challenging for the institution and as a curator to kind of explain that in a way that made sense to people in a way that people could have ownership over. Because I think that is also the fundamental for people to have buy-in in your exhibitions for them to be successful. I have learned. Internally, as well as externally, but especially internally. Cynthia Danio, beautiful painting installation. And finally, this is a piece by Jeanine Antoni. And so this piece, I usually have the letter with me, but this is a letter that she wrote from the perspective of a work of art to an audience member. And so the way that this piece worked was that it was actually a note that we printed at the museum in our printing press on our real maps. This is what they look like. And were then placed into people's bags or coats at coat check. So you would see the exhibition, go home, maybe get on the train and then pull out this piece of paper, which, you know, I'll just read the beginning. I caught you staring at me from across the room, but you didn't come right over. Were you being coy while it worked? Maybe you felt the need to see the others knowing that I would seize your full attention. And so this idea, again, of like, how do art objects speak? How do artists speak to the public, to their public? How do audiences kind of parse what they saw, what they experienced when they get home? How do we kind of extend that point of contact, that point of community, that point of communion, frankly? This is probably one of my most favorite pieces I've ever worked on. And there was nothing in the gallery. I have thousands of these notes in my office. I tour thousands of these notes very artfully. She wanted them like that. Yeah, and it was, you know, in that case, we kind of, we, our collaborators on this piece were the security guards and the people in coat check. And I think when you work at an institution, when you are a curator, you are, you are empowered to think that you are more important than other people. And I don't know any other way to say that, except to say that. And it's obviously false. You know, it's an obviously deeply problematic kind of positioning. But it's also true. And so I think as a curator, I often think about how, how I cannot be that way. Because I don't want to be that way. I don't think it's appropriate to be that way. But this piece was really interesting because literally it was like, well, it doesn't really matter what, and I love the registrars. It's not about that. But like, this is a piece of paper that it lives and dies by whether this person in coat check trusts me, trusts the artist, to have it be okay that they're kind of infringing on somebody else's personal stuff. And they don't, there's no oversight. Like, I was, I can't be in there every day being like, well, how many did you put in someone's pocket today? So, some days I'm sure zero. And that's also okay. That's also part of the success of the piece. And so I always kind of go back to this and thinking about how I position myself. And we can't always be working with the most ephemeral, conceptual, like, poetic projects. But we can always position ourselves as people who are collaborative and work kind of horizontally to the best of our ability. And finally, I'm way over. I just want to talk very quickly. Now I'm working on an exhibition that's coming next year. This is what it is. And I'm just going to show you these slides because they're so amazing. But it's an exhibition looking at black women artists 1965 to 85 and a relationship to feminism or their non-relationship to feminism, particularly as constituted popularly by, at that time, primarily by white women. At the Brooklyn Museum, as you may be aware, we have the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art and the Judy Chicago's Dinner Party at the center of it. So this is a very particular kind of feminism. And we are really interested in complicating that time period and repositioning a lot of the artists whose names hopefully you've been seeing as I zip through this and how they might fit into those conversations from 1965 to 1985. And that is all. Great, thank you, Ru. Next up we have Taylor Aldridge. Taylor Renee Aldridge, excuse me. Yes. So I would first, I made this slide show before the passing of prints. I would have put like an audio in here and some photo and gifts of his performances. But I do want to take some time out to recognize Prince as the amazing person that he was and also acknowledge another passing that happened this week in Flint, Michigan by a woman by the name of Sasha Ivana Bell, who was one of the first people in Flint to sue the city for the environmental disparities happening around water in the city. She was found killed in her home this past week. And the causes are unknown. So I just would like to take a moment of silence to acknowledge her and then acknowledge Prince, if you don't mind. All right, so I'll just go ahead and jump right in. Hello again. My name is Taylor Renee Aldridge. I'm the co-founder and co-editor of Art Stop Black, which is the home for art criticism from black perspectives. My co-founder Jessica Lynn was in the moderated discussion before. I am currently based in my hometown of Detroit, Michigan, which is heavily influencing the work that I'm creating now. I work primarily as a writer, arts administrator, organizer, truth teller and void filler. I receive my master's in museum studies where my thesis focused on the underrepresentation of African American audiences within mainstream art institutions. I continue in this research focusing on all facets of the art industry. While we need to engage more people of color to visit museums, we also need to encourage and foster opportunities for them to work in other areas of the art industry as well. We need black admin, museum directors, gallerists, collectors and critics. And so what became a theme in most of my work, and it's still a theme in a lot of the work that I do, is this desire to shift the cultural norms within the industry. To make a space, to make spaces in the art industry where blackness and authentic narratives around blackness can exist. From this I realized that the use of content, access to content and the ownership of content is important in the representation of blackness within the industry. A quote by scholar and feminist Michelle Wallace reads, the biggest thing I learned about history or linear historical narrative at Yale was that it is always written by someone in particular and therefore never quite true in the factual sense. In order to be true in any sense that is usable to the present, history has to be dialogic. It has to find innovative strategies for taking into account contradictory voices and interpretations. My work to build an equitable history is now, the opportunity to build that equitable history is now. My work is concerned with how the present will live in the future. I'm interested in providing counter narratives for dialogical histories to manifest ultimately. So what does my counter narrative look like? An example of my writing particularly is where I exhaust some of the opportunities for me to provide a counter narrative within the canon of art history or the contemporary arts realm. An example, last year writer Carl Swanson wrote an article on Detroit for the publication Vulture which featured nine artists living in Detroit. In a city that is approximately 80% black, Carl could not find one artist of color apparently because every artist on this list was white, most of whom were not from Detroit. In response to the article, I wrote an essay on Detroit's recent developments. You see a screenshot here on Art Stop Black site which references one of my favorite movies, Mean Girls. You can't sit with us which is like an exclusionary statement. In my essay I provide nine artists of color who have made an insurmountable impact on the arts community within Detroit, most of whom are from the city. Counter narrative also looks like counter space. Since moving back to my hometown a couple years ago, I've been in several conversations around the need for safe space for black artists to meet up and engage in critical dialogue. While there is a lot of art being made in the city, there is a lacking infrastructure which is unable to support this. There is little to no resources for critical development for one's practice unless you have the fortune of participating in an expensive MFA program. On the other end I found myself in conversations with black artists who were in MFA programs like Cranbrook and CCS and finding critique sessions on their work counterproductive because they would have to provide pre-context on black cultural acumen, colloquialisms referenced in their work for their mostly white male counterparts and instructors to have foundational understanding of it. So me and two other artists working in Detroit, Ash Arter and Jover Lynn created the Black Artist Meetup, a safe space where black artists in Detroit can dialogue critically on their practice while decentering the white male gaze. The Black Artist Meetup consists of about 15 to 20 emerging and seasoned artists in Detroit. We meet monthly and hold critiques on works by two artists in each session. Through this we have been able to garner not only an opportunity for critical dialogue to happen between emerging and established black artists in the city, but we also have provided a safe space of fellowship and support for these artists. So these are just some photos of our meetups. And the last project I'm going to talk about that I'm working on is one that focuses on resourcing counter narratives within the city of Detroit. Allied media projects, a Detroit-based network of media makers, artists, educators, and technology workers working for social justice, which also produces the annual media conference, was engaged by the Ford Foundation's Just Films to provide microgrants to storytellers and media makers in the city of Detroit. Out of this, a group of Detroit creatives were engaged to lead a transparent grant-making process for the microgrants to be allocated. The project, the Detroit Narrative Agency, has been leading information sessions and having dialogues with various people in the city of Detroit to learn how we can first develop an equitable grant application process to help shift narrative within the city. Oftentimes, there are barriers in many grant application processes that make applying inaccessible and inequitable, such as dense language, the requirement of a computer, or access to a computer, internet access, et cetera. So for this microgrant initiative, we're including potential applicants in the development of the application. Ultimately, the Detroit Narrative Agency aims to change the stories that form the future of Detroit. We are looking to ultimately support moving image work that helps shift narratives about the city of Detroit, such as it's a blank slate, it needs to be saved. There are no people living there. Through this grant process, we will begin cultivating moving image projects, film, video installation, emerging media, forms, et cetera, in and of the city of Detroit. So here's just a photo of one of the workshops that we've done in engaging the community and doing outreach. We do this activity called Foursquare, where we first ask people to provide a counter narrative, or first identify a story that they're tired of hearing about Detroit, which is related to maybe crime, or sort of like this need for the white savior to come in and save things in the city of Detroit. And so then we have them provide a counter narrative. What are the positive narratives that we can begin to formulate and sort of manifest to counteract those narratives that are plaguing the city? And then we think of ways that we can actually turn this into a media-making project, and what resources we need to put in play for this to happen. So I'll get out of your way now. Thank you. Thank you, Taylor Renee. So our next arts administrator who wears several hats is Diaz Kinzel. Hello. Peace. Yes, my name is Diaz Kinzel. I am a Pittsburgher, born and raised, self-taught artist. I am the co-founder of Boom Concepts. As Kulolo mentioned, I am an artist of many hats. I primarily wear this Pittsburgh hat. But I want to start off before I talk about curating and field building here in Pittsburgh and across the country with a little video of me painting in my own studio. So as I said, I'm the co-founder of Boom Concepts. We are home for cultural spacekeeping and creative placemaking here in Pittsburgh. We are identified as a creative hub dedicated to supporting artists of color and artists representing marginalized voices. That's very important here in Pittsburgh as we are the widest metropolitan area in the country by providing safe havens and providing spaces that engage salon settings and workshop experiences for artists so that they're able to make mistakes, develop their practice, and then go on to bigger and better things that are beyond our scope and our facility of work. We are always encouraging artists to expand beyond their practice and collaborate because we are children and influenced by hip-hop. If you think of hip-hop culture, not hip-hop just as a musical art form, usually those artists were able to engage every piece of that practice. Dance, visual arts, MCing, I don't want to get into, I'm getting there, brother. MCing and most importantly, as a visual artist, graffiti practice. A lot of the ideas and concepts obviously come from myself out of boom so I'm really encouraging artists to take a graffiti style approach and presenting your work in unsanctioned places, whether that be in the real space or in the digital space. So here's an example of an installation that recreates an urban setting of a place where a newspaper box and media are existent so taking an old style newspaper and presenting it through media, through hashtags and through graffiti. Also, within these installations, whether it be created by artists on the roster or outside of the roster, how can you get the most run and most collaborative efforts out of that action. This project, it focuses primarily on the digital space, it's called hashtags or the new protest signs, so it really encouraging artists to use hashtags and demand space in the digital world. Oftentimes if you are having opportunities to engage institutions, you will feel left out, you will feel left out or the canon is also excluding your identity. In the digital space and by building a digital canon, we're able to take responsibility and take ownership of what is represented. So I'm usually forcing people to dress up and take part in the projects that I run and lead. So these are just a few of the artists on the boom concepts roster taking part in all of the collaborative action that we take. We always say this creative property belongs to you so it isn't central to one artist. It may start with one artist, but we're encouraging collaborations across and also making sure that that action and especially starting in a digital space, how do you convey that influence into a real world experience? So are you taking hashtags? Are you turning that into a public art? Are you turning that into a conversation here at a symposium? Are you engaging youth and community in that conversation? Is it presented as a workshop? So many different ways to identify what you do and how you do it just by starting in a digital space. At Boom Concepts, we are also focused on collaborating outside of our 2,200 square foot studio. So making sure that we engage partners such as the Carnegie Museum of Art, the World Hot Museum, the Society for Contemporary Craft, and not only negotiate but demand access and resources. So locally we have partnered with Carnegie Museum of Art for some of their social programming called Third Thursdays where we presented remix tours from our artist roster and always making sure that these institutions are paying so it is an equitable exchange or try to make sure it is as equitable as possible. With the Warhol Museum, we are launching a project called Activist Print where we're engaging three local artists and utilizing an old space that the Warhol Museum owns to present ideas around activism and social justice. This is also in partnership with Artist Image Resource, which provides all of our artist roster and opportunity to not only work on the public art project and the institutional relationship but also to develop what they have in their current portfolio. So access, income, and collaboration are three things that are really key in what we do at Boom Concepts. Our collaboration with Society for Contemporary Craft offers micro-residencies off-site at the Society for Contemporary Craft where artists are offered scholarships and access around trainings, workshop fees, materials, all those great things. On-site, we also offer micro-residencies where, and this is also supported by the Hands-in-Down Men's World, we are focusing on black men or artists who identify as African-American men across identity to engage Boom Concepts as a salon space for them to experiment, like I said, make ideas, make mistakes, and just generally build the field. Let's play a little bit. I want to say it's really difficult to manage so many different hacks. There was some conversation earlier and I think all of us as contemporary artists, whether you are an administrator or a practitioner or a cultural worker or an administrator or artist or whatever label you identify as, we have to remember that this is all art and whether it be people or hard materials or digital space, anything that you have access to can be used as a medium. That's it. Thank you. Yes. Pardon us for one minute. Okay. The next panelist right here, we're working on downloading one of his presentations that he was working on while he was here. So, technology. Okay. Okay. Yes. Onie, when you? Yeah? All right. Thank you. Yeah. Sorry about this. I had notes that weren't trans right now. I can just run this through Google? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Okay. Let me just, I'll just use the old slide. Okay. So today I'll be talking to you about developing an alternative effects of curating. It's, I guess it's not an alternative in the sense that there's a history to this or the way I'm approaching curating. But I guess, you know, getting invited to talk about, you know, being a cultural producer or curator, I started to think about, you know, my curatorial practice and it's developing in a way. But I guess I developed it in a way, but I guess it's more so emerging in that it required a bit of reflection and looking back over years and over the year and a half that I've been curating and, you know, what's kind of come to the fore. And, you know, this idea of like effects of curating came about through my current boss at Performa in New York, Adrian Edwards. And, you know, we've been having conversations about, you know, what does it mean to curate and how do you align yourself with what you do as a curator. So that's kind of where this idea of curating began as a therapist. So I was actually at PID's PhD program in clinical psychology and biological health. I had a neuroscience emphasis and a behavioral medicine background. I worked at children's, I was working with girls who are depressed and overweight, who had polycystic ovarian syndrome. So I was doing all this and at the same time I started this fashion magazine called The Lower Love You. And, you know, we had a lot of influences, but one of our influences was like the negative. And if you know some of the key questions was, you know, who am I? Who are we? And who are we within this white world? You know, some people can critique negative in terms of it trying to establish itself against this white world. But something we did with PID was excuse in terms of we didn't publish on a calendar, a fashion calendar. We didn't have ads and during times when we were struggling to kind of develop or print the magazine we kind of excused being bought over. A lot of publications wanted us to become their avant-garde wing. But we kind of stopped to it. We had a good run and it's finished. But, you know, while I was writing, she said, you know, I come on board and be an editor at large and, you know, I contributed a lot of writing to the publication, you know, editing. We actually spotlighted Toyin Odotola back in 2007 while she was in Alabama, you know, while she was kind of just getting her feet wet. So, you know, I was meeting artists, talking to them, you know, getting the sense of their practice and I took a leave of absence and here I am now. I had written a proposal and sent it to Mia Taduchi Henry, who's a local Pittsburgh artist who has a space out in, I think, Point Breeze called the Mind Factory and it was this show about, you know, works on paper. I presented it to her, you know, it was called I Just Wanted Paper and there's a piece of paper with this realism riff on there and then there's this idea of, you know, paper as this kind of like originally starting point for a lot of artistic practices, be it, you know, doodling or, you know, just working out ideas, you know, and for me as a curator, this is my first show and, you know, this is my starting point, I figured, you know, start from works on paper and it didn't kind of stare that minimal, like, kind of aesthetic. So there's a few Pittsburgh artists in there, like Terry Boyd. You can see some of his drawings there and there's Cantura Davis from LA who's kind of making a bit of noise out there. So that was, you know, the Mind Factory. And then Susan Goffo Campbell, she had some interesting drawings, works on paper where she placed the environments and the air particular kind of like impressed upon the paper and these were like filter papers. And it was interesting, Jenera kind of got me thinking about my next step. So, you know, she came to the show, his DS Kinzo, his work that was in the show. But Jenera got me thinking about, you know, next steps. I think at the time I had taken work as a therapist in East Liberty and there was a job opening at the Kelly Strayhorn and I interviewed Jenera and she's like, you know, you might as well just kind of like, you can stick around here but you can go and get experience somewhere and get your feet a bit wet, AKA, you're not ready for the job. But, you know, so I took that advice and I went to New York and I applied to you know, the School of Visual Arts. The whole time I was still writing because, again, talking about accessibility, private public space, as an emerging curator, without art history background as a psychologist, people see a resume and they think, whoa, what's this? What do you know about art? So, you know, I kept writing. I wrote an article, a review of John Rubin's project, Conflict Kitchen for Cool Hunting. So I was having a writing practice with Cool Hunting which is like a design, kind of like Tink Bank based out of New York. And at the same time, you know, I was meeting artist Shaqif who's in the audience here. You know, he really got me thinking about the idea of, you know, I write but then there's this interest in, like, performance, public art. But given my psych background, there's the interest in also that social interactive space and how within that space, audience and cultural producers can really come together to, you know, really challenge accessibility, physicality of spaces and within private and public. In this project, Black Men Dream, you know, I participated in it. Spent a lot of nights talking to Shaqif about it. We have, like, a long-ass text message history that's almost like Glenn Ligon and probably Delma, you know, very soon will publish that. But, you know, we keep talking about it, you know, some days not. But, yeah, so, stayed in touch with Shaqif, moved to New York. I started working as a curator with art in all places and this is a performance by a Russian craft artist, Oleg and she staged, we worked on a project where she staged this kind of like, you know, guerrilla style performance in Union Square and pretty much what's going on is the women are knitting, constructing these aprons that they're wearing and it was like an hour-long performance. It was very interesting, you know, I wrote an essay about it for the catalog but, you know, you had men coming up to them trying to hit on them. It was interesting. But they stayed, you know, firm and just kept in silence, you know, just going about it. It was really beautiful. So, staying in New York, you know, the idea is real estate is how to come by as an emerging curator and they reached out to me. They were in transition from their old space to a new space and they needed to kind of, like, maintain their programming and they had all these artists on their registry who had submitted work thinking that there was going to be a show. So I did a lot of studio visits and met them and their work doesn't really belong in an online space but that's all we had to work with because AC Institute was in transition. I said, okay, let's kind of, like, explore the limitations and the possibilities of the screen with artists whose work doesn't really belong on the screen and, you know, so it was a bit of, like, a vulnerability push and pull between me and the artist. So I made it a very, like, transparent curatorial process. Studio visits were uploaded online and I also had them do a live stream and it's kind of, like, kind of because their work doesn't belong on the screen, like, I wanted folks not to just see their work and, oh, okay, it's like some online, you know, presentation of it but kind of, like, return it to the process. So kind of, like, there's this essay in praise of actuality that Hal Foster wrote and it's kind of, like, introducing different temporalities both from the online work to the process and then, you know, this is Shada Soleimani, she's a professor at RISD, super smart artist and, you know, she creates these, like, images within her studio and shoots them but what was interesting is that, you know, after, during the installation, you know, around this point she's kind of, like, showing her post-production, you know, and during that moment, you know, if you watch the stream, you can hear people talking how to edit something on Photoshop and her Photoshopping skills were horrible. So we were all there just kind of, like, talking to her about the process, he's another artist and, you know, we're just hanging out, chatting, you know, about her process and, you know, what she's doing. Jessica Thalman is a photographer at BART but on the right, you can see, again, the open process in terms of from the studio visits to live stream to the fact that audiences can engage and interact with the artist while they're in their studio making work. And this is the last couple slides. This is another artist that was in screening. She does, like, site-specific installation. This is a, this hut that she created called Heartbeat. It's an older Elvis. So in the hut the song is playing and she has this kind of, like, red light on. This was shot at night but given the, you know, she, the way she shot it, it kind of looked like it's daylight but she had this, she was in the show. So, again, she went back to Finland. We kind of set her up where she went back to Finland to re-document to see if the building is still there. So this was, like, two years after she built it. It's still in that forest where she grew up and, you know, so you can see we're all chatting. This was, like, 8 a.m. in the morning. And if you can, I don't know if the resolution, could you, the light is on at that moment. So it's kind of, you can see the red light. I don't know if you can, but so, yeah, and so, again, riding and just kind of, like, kind of sticking to, you know, exploring different spaces to curate is what I've been kind of exploring but I think the writing is what kind of got me in the door in the first place and this is a piece I wrote and Tim Griffin, one of my professors and mentors, back in New York, he said something no one will ever remember you if you say nice things. And it's kind of, like, a question about criticism and whatnot in New York and, you know, I went to the show at the Met, it was a Joe Ratcliffe show and, you know, I sent this idea to the publishers at Afterimage. They ran with it because I really came at the show in terms of how the curators didn't really explore Joe Ratcliffe's the myth behind this image-making that she's doing, traveling from different areas within Southwestern Africa and recording the vestiges of war. It kind of just kept a very matter of fact in their war text. So kind of, like, throwing into consideration the other side, you know, the other side of myth, the other side of imaginary and, you know, this was long Skype conversations with Joe, you know, just kind of talking about her work and really trying to bring to light, you know, the other side of what she was struggling with as she was shooting these images. So, don't be nice, push the boundaries. Yeah. Cool. Thank you. Yeah. Are they on now? Okay. Great. Great. Thank you all for your presentations. They were very powerful. Wish we had more time to hear more about your work. But you gave us a really great, you know, overview of what you've done and I really look forward to more of your work. So, I just want to begin with this question about diversity because diversity means something different to everyone. So, I just want to ask each one of you, what does diversity look like to you in cultural institutions, whether it's a gallery space or a museum, a public or private space? Anybody can go first. We don't have to go down the line. Taylor's taking the mic. Um, I don't think it looks like something like a monolith of some one image. But I think for diversity to happen, there needs to be an inclusivity of all backgrounds throughout the beginning of a process. Whether it be exhibition making, outreach, whatever it may be, like we need to see people of color, people of all various backgrounds in the beginning stages of the planning process and throughout the planning process and post-planning process for some diversity to really happen throughout the entire period of a project within the cultural institution. I'll go next. Diversity, it should be an aesthetic, so just how people dress their skin tone, their hairstyles, very simple things, but also and more importantly, just diversity of thought across an institution. So, you know, it could be a traditionally African-American institution, but how does that diversity of thought make that institution to the next step or the next level and involve their mission? Oh, I really love that. I think kind of a combination of what these two brilliant people just said is what it means to for me. Speaking in a really specific sense in an institutional sense, I think it very much means whether that institution is a brick and mortar museum university or foundation, whatever it is, but thinking about who is in your leadership and what experiences do they have, what do they bring to bear, because traditionally what a board member is meant to bring, what a director is meant to bring is money, and traditionally we know who has money. And so I think if that is all you are thinking about, when you think about how you constitute those bodies, if that's the only value, the only kind of thing that you privilege as necessary, you will never have diversity of any kind frankly, because you can be a person of color, you can be a man, you can be a woman, you can be queer, and you can be class wise, you have more in common with the people who quote-unquote don't look like you. And so I think it's about this diversity of experience and of where people are coming from in their lives being put on an equal footing with of course the dollars. Building on these points, I think even the diversity of experience I think also being curated kind of goes back to the programming that you have in the institution even with rules, the board experience I think creating different programming that cuts across different interests the same gallery show within the four walls is not going to cut it sometimes and at the same time you also have to think about sensitivity of the other mediums you're dabbling using performance just to bring splash to your museum so I think making performance or whatever you kind of diversify with something that's worked in a genuine way not just to be diverse or change the programming but have it very fleeting so making some of these programs within the DNA of the institution and I think that speaks to the aesthetic great thank you just to follow up on this I was just curious about like what artists really do you see influencing your work it could be performance based visual arts I'm just very curious because you all have a very interesting approach to your work and I'd be really interested to know about other artists that influence your work and your decision making for me as the youth at Boom Concepts we're really community based we're engaged with a lot of peer to peer mentorship but also making sure that children teenagers, early childhood kids have an opportunity to see artists that look like themselves that come from places that they come from so a lot of art choices both in my personal practice and at Boom Concepts is molded and shaped by the youth directly in the community behind Penn Avenue well I think specifically because I work monthly with a collective of black artists within the city of Detroit particularly within this social climate of Detroit I think there is a certain impact that these artists have that is a bit unapologetic and sort of resilient a lot of the artists that come to the meetup don't have any like professional training within the arts and so to have the tenacity to want to just embark and make space within an industry that they don't really have much knowledge or like a huge pedagogy of the experience of art and institutional practice and all of that I think it's really inspiring to want to delve into an industry that you're really not that familiar with but say I'm worthy of the space in this industry and my voice matters so I'm really inspired by artists in Detroit and I'm thinking of Tiff Massey who is a female metalsmith artist within Detroit I'm thinking of Jova Lynn, Jessica Seal who's a Cranbrook who just finished her her tenure at Cranbrook and getting her MFA I'm thinking of artists like Tony Rave Sengora Reed but all of these artists are really inspiring to me and I'm constantly in conversations with them so I think that's you know naturally what's in my mind I think for myself like I was trained as an art historian and that at some point in that training where you almost don't realize that there are artists making work like contemporaneous with your life I realized that that was true and so but I do you know I love art history and so I do like have these kind of attachments to historical work, historical people, etc. I mean I think the first exhibition I really remember seeing that really like has stuck in my mind forever was Jacob Lawrence's migration series at the Whitney in like the early 2000s and it was only half of it so MoMA just showed all of it but I remember you know I was in college at that time and it was this is a very profound moment for me of understanding that art history could be something that talk to society to a broader context to a political context to a specific context to this idea that the experiences that perhaps were germane in some ways to my life could be could exist within these spaces and on top of that that these were these amazingly beautiful narrative objects had incredible power to them other artists I love Eva Hesse I love Charles Gaines, I love David Hammons these are all people that I obviously don't know, Jacob Lawrence or Eva Hesse they're no longer with us I don't know David Hammons but you know I'm on the streets of New York but I think I've been lucky to be able to be a contemporary person working in a kind of institution and so I get to kind of both have the fans the people that I'm very, I'm fans of that I never will get to meet for whatever reason and then the people who are my peers so you know I went to grad school in San Diego and a program that was at UC San Diego and a program that had an MFA and a PhD which is a very well oil and water fit but it also is kind of very amazing so a lot of the people that I think of now when I think about the work that I do I think about my peers artists who are working now who are at varying degrees of their career who you know it's like we're two sides of the same coin so I'm thinking very specifically of Sadie Barnett who's a dear friend of mine Christopher Cardumbicas who I went to grad school with and who actually is from Pittsburgh Chris is the best people that I'm in dialogue with kind of in this way of like we're texting about do you want to go to dinner, oh like what's that piece that you made, oh like what happened at work today, like what did that annoying artist do now like what did your annoying boss do now like are we going to go shopping next week so this like kind of slippage between our professional quote unquote lives and our personal quote unquote lives and being able to actually see that those things are not distinct they're one, they're the same thing yeah but that is a really hard question like incredibly hard yeah that's a hard question too I guess for me because I'm I don't know I'm still independent yeah I just kind of follow what artists are doing like follow what's happening scene shows but like right now given what I'm working on a lot of performance artists Maria Asabi did a dance piece that I'm really interested in in terms of her you know decelerated choreography and what that means for you know how we look going in and about the streets you know she's joined a lot of stuff from like abject bodies, homeless bodies and I just had an interesting moment where saw her piece couple days later I saw homeless man on the street and I actually walked past him he had fallen over in garbage this is an aside but he had fallen over in the garbage and I had walked past him didn't recognize that he was a body walking back the other way after seeing a show and someone flagged me down saying hey there's a homeless guy who fell over on his wheelchair you know the next two hours I was waiting for the paramedics but you know Asabi's work really slowed down that experience you know so that kind of connection between you know what's going on with the performance of public art and what's going on in the street and how that can change the way you look at things you know those are artists that I'm looking at Cole Sternberg is another artist he's out in LA he does some interesting public art work but yeah you know Shai Keef we text every day he's doing some stuff with glass I'm looking at another artist called Doreen Garner who does some glass the abject body making organs so it's whatever's bubbling right now idea-wise and you know I also want to say hearing what we or who and what we mentioned let's not forget like Jay-Z that was the other thing you talked about Jay-Z but artists outside of the traditional view of the art world or our industry that are operating specifically within hip-hop culture so Bed-Fat Freddy and Dame Dash and Carl Canah so like making sure that we are paying homage of people like under 40 here at this panel right so seeing that hip-hop in hip-hop as a fully formed art practice across discipline is like probably one of the primary just internal influences of our practice in our decision making and I also would say like for myself I was a huge still am but what grew up an incredibly like excessive reader and I think that the first place that I really the first things that I loved in my life like the first things that I found or were given to me that somebody else created were books were stories that I was told and so I think like that's why when I say it's hard it's like of course on the spot you're like oh I can't think of anybody like I'm horrible but it's actually harder because there is so much there are books there's music there is dance there is science there's art my family there you know like my grandmother is my favorite artist she was embroidered you know like didn't think of herself as an artist obviously or maybe not obviously but I'm telling you she didn't yeah I agree I think like even myself literary works stuff come out break with come out break with come out break with yeah just go ahead I love it keep it flowing here yeah but I think it's so easy to sort of forget what influences you in this data age because we're constantly coming in contact with content on a regular basis like non-stop but most recently I saw this post by Hilton Owls on Prince and his experiences with Prince that have been like I've been like re-reading it over and over but he talks about queerness and he talks about de-centering the white gaze I would advise you all to just Google Prince and Hilton Owls it'll come right up but that's been pretty inspiring just this weekend for me so yeah Hilton of course Hilton Owls so Ru you talked about the importance of mentors and mentorships and I was just curious about the other panelists on your mentors and also mentoring other people and also people of color because I know as an art historian and working inside the museum I didn't see anybody like a reflection of me and so I had to seek outside of the museum walls for mentors so if you could just tell me a little bit about your mentors and you mentoring other people and the importance of that yeah my mentors I think when I was here in Facebook Jennera keep in touch with her Dan Byers I had a couple conversations he was at the Carnegie before he went to ICA Boston but he talked a lot to me about curatorial practice and whatnot and then just folks I work with in terms of mentoring others I wouldn't say I'm mentoring others but my conversations with others I think it's kind of like a co-mentoring you know we the conversations we have we're kind of guiding each other for example we kind of open each other out yeah peer mentorship definitely but yeah I guess I'm at a stage where I'm not mentoring anyone right now I mean at Bloom Concepts we do 12 exhibitions a year 12 month long exhibitions a year we have a lot of students you know so our team or myself and my business partner we've been called art doulas so not necessarily mentors yeah like guiding the past art doulas but you know mentors for me I tend to be because it's hard to find another black man in the art industry and as a straight black man another straight black man as a mentor so like Robert Hodge he recently visited here we created a great relationship I have a mentor in the audience Alicia Wormsley who's been really helpful in just being a bully and developing my practice but you know at Bloom we really highlight peer to peer mentorship so kind of still sharpening still and just being critical of each other in that practice and being open and honest so my business partner Thomas Agnew he's probably one of my biggest mentors so I have to just tell this like short anecdote about how I even got into like actually pursuing arts admin work and work within the industry I was like majoring in business administration in undergrad at Howard and my mother actually had literally mailed me I think it was either Essence or Ebony she mailed me this article she's like yeah I found out about this arts lady this arts lady who works in the industry and she's fly you know you should like her because I know you like the art and so I get it like in this package in the mail it's Thelma Golden ultimately my mother knows nothing about art really like she's artistic but she doesn't she's not really you know in contact with the contemporary and keeping up with that but I just thought it was amazing that my mother was sort of like this introduction into visibility of black women within this industry and kind of encouraging me like you should probably do this you should probably you know try to figure that out and so from that point on I switched my major to art history this was like after my freshman year I was like okay Thelma Golden this was like my reference I could do this I see a black woman doing this in the industry and being super fly at it you know and so I was just like I can do this and I totally switched my whole like outlook and pursued art admin from that point on so my mother is a huge mentor my peers I get a lot of inspiration from my peers Kimberly Drew is amazing Jessica Lin is amazing Jess Bill Brown is amazing so yeah that's primarily it just seeing black women do their thing in this industry is really inspiring so I feel like I already told you about my mentors all these people all the above but I think the other thing that I just really want to add is I think that it is incredibly important to see yourself reflected in the people in the industry that you decide to be in but I also think that it's incredibly important to remember that yourself is actually much more than what your physical aspect reflects the world and the mentors can I mean I think if you're looking for like the person who is exactly you in the world to be your mentor like you will never find a mentor like truthfully because you know we're all unique individuals and I think that this you know it's two fold it's important to see yourself reflect in the world obviously especially if that's not something that traditionally is happening in the field that you're in but I think it's also important to see the potential out there for who can be an ally for you who can help you who wants to help you who wants to be invested in you because all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons are out there to be drawn upon to be mentors in maybe only in one small thing maybe it's not everything because you know you can have a mentor who like helps you with this one part of your life or career but doesn't understand maybe this other stuff and that's okay so which I think is also goes looking the other way because I don't know that I mentor people necessarily but I think that as I get older in a field in which I does look a certain way you know people start to reach out to you because they feel that kinship and so I certainly I feel personally a strong responsibility to be available and to be open to those sorts of interactions even though you're like do I know you hey I don't know who you are like you just came up to me at a bookstore like random 20 year old and like that's the most amazing thing ever literally that happened at Greenlight bookstore in Fort Greene in Brooklyn's 20 year old girl who's an art history student at Columbia which is where I went and when I what I studied and she knew all that and we you know we text now I don't know that I'm her mentor but I feel like I'm somebody that yeah that we now are in a community together and in communication together whether she stays in the art world or not it's like we have a point of contact and I'm it's an amazing privilege to be somehow that for somebody just by living your do living your life doing you you know I think about mentors as not necessarily you know we talk about peer mentors but also mentors not being like this whole top down because for example looking at the work of Jessica and you know we kind of established this relationship once again through digital media being both development people in museums and just being able to talk through some of the challenges that we have just being in fundraising all the time fundraising mode writing grants all that kind of stuff so but you know she's half my age practically but for me that was never a barrier I was like oh my god I'm learning so much from her and so it can you know it's not always that top down it's the ground up and that's something very beautiful also it made me think about that Moseley and the knowledge the institutional knowledge that that man carries and being here and you know he's not on the internet interwebs but you know he's up there talking and it's rare that you hear him talk and so for me that that was just an honor for him to be here and share the space with us so Taylor I wanted you to talk a little bit about art criticism and art stop black and how that came about and then also one many of your works that you you know you write about artists and movements but one particular artist and a critique by Blake Gopnik really struck a chord with me on Alma Thomas so I know it's a little two parts but you might just I think this is a really good to talk about definitely yes I try to like stay away from like going into the criticism work because I could start to rant okay well we got your back thank you so art stop black began literally in a call and response manner I'm always on Facebook that's how I met you Keelala that's how I meet a lot of people and I was in the thick of my master's research on the underrepresentation of African-Americans within museum institutions cultural institutions and I was really I became really curious about the representation of critics like I was doing of course like you know an art historical work you're primarily reading perspectives from white male art historians and critics and so I literally I don't I mean this is something that we have to work on within Google algorithms as well like I can I could not find a substantial amount of black critics and that's problematic right because these critics contextualize the way art historians interpret artwork you know and so previously like a few months prior to that choir to this query I purchased the domain art stop black because I'm interested in the arts and I'm interested in blackness so it made sense to invest in that domain so anyway I had this choir in my mind I posed the question on Facebook where are the relatively young black art critics simply put like I know a lot of arts admin on Facebook I thought they can provide some answers and while there was a sea storm of responses there were no really like good there were no solutions to my to my question I'm so I was like I was having conversations with just suggests and I would prior to that I had met her of that year earlier and we were just in conversations about what that platform could look like what it exists online I'm like hey yeah I got this domain let's uh let's do it and we kind of just encouraged each other from there like we even though we kind of had self doubt a little bit because we're like we don't have the pedigree who are we to sort of create this platform to call together all of these perspectives but it's it became a thing of if we don't who will and so from that point on a few months later we just started to flesh out ideas of what it would look like and we launched we launched art stop black in December of 2014 so we're a little over a year old um but then to your second point the question about Gopnik um so Gopnik basically who is black Gopnik who is a art critic white male pretty popular and people look to him and value his opinion within the canon he wrote some really rudimentary comments about Alma Thomas and saying that basically she's a domestic artist and so I don't know if you all are familiar with Alma Thomas but she is one of the first African American women to get an MFA degree to get a masters degree in the arts there's nothing really domestic about that you're not really in the kitchen doing work if you're pursuing an MFA um so basically Jess and I in the manner that we usually operate is to hold these art critics accountable for their rudimentary comments and so for the Walker publication we just wrote a joint essay sort of holding him accountable and really criticizing his thoughts as a curator um in a way that was I think sophisticated but also just provided some additional inquiry and a counter narrative for the way people should be thinking about things and thinking about art I think we're good on the rant no it wasn't anybody else want to respond to I just wrote some down criticism is one of the best ways to document culture and encourage innovation and often times like people don't feel like they have the voice like you said there was self thought when you launched the program so you know it's about like artists making and someone managing or helping them get that opportunity but you know in that world or in this industry that piece often missing but it's super necessary yeah I've been a big fan for a long time that means a lot like that support just people telling us like we read like we read the articles people still read okay cool you know it's like take time to read you know and really like our quoting our work you know that really means a lot to us and that helps us keep going IK you've been writing for a while and also been writing for arts.black as well yeah yeah it's a good space I think when I got to New York there was definitely an outlet to get your thoughts out there because again if you don't have any like I don't know academic capital social capital I don't know it's tough to get people to look at your writing so yeah I stopped definitely a medium and you know they're like really dead to me so probably I just wanted to just open question for any of you all before I go to Q&A because in the interest of time I want to stay on time so are there any questions that you all have that you wanted to pose instead of me yes to each other instead of me just asking the questions to you once again it's I'm not trying to be hard or difficult you know because usually it's always one way street with this so just thought if there's anything that you're thinking about well I'm interested in asking you a question we talked a little bit about this last night sorry but I would love to just hear your perspective on sort of the arts ecosystem here what things are thriving what things are still needed to help the infrastructure thrive in a way that is equitable so yeah if you have thank you great question well I think for one this type of interaction where you have artists, curators writers, cultural workers of color so people can see what black excellence looks like is very important because being an art historian living in Pittsburgh for over two decades now walking the walls of these museums it's very stinging for me to see show after show and not seeing artists of color or even collections about new acquisitions and there's no artists of color or arts leadership you know I hate being negative it's just no artists and no people of color in arts leadership positions here and that really has an impact on what gets shown, what gets bought and then who sees it and so I feel like as much as I love Pittsburgh I love Pittsburgh enough to be critical of it and so having this the start of this by any means is really important to be able to reach out not only in Pittsburgh but outside of Pittsburgh to bring people here but I think the work that DS is doing at Boom Concept I have other peers here like Alicia Wormsley Charlotte Ka incredible artist and mentor for me she's just doing phenomenal work she and her partner Mo Reynolds and I feel like these are voices that are missing from the storytelling within not only the museum walls but newspapers online, digital media same thing with Fatties Mosley I see Joanne Bates out there she's an educator, artist instrumental and working at the creative and performing art school here there's just so many wonderful amazing people that I feel like should be amplified their voices should be amplified and so instead of I'm not one to you know complain about things I'm one to take action and it does take the army of people and thoughts and being critical to move the needle in this city and to I feel like this is very timely because the Carnegie International is coming up in 2018 that's not even two years away and I don't want to go through another international and getting a phone call from one of the team members and saying I'm interested in this one artist and I'm like please don't tell me they're black therefore you want me to talk to them I don't want to go through another Carnegie International having that question or getting that phone call or email I want to be able to see artists of color from all walks of life being a part of the international team of artists and the people that actually make those decisions to bring artists to the city and also highlighting artists of color that live in this region that was more of a long that was necessary anything else anything else alright so Jess has the mic anybody have any questions I think when Pittsburgh should be we are blessed to have King Lolo here we at this auditorium it really should be and we have to do more an effort to make these kind of things more accessible maybe they could even be telecasts somehow on TV because not only black artists and black folks should hear this everyone should be able to hear because Pittsburgh does need a lot of help and the Brooklyn Museum because I lived in Brooklyn for 40 years so she brought back so many memories and the Brooklyn Museum should take this museum should take a lesson from the Brooklyn Museum because it's open it's accessible and I think it's because of the previous director because I know when I was in school I don't know it's too long but when I was down at Baltimore in school and would go to the Baltimore Museum and would see black art all through you didn't know if you just didn't know black artists because it was so inclusive now this same director came to the Brooklyn Museum then the Brooklyn Museum is hot on the first Saturday of each of each month it is a happening I mean a serious happening and this museum should go and take lessons because by the way I wanted those weary artists that you're going to be showing but anyway this museum should really take lessons from the Brooklyn Museum because it needs a lot of help and it's a way to bring money into it it's not just people it will bring more money into the institution if it was just open up more well thank you that is wonderful to hear and I think that you're right yeah Arnold Layman who is our director for 17 years he did come from the Baltimore Museum prior to that he was the director there and yeah Arnold did do a great deal I think to open the museum up but I also want to say that Arnold had the sense to talk to the right people and to listen to the right people so I don't think it's just that Arnold was like I get it I'm going to go out and do it he knew enough to ask and to listen to what people had to say about what can this institution be which once again as I said during my presentation is in crown heights like you can't ignore the fact that we're not the met we're not on the upper east side and that's a privilege that's something that is good we're winning because we are in crown heights we're not at a deficit and I think Arnold reframed that conversation very much to not see our surrounding and our position in Brooklyn as something that had to be overcome but instead as an asset it has helped that in the last 20 years 10 years Brooklyn has become something very very different in terms of its position in the culture but crown heights was always kind of a vibrant cultural community just depends on who you think has culture who you think is should be in a museum or shouldn't and what those kind of boundaries look like so Arnold is great can I just can I just add on I would love the Carnegie to do I mean it's not easy I don't know anything about the Carnegie I know that we're both old institutions with a long history and old somewhere in the building so Charlie we're going to find that we're going to find that before we get to the next question I also want to say not only do these institutions need to take best practice from other places but best practice from who's practicing here in Pittsburgh so it's not always looking externally out but asking Key Lolo, asking Genera, asking Alicia, asking boom concepts how can we facilitate and how can we engage these institutions with ideas because if they're not going to do the research us contemporary artists and contemporary folks operating within the industry are going out and seeing what best practices so yes it is about going and seeing what the Brooklyn Museum is doing but who is operating here let's get you Ms. Charlotte to go tell them what to do absolutely hi thank you all so much I think to just continue this discussion because I think it's really important I guess I'm wondering in your curatorial practices how do you navigate the kind of code of community engagement as a way to include diverse audiences and I'm just wondering like different strategies techniques ways of being that you're kind of engaging with I think that it has to be something that you think of as fundamental it is not a technique it's not a method it's not a means to an end it's foundational and I think that's often the problem with the way the cultural institutions quote-unquote pursue diversity is that they think of it as something that is like a fad they think of it as something that's going to bring in money they think of it as something that like is politically correct or like expected in 2016 and I think frankly I find that to be like an offensive way like I'm not a fad I'm a person and I should always be included in the space I'm a taxpayer this is a public institution and so I think like that free framing is the most important thing and also like ask the people that live where your museum is like what do they want to have here because it's like people know what they want people know what they're interested in people know what they think is important I think for Saturday that you mentioned is a really good I mean it used to be really really crazy you have to scale it back because like 20,000 people in a museum in one day is amazing but terrifying so but I think that for Saturday was a really good example of that like it's not in the same thing with the mentoring it's not it's not a top down it can never be top down because people are smart like I don't want to be panned or two I don't want to be imposed upon I don't want to be deployed I don't want to be invited to something so the picture can be taken so I can be part of your promotional materials which frankly happens like whether it's as I'm not saying it's a malicious or conscious action but like that's not what it is and if that's you know I think so it's not about it's about the thinking has to happen on the institutional side it has to happen internally inward facing the questions about who are we what are we doing who are our audiences and why are we pursuing quote-unquote diversity or quote-unquote diverse audiences and why don't we have them already here in our staff for example in this room talking about this mini rant probably echo a lot of what Ru said yeah I think like you said no methods techniques you know when you start introducing that language into how you bring diversity or you know get diversity institution becomes an issue at the same time it's I don't know yeah it's tough to yeah how to bring diversity into an institution I don't work in an institution so yeah yeah so I don't know it's kind of an institution so you know we don't have the issue of diversity in that you know we're just in the streets you know we have different sites that we do things that we perform on so yeah so but I guess like Ru said you know it should never be to a means to a means to a means like it keeps constantly involved in and kind of like going back to figure out what people want and what they want to see in their spaces at the same time when that happens you know about some of this like with the rain show at LACMA you know you almost have museums now putting on like experiences that you know it brings crowds gets diverse audiences in there but then it becomes almost I don't know like like pimp pimp like I don't know like yeah spectacle like yeah so you know the spectacle will bring you diversity and the spectacle will bring you people I think how you maintain people coming back and really engaging beyond just you know the line at more Friday that's the stretching I don't know it's difficult I think I haven't really thought about much but just my mini thoughts yeah Hi I'm Catherine I just had a quick question for the Blake Gopniks response did he have a response to your response no he remains silent if somebody finds one please let me know was he aware of we added him on twitter right he's active on twitter it's just it seems so irresponsible I mean there's no incentive right there's no incentive to what to do your research to engage with us aside from due diligence maybe yeah there's no incentive so I don't think we were really expecting a response but I think just that dialogue between our perspective and his perspective was important to have out there I mean the incentive would be you know like owning up but ok well thank you thank you I would like to point out as well just from your work at art stop black you all have been people reaching out to you all to write reviews not only by black artists but reviews I mean Jess reading your reviews in art in America it's been for me a watershed moment just to see that and see how you all have really impacted art criticism globally in a year and I think this is something that maybe I couldn't even predicted but we have created a platform for black artists to live right but we also created a resource for these larger publications to be in contact with these perspectives and so that's been something that I've been learning as of late like larger institutions cultural institutions are really coming to art stop black to figure out what how to include these black perspectives and how to engage with them so yeah it's been amazing just to say beyond that but I appreciate all the support I guess the other day I was having coffee with Jessica talking about the fact that institutions are coming to you guys now do you guys think it's a moment or how do you guys feel about this new found interest and what do you do with that Jessica you want to come on up you want to just work the room Oprah hello everyone I think to say quickly it's been my sense that the generosity is sincere and that the love is real I think that we have been fortunate enough to connect with fantastic folks many of whom are in this room who get that a conversation about equity cannot just be a pillow talk right like there's real work that has to be done and it's hard work but it's not impossible work and so for me just recently I had the pleasure of interviewing two amazing grad students at CMU were doing some interesting movement based work and I was reminded that even the fact that I could write for the rail does art stop black exist and I've been existing for a while but like it's starting to point somewhere and point outward and I think the point about criticism being equally fundamental to the ecosystem it's for this project this publication this journal is a testament of that that criticism is not a relationship that needs to be antagonistic right like it can also be a gesture of love we all want this field to be as best as possible but it doesn't exist outside of frameworks a socio-political framework that we're navigating just as individuals on a day to day okay I'm coming right cool yeah I just want to talk about how art stop black I guess by care maybe has off-handedly affected my career in regards to just having the opportunity to be interviewed by Jessica for art 21 magazine which was huge for the a digital project that a lot of people just didn't know about but what has happened with me over my career with the kind of work that I produced because it's very big it's very ambitious that I've had a very hard time with press because there's just a complete negligence of a lot of the you know information that is in there that is like just inherently black and so most of my interviews and press have been very fluff based that's what I say to the point where I just stopped doing it start turning down stuff which is like I'm not even that big to be doing that but it just you know after a while it's only so many like things you're going to see that like really tokenize you and make you you know seem silly or something and so to have just an engaging thorough conversation where I didn't have to explain basic elements of blackness to get to the root of you know what the work or what I wanted to talk about in terms of the form and you know all this other stuff is just awesome to have especially in it's not even you know this isn't this didn't happen within Ernst & Black but it's definitely a part of that conversation of how you know writers black women writers of color can then create these opportunities within well-known larger publications to you know place work like that which is like a new thing for me within some kind of like discourse or canon because I've gotten a lot of inquiries because of that which is you know I see as a benefit that just did not exist for me like it was like a barren landscape you know a year ago two years ago no people you know are definitely the fear is around like this idea of opportunity in regards to critique you know people are always holding out you know hold it hold it hide in their hands because of possibly you know some money or somebody is looking at them even some of our artists within you know you know the black contemporary art community whatever who haven't have gone unchecked you know not been critiqued and fly you know kind of through that white press radar so it's like I hope that it just you know creates more of a fleshing out as well as like genre as a filmmaker to someone like you know critiquing like black cinema you know those things are very much needed and it's just been really nice to watch and see how something can really influence everybody else's approach and kind of like lift a barrier of fear because I will say it was a bit of fear that people had with even trying to you know interview let alone critique artists or you know these horrible press writings interviews essays that have been conducted over years that have completely erased of a lot of artists from opportunities so yeah it's really really important we can take one more question any questions out there I think that's a good note to end on we're good Charlotte you had oh here I'm going to give you the mic this idea of criticism too I think in the colleges that's where it stems because in those black I mean in history classes you wouldn't hear about any black artists so how can these critics know anything unless they go on their own and decide to study so it's a matter of ignorance that's what it is it's ignorance on their part because we don't exist I fully a thousand percent agree but I also think that when we talk about somebody like Blake Gopnick who's a critic for the New Yorker magazine whose job is to know that's different I mean I absolutely agree that there is a kind of baseline lack of knowledge but I also feel like your job is actually to know and if you don't know you need to well I mean I don't know that you should lose your job necessarily I think that you should be tasked with challenge to do better and you know like the internet is an amazing resource like if you don't know enough about Alma Thomas to write your review you have there are many many places you can find that information and so I think there is something to say about like if you write for the New Yorker this is the high standard that we hold you to and that's you don't have to work there like if that's if you don't want to do that you don't have to work there but yeah that's very frustrating that part James K alright well thank you all for coming and thank you to all of the panelists alright it's a wrap thanks y'all peace support boom concepts oh I was like yes yes ma'am thank you so much for your comments thank you so much