Was a big week for seeing art. On 1/16, I weathered 2.5 hours of traffic from the IE to the LA for African-American Avant Garde, 1965 - 1990 at the Getty Center. The panel featured west coast experimental artists working in sculpture, performance, and video during the 1960s and 70s -- Maren Hassinger, artist and director of the Rinehart School of Sculpture; Ulysses Jenkins, artist and associate professor of art, UC Irvine; Barbara McCullough, artist and filmmaker; and Senga Nengudi, artist and lecturer in the Department of Visual and PerformingArts, University of Colorado. The panel was co-moderated by Kelli Jones, associate professor of art history, Columbia University; and independent curator and historian, Judith Wilson, PhD. The audience was peppered with many individuals and artists who were around during this turbulent period and took part in many of the experimental happenings with the panelists.
Thus the panel was more of a homecoming and celebration of visibility then a theoretic untangling of seemingly contradictory visual arts practices taking place in the Black community during the 1960s and 70s. Afterall, what were these folks doing not making (obvious) "protest art" when the rest of Black American sought to set communities ablaze. Yet, to paraphrase Jenkins, "we embodied that same desire for personal freedom, that was being expressed collectively in the streets." A book project is surely in the works!
