SESSION SIX
Embedded Files
Protesting Metropolitan Museum of Art's "HARLEM ON MY MIND" exhibit which omitted the contributions of African-American painters and sculptors, 1969.
The Black Emergency Cultural Coalition Inc. (BECC) was organized in January 1969 by a group of African-American artists, in response to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "HARLEM ON MY MIND" exhibit, Members of this initial group that protested against the exhibit included several prominent African-American artists, including Benny Andrews and Clifford R. Joseph, cofounders of the BECC.
Note the sign worn by the picketer : ART POWER + PEOPLE POWER = FREEDOM
STUDY QUESTIONS
How were these two community responses involving artists (Protesting against Major Museums and the Founding of the Studio Museum) and ) related?
How was the later work of Benny Andrews and Clifford Joseph, both of the same age generation, similar, yet different?
FOUNDING OF THE STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM - FOREGROUNDING THE ROLE OF ARTISTS AND EDUCATION (1968)
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PROTESTING AGAINST MAJOR MUSEUMS and the FORMATION OF THE BLACK EMERGENCY CULTURAL COALITION (1969)
ARTISTS OF NOTE : BENNY ANDREWS , CLIFFORD JOSEPH
Founding of the Studio Museum in Harlem - Foregrounding the Relationship of Artists and Education (1968)
FOUNDING OF THE STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM - FOREGROUNDING THE RELATIONSHIP OF ARTISTS AND EDUCATION (1968)
'Ancient to the Future', Dr. Kellie Jones, Studio Museum in Harlem.
Click on the image on the right to read about the work of the Studio Museum. (At this time, the Studio Museum was located on the second floor above 'Wines and Liquors' shown at the right of the photograph.)
1968 - The Studio Museum was founded in Harlem by a diverse group of artists, community activists and philanthropists who envisioned a new kind of museum that not only displays artwork but also supports artists and arts education.
The Museum’s Artist - in - Residence has supported over 100 graduates who have gone on to highly regarded fields.
FOUNDING OF THE STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM - FOREGROUNDING THE RELATIONSHIP OF ARTISTS AND EDUCATION (1968), cont.
'A Collection is Born', Studio Museum in Harlem.
Click on the right to learn more about the Studio Museum.
An excerpt:
"The Studio Museum in Harlem opened in 1968—a watershed year that included the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, major anti–Vietnam War demonstrations, Tommie Smith’s and John Carlos’s Black Power salutes at the Summer Olympics, the publication of Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice, the murders of several members of the Black Panther Party, and the police riot against protestors at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago—amid larger discussions of the struggles of disenfranchised peoples around the world and the place of Black artists in the art world.1 The Museum’s founders were a diverse group of artists, activists, and philanthropists all committed to creating an institution in Harlem that foregrounded the role of artists and education, especially during such a tumultuous moment in US history."
FOUNDING OF THE STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM - FOREGROUNDING THE RELATIONSHIP OF ARTISTS AND EDUCATION (1968),cont.
OPTIONAL READ Tom Lloyd at The Studio Museum in Harlem - The Studio Museum in Harlem - Google Arts and Culture
Click on the right to learn more about Tom Lloyd and his work which was considered a controversial choice for the opening exhibition.
An excerpt;
"The choice of Lloyd’s work as the subject of the Studio Museum’s inaugural exhibition was therefore controversial, as most audiences—both black and white—expected African-American artists to produce work that was socially relevant or figurative. Lloyd’s electronically programmed sculptures used colored light bulbs to create flashing projections that did not readily connect to the real world."
FOUNDING OF THE STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM - FOREGROUNDING THE RELATIONSHIP OF ARTISTS AND EDUCATION (1968), cont.
OPTIONAL READ Studio Museum in Harlem Unveils Design for Expansion, NY Times, July 6, 2015.
A rendering of the expanded Studio Museum in Harlem, at right
Click on the right to learn more about the Studio Museum.
An excerpt:
"The project also signifies the Studio Museum’s move from the margins to the mainstream, having started as a place that brought attention to black artists who had been largely ignored by major museums. Now black artists are better represented in many institutions.
“The museum was a radical gesture to address the exclusion of black artists from the canonical presentation of art history, Ms Golden said. (Thelma Golden has been the museum director and chief curator since 2005.)
6 Studio Museum in Harlem Unveils Design for Expansion - The New York Times.pdfARTISTS PROTESTING AGAINST MAJOR MUSEUMS and the FORMATION OF THE BLACK EMERGENCY CULTURAL COALITION (BECC), 1969.
A Brief Background - Excerpts from "HARLEM ON MY MIND, 50 years later would Reginald Gammon still be protesting the American art establishment?" by R. Crews , Black Art in America, June 21, 2019.
"As the Civil Rights movement was morphing into the Black Power movement, the Metropolitan Museum of Art organized Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968. The Director, Thomas Hoving and Allon Schoener, the Curator wanted to exploit the history and value of the predominantly Black community of Harlem, New York. They excluded Harlemites from participating in the planning of the exhibition and also excluded artwork by Harlem’s thriving artist community from the exhibition. Reginald Gammon condemned the choice of Allon Schoener as the Curator, saying “they always pick someone else to tell your story”.
Schoener’s mind was set on using multimedia and photography rather than the traditional visual art to tell the story of Harlem. Hoving wanted to use the Harlem On My Mind exhibition to merchandise the show and open the doors of the museum to the masses, thinking this would solve the money problems the museum was having. But they did not know they were residing over a perfect storm that would later be known as a landmark event.
November 1969, Romare Bearden, Jean Blackwell Hutson and Harlem-based artist Benny Andrews, organized a demonstration against the exhibition. Unfazed by their protests, Schoener stood firm in his determination. Equally determined, the Harlem artists continued their struggle for representation at the Met.
The Spiral group – Bearden and Charles Alston – wanted to continue letter writing, making contact with the museum directly and having meetings with them. Many of these meetings never happened. Frustrated with the lack of progress, Reginald Gammon decided along with Benny Andrews, to form the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC) at Benny’s studio on January 9, 1969. The BECC was very radical for its time.
ART WORLD ACTIVISM
The political and social upheavals of the 1960s included the Civil Rights, Ecology, Gay Rights, and Women’s Movements as well as international struggles to end colonialism and the Vietnam War. These movements for equity and progressive change prompted artists to organize, agitating for broader, more inclusive representation in museums, galleries, and alternative spaces. Multiple ad hoc arts groups formed to address specific issues via protests, guerrilla actions, mail art, and group exhibitions. One of the earliest such groups was the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, organized by artists outraged by the exhibition Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968, which opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1969. Presenting documentary photography of Harlem’s daily life in displays resembling those of a science museum, the exhibition was devoid of contemporary art by African Americans.
Emerging concurrently, the Art Workers’ Coalition sought to pressure museums to instigate progressive reforms. The demands made of art institutions included respect for artists’ intellectual property rights, divestment from funders who profited from the Vietnam War, free admission for artists and students, and greater parity in exhibitions across lines of class, gender, and race. Important splinter groups of the Coalition included Women Students and Artists for Black Art Liberation, Women Artists in Revolution, and Artists Against Racism in the Arts, all of which were committed to more forceful, nimble, and creative actions to combat racism and sexism in the mainstream art world.
BIOGRAPHICAL/HISTORICAL INFORMATION Black Emergency Cultural Coalition records 1971-1984, New York Public Library Archives and Manuscripts
BIOGRAPHICAL/HISTORICAL INFORMATION Black Emergency Cultural Coalition records 1971-1984, New York Public Library Archives and Manuscripts
The Black Emergency Cultural Coalition Inc. (BECC) was organized in January 1969 by a group of African-American artists, in response to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "HARLEM ON MY MIND" exhibit, which omitted the contributions of African-American painters and sculptors to the Harlem community. Members of this initial group that protested against the exhibit included several prominent African-American artists, including Benny Andrews and Clifford R. Joseph, cofounders of the BECC. The primary goal of the group was to agitate for change in the major art museums in New York City, so that there would be greater representation of African-American artists and their work in these museums, and that an African-American curatorial presence would be established. The Coalition described itself as an action oriented watchdog group that strived to develop the legitimate rights and aspirations of individual African-American artists and the total art community. This process, which began in 1969, culminated with the call to boycott an exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1971, after talks between the BECC and the Whitney to curate an African American art exhibit failed to achieve greater participation and visibility for the African-American artist.
ARTISTS PROTESTING AGAINST MAJOR MUSEUMS and the FORMATION OF THE BLACK EMERGENCY CULTURAL COALITION (BECC), 1969, cont.
"Harlem on My Mind - Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900 - 1968", an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1968.
One of the main critiques of "Harlem on My Mind" was that it did not contain a single work of fine art by a Black artist and was instead, according to the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, “an audio-visual exposition with neither logical sequence nor adequate explanatory information.” (See images below)
From: "Harlem on Whose Mind?" The Met and Civil Rights by Kelly Baum, Maricelle Robles and Sylvia Yount, The Met, February 17, 2021.
ARTISTS PROTESTING AGAINST MAJOR MUSEUMS and the FORMATION OF THE BLACK EMERGENCY CULTURAL COALITION (BECC), 1969, cont.
"How African - American Artists Fought to Diversify Museums" by Issac Kaplan, Dec. 27, 2016
"To the BECC, by omitting the art of Black Americans, the Met defined their work as non-art."
In 1969, a white curator named Allon Schoener mounted an exhibition titled “Harlem on My Mind” at the Museum of Metropolitan Art. Despite being the first-ever exhibition of African-American art at the museum, however, it included only archival material and the work of photographers (then considered to be beneath the status of fine art), and failed to include a single non-photographic work created by a black artist. The exhibition immediately provoked an outcry from the very people it aimed to represent. African-American artists picketed the museum, furious with Schoener’s oversight. Though the exhibition was radical in one way—showcasing a medium that deserved serious attention—it ultimately represented one of many missteps from the curator, demonstrating the lack of diversity within the institution.
OPTIONAL READ ARTISTS PROTESTING AGAINST MAJOR MUSEUMS and the FORMATION OF THE BLACK EMERGENCY CULTURAL COALITION (BECC), 1969, cont.
'How Black Artists Fought Exclusion in Museums, JSTOR Daily, July 6, 2020
Click on the right to learn more about the beginning of the BECC.
An excerpt:
How is it possible that a world-class art museum’s exhibition about a community could neglect to include the artwork of that community?
In the late 1960s, a group called the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC), composed of seventy-five Black artists including cofounders Benny Andrews and Clifford R. Joseph, wondered the same thing about Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–68, organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In January 1969, the BECC protested this exclusion.
Reginald Gammon, "Harlem on My Mind"
ARTISTS PROTESTING AGAINST MAJOR MUSEUMS and the FORMATION OF THE BLACK EMERGENCY CULTURAL COALITION (BECC), 1969, cont.
"15 OF 75 Black Artists Leave as Whitney Exhibition Opens' by Grace Glueck, NY Times, April 6, 1971
Click on the right image to read about these 15 artists pulling out of the Whitney Museum exhibition.
An excerpt:
"A separate statement issued by Cliff Joseph, co‐chairman with Benny Andrews of the Coalition, said in part that in order for the show to have authenticity, “it is essential that it be selected by one whose wisdom, strength and depth of sensitivity regarding black art is drawn from the well of his own black experience.” The show was organized by a white curator, Robert M. Doty."
6. 15 of 75 Black Artists.pdfARTISTS PROTESTING AGAINST MAJOR MUSEUMS and the FORMATION OF THE BLACK EMERGENCY CULTURAL COALITION (BECC), 1969, cont.
OPTIONAL READ "Acts of Art and Rebuttal in 1971 ", Brooklyn Rail, November, 2018
Click on the right to learn more about....
An excerpt:
By the time 'Contemporary Black Artists in America' opened in 1971, fifteen artists had dropped out and the BECC organized a series of protests and a counter-exhibition of forty seven artists, Rebuttal to the Whitney Museum Exhibition: Black Artists in Rebuttal, which opened at the Acts of Art Gallery in Greenwich Village.
ARTISTS PROTESTING AGAINST MAJOR MUSEUMS and the FORMATION OF THE BLACK EMERGENCY CULTURAL COALITION (BECC), 1969, cont.
Nigel Jackson, the owner of the Acts of Art gallery, in 1971 with some of the works in the show, 'Rebuttal to Whitney Museum Exhibition'
Mr. Joseph's 'The Superman' is in the upper right corner of this photo of works in the show, 'Rebuttal to Whitney Museum Exhibition'(Tyrone Dukes, The New York Times.)
ARTISTS PROTESTING AGAINST MAJOR MUSEUMS and the FORMATION OF THE BLACK EMERGENCY CULTURAL COALITION (BECC), 1969, cont.
Romare Bearden , The Prevalence of Ritual (March 25 - July 9, 1971)
Romare Bearden, The Prevalence of Ritual (Exhibition March 25 - July 9, 1971)
"Romare Bearden: The Prevalence of Ritual grew, in part, out of demands made by the Art Workers Coalition (AWC), an activist organization that advocated for New York City museums to improve their ethical relationship to artists and to the public. They argued that museums should improve public access by waiving admission fees and implement more inclusive exhibition policies to encourage shows by women and minorities. In 1969, the AWC submitted a list of demands to MoMA, including that a “section of the Museum, under the direction of black artists, should be devoted to showing the accomplishments of black artists.” MoMA’s Board of Trustees recommended that the institution embrace a more inclusive approach to collecting, exhibiting, and public programming, and the Bearden exhibition was one of the first outcomes of this recommendation."
ARTISTS PROTESTING AGAINST MAJOR MUSEUMS and the FORMATION OF THE BLACK EMERGENCY CULTURAL COALITION (BECC), 1969, cont.
OPTIONAL READ "Harlem on Whose Mind?" : The Met and Civil Rights by Kelly Baum, Maricelle Robles and Sylvia Yount, The Met, February 17, 2021.
Click on the image on the right to read a broader view of protest.
An excerpt:
The exhibition was also an attempt to respond to the Civil Rights movement, which had reached a fever pitch with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. It was a contentious moment, and there were signs of controversy long before the show opened to the public. As early as a year in advance of the opening, various committee members and prominent Black artists withdrew their support for the exhibition. One of the central complaints was the exclusion of work by Black artists, such as Romare Bearden, Faith Ringgold, and Jacob Lawrence—all of whom were living in Harlem at the time, creating works that would have easily fit the exhibition’s narrative. In fact, the Museum’s collection already included works by Bearden and Lawrence. [1]
ARTISTS PROTESTING AGAINST MAJOR MUSEUMS and the FORMATION OF THE BLACK EMERGENCY CULTURAL COALITION (BECC), 1969, cont.
OPTIONAL READ 'Art from Inside Caged Hearts and Souls' by Adam Zucker, Rhino Horn Group, March 22, 2016.
'In the early 1970s, around the time that Benny Andrews was showing with the Rhino Horn group, he began an arts program inside of the local New York jails. The “Prison Art Program” was developed by the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC), which Andrews co-founded to advocate to represent African American’s rights within the cultural sector. The Prison Art Program was initiated through a drawing class that Andrews taught inside of the Manhattan House of Detention (known as The Tombs). The program would eventually grow to develop 37 projects in 14 states. The highly influential Prison Art Program enlisted many successful working artists such as Andrews and Faith Ringgold to work with prisoners on art projects.'
ARTISTS OF NOTE - BENNY ANDREWS, CLIFFORD JOSEPH
# 1. ARTIST OF NOTE: BENNY ANDREWS (1930 - 2006, born in Plainview, GA)
Benny Andrews was born in 1930 to a mixed-race family (Cherokee-Scottish-African American) in rural Plainview, Georgia. Andrews (1930-2006) was the son of an impoverished Georgia sharecropper who taught him to draw as a child. The skill became an essential tool that compensated for the school he missed while helping his father. He learned in part by drawing biology and plane geometry projects and whatever else the teachers asked for.
After becoming the first member of his family to graduate from high school, he attended Fort Valley State College supported by a scholarship. He was not allowed to attend the University of Georgia due to the color of his skin. In 1954, after serving as a military policeman in the Korean War, he used the GI Bill to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, studying under Kathleen Blackshear.. He wanted to paint representationally, even though he disliked the constant refinement that realism entailed. No longer constrained by the racial laws of the South, he entered an art museum and saw original masterworks for the first time in 1954, an experience that brought tears to his eyes. Benny Andrews rose from the injustices of the Jim Crow South to become a leading voice in American painting. Andrews earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1958. Soon after, he moved to New York City, where he would live, work and paint for nearly five decades.
Andrews co-founded the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC), which agitated for greater representation of African American artists and curators in New York’s major art museums in the late 1960s and 70s. He also led the BECC in founding a groundbreaking arts education program in prisons and detention centers. Andrews taught art at Queens College for nearly three thirty years, beginning in the late 1960s. From 1982 through 1984, he served as the Director of the Visual Arts program for the National Endowment for the Arts
BENNY ANDREWS, cont.
"Did the Bear Sit Under a Tree?", 1969 (Oil on canvas with painted fabric collage and zipper) Artsy.net
"Benny Andrews’s narrative paintings tell poignant stories of social injustice. Inspired by his youth in the segregated American South, Andrews created a body of work depicting scenes from the Civil Rights movement, American Indian relocation, antiwar protests, and other cultural struggles. A self-described “people’s painter,” his overt political series are punctuated by paintings of everyday people and moments, encapsulating an expression of the human condition in times of conflict. He sought to convey authenticity of emotion by employing a painterly style reminiscent of folk art, often incorporating collaged elements pulled from daily life. “I started working with collage because I found oil paint so sophisticated, and I didn’t want to lose my sense of rawness,” Andrews said."
BENNY ANDREWS, cont.
Benny Andrews, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA.
Drawing from the Ogden Museum of Southern Art’s premier collection of works by Benny Andrews.
BENNY ANDREWS, cont.
'Benny Andrews: A Life in Portrait' by Roberta Smith, NY Times, Dec. 3. 2020.
Click on the right to learn more about Benny Andrews.
An excerpt:
"Benny Andrews once defined his artistic ambition as a desire to represent “a real person before the eyes.” The phrase is the subtitle of a momentous exhibition at the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery in Manhattan. “Benny Andrews: Portraits, a Real Person Before the Eyes” brings together 28 of the artist’s imposing depictions of friends, family and artists, the most ever shown together. Made over the course of 35 years with a technique he called “rough collage,” these riveting, eccentric images combine painted motifs with added pieces of canvas and paper, bits of printed fabric and carefully placed fragments of garments."
Below are several of Benny Andrew's paintings.
6.Benny Andrews_ A Life in Portraits - The New York Times.pdf
"Louie" (1977) , a stark image of sorrow that symbolizes a cultural memory of oppression.
"Famine" (1989), in which the subject's face is split between an abstract mask and a ravaged visage.
A 1986 portrait of George C. Andrews, the artist's father. " All of Andrew"s portraits are notable for their tenderness, especially those of the people to whom he was closest"
# 2. ARTIST OF NOTE: CLIFFORD JOSEPH ( 1922 - 2020 , born in Panama )
CLIFFORD JOSEPH,
"Cliff Joseph, Artist, Activist and Therapist, Dies at 98" by Alex Vadukul, NY Times, published Dec 4, 2020, updated Dec. 7, 2020.
Click on the right to read about the life of Cliff Joseph.
An excerpt:
'In 1963, Mr. Joseph, whose paintings depicted the social unrest sweeping the nation, was struggling as an artist in New York. He was in Washington that August, standing at the front of the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.
“I was so moved by that experience and what it said to me about the way I should be using my art skills,” Mr. Joseph said in a 2006 documentary, “Conversations With Cliff Joseph.” “This really awakened me.”
6Cliff Joseph, Artist, Activist and Therapist, Dies at 98 - The New York Times.pdfCLIFFORD JOSEPH , cont.
Clifford Joseph ( 1922 - 2020) ' The Separatists : Racial Hatred Keeps All Imprisoned' (1966), oil on board.
CLIFFORD JOSEPH, cont.
Clifford Joseph, The Superman, 1966.
"The Superman" - 'those who claim power over others are bereft of true power", oil on masonite, 1966.
Excerpt from "Cliff Joseph, Artist, Activist and Therapist, Dies at 98 ", NY Times, Dec. 7, 2020.
"In 2018, Hunter College in New York revisited “Rebuttal to Whitney Museum Exhibition” with an event at its campus gallery. The exhibition remounted works from the original 1971 show, including one of Mr. Joseph’s oil paintings, “The Superman.”
That painting depicts a bloated Klansman holding a rifle and a cross standing in front of a Confederate flag. But he is naked, carrying his white robe on his arm, and Mr. Joseph has rendered him spectral and forlorn. "
Clifford Joseph, The Superman (those who claim power over others are bereft of true power), 1966.
CLIFFORD JOSEPH, cont.
Clifford Joseph "My Country Right or Wrong", 1968, Oil on masonite.
Created at the height of the Vietnam War, Joseph's work derided the blind patriotism but it was also a stunning indictment of the apathy found on the home front. In Joseph's painting, flag-blindfolded citizens wander through a desolate landscape of crushed skeletons. (Art for a Change)
Clifford Joseph 'My Country Right or Wrong', 1968, Oil on masonite.
CLIFFORD JOSEPH, cont.
Clifford Joseph ( 1922 - 2020), "Blackboard" , 1969, Offset lithograph
Joseph was the co-founder of the 1960’s Black Emergency Cultural Coalition in NY-an artists group involved in creating socially conscious artworks.
“My art is a confrontation. Among the many realities of art expression, this remains the most constant purpose of my aesthetic. It is, of course, a social art, based on my ‘gut’ perceptions of our worldly conditions; but it draws upon each viewer to confront himself in consideration of his role in affecting those conditions.” Aaron Galleries, Glenview, Il
Clifford Joseph ( 1922 - 2020), Blackboard, 1969, Offset lithograph
"Blackboard' depicts a black teacher and student with ABC's that begin by spelling the words, "Ashanti", "Black Power" and "Community Control"
CLIFFORD JOSEPH, cont.
OPTIONAL READ "Drawing Class at Tombs Eases Pent-Up Emotions" by Richard F. Shepard, NY Times, Nov. 16, 1971.
Click on the right to learn about this program (published 1971)
An excerpt:
"Mr. Andrews, a professional artist, was conducting a class in drawing and the turn‐out last week at the Men's House of Detention brought inmates who had been whiling away the hours by art. Some had studied drawing in high school and some had never done more than doodling. But they became absorbed as soon as Mr. Andrews proceeded from rudiment to refinement.
When he stationed the volunteer model at the front of the house, pencils and crayons raced over paper.
“Don't try too hard,” Mr. Andrews advised, “The rhythm comes from your head; you're just using your hands."
6. Drawing classs at tombs.pdfOPTIONAL READ CLIFFORD JOSEPH,cont.
"Pratt Institute Remembers Cliff Joseph, Founding Art Therapy, Faculty Member and Alumnus", December 23, 2020.
Click on the right to read about the life of Cliff Joseph.
An excerpt:
"One of the major actions he was involved in was the founding of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition to push for the visibility of Black artists in museums. As he discussed in a 1972 interview for the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art, the organization was formed after the Metropolitan Museum of Art excluded Black artists from its 1969 Harlem on My Mind exhibition. “Our feeling is that art has a very vital part to play in the lives of people, not just aesthetically, but in terms of their real needs,” he said. “Many people don’t understand the way in which art can influence thinking and feeling and lifestyle.”
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