La Pyramide, Abidjan, Ivory Coast. (Photograph: Iwan Baan)
A field of triangular roofs pokes up above the horizon on the outskirts of Dakar, like a forest of wigwams that have been baked to stone under the scorching sub-Saharan sun. They sit on a triangular concrete plinth, from which bigger triangular pavilions protrude, accessed by flights of triangular steps from the dusty streets, along which triangular gutters jut out. It could be Toblerone Town, a city-sized hymn to the three-sided prism.
This mysterious complex, which looks like what might have happened if the Mayans had discovered reinforced concrete, is the Foire Internationale de Dakar, or FIDAK for short. It is a sprawling exhibition centre built in the capital of Senegal in 1975 to host the country’s biennial international trade fair – and trumpet the new nationstate’s presence on the global stage. Designed by little-known French architects Jean-François Lamoureux and Jean-Louis Marin, it is a project of obsessive and extraordinary detail. There are facades decorated with coloured pebbles and tiled mosaics, psychedelic sand art murals that evoke the rocky African coastline and its azure seas. Yet outside Senegal, this building is almost entirely unknown.
It is just one of the astounding projects documented by Swiss architect Manuel Herz, who has spent the last few years researching the architecture of African independence with his team at ETH University in Zurich. A period of bold structures and strident new forms, it is strangely absent from the recorded history of modern architecture. “There was an intense flowering of experimental and futuristic architecture in the 1960s and 70s, which the young African countries used to express their national identities,” says Herz, who has curated an exhibition of more than 80 buildings from sub-Saharan Africa, showing at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, until May. “But we simply don’t know about it. When people think of Africa, they think of poverty, misery and violence, while architects fetishise informality and focus on slum-upgrading. But we wanted to show this incredible cultural wealth that also exists.”
University of Zambia, Lusaka. (Photograph: Iwan Baan)
The buildings, a number of which have been beautifully shot by Dutch photographer Iwan Baan, portray a period of extreme confidence and political ambition. They are mostly the products of big, state-sponsored initiatives, from heroic parliament buildings and imposing central banks to daring universities and vast stadiums, many the pet projects of Africa’s “big man” leaders, built for propaganda purposes as much as anything else.
The Kenyatta International Conference Centre, whose pink cylindrical shaft towers above Nairobi, was initiated by the country’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, as a lavish new HQ for his ruling Kanu party. At 32 stories, it was by far the tallest structure in east Africa until the 1990s, a big column for Kenya’s big-man chieftain. Yet its great size can be credited to an accident of international intervention. In the midst of its design, the World Bank decided it would host its 1973 annual meeting in Nairobi, and the building was chosen as the venue, forcing a growth spurt. The tower almost tripled in height, while a magnificent auditorium shaped like a closed lily-bud was also added, and mirrored by an open flower form at the top of the tower containing a revolving restaurant.
The University of California, San Diego, recently unveiled a new life-size bronze sculpture of Sojourner Truth. Born into slavery, Sojourner Truth became a leading abolitionist and advocate for women’s rights.
The statue, displayed on the campus of Marshall College, is the work of local artist Manuelita Brown, a graduate of the University of California, San Diego. Brown stated that “Sojourner Truth serves as a drum major for social justice, equity and voting rights. It is my hope that the brilliant students and graduates of UC San Diego will be reminded each day as they walk past her of what they can accomplish with a superior education.”
At the ceremony unveiling the new sculpture, Pradeep K. Khosla, chancellor of the University of California San Diego noted that “centrally located, hundreds of campus and local community members will pass by Sojourner Truth each day. Her presence will serve to start conversations about who she was and what she stood for, a reminder of her influence and the need to continually address racial and gender equality.”
According to the latest U.S. Department of Education figures, Blacks make up only 1 percent of the undergraduate student body at the University of California, San Diego. Under state law, race cannot be considered in admissions decisions at the university. article via jbhe.com
One Tumblr artist struck a nerve when she re-imagined the main characters from “Frozen” as Black girls. Here’s why haters need to find their chill.
Earlier this week, I saw some “Frozen” fan art from Brazilian artist Juliajm15 that gave me all of the warm fuzzies. It depicted the sisters Queen Elsa and Princess Anna as young Black women in remixed scenes. Julia didn’t just dip the original characters in chocolate, either! She gave her recreations afro-centric features and gloriously curly hair. Not only that, but that art style was so close to Disney’s traditional animation that it looked like concept art for film. It. Was. Everything!
When Buzzfeed posted the pieces online, it pointed to the “absolutely stunning” pics as an example of racebending. For those unfamiliar with the word “racebending,” it’s a term born of the egregious white‑washing in M.Night Shyamalan’s “The Last Airbender.” It was based on Nickelodeon’s hit cartoon “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” and the main characters that were obviously meant to be Brown and Asian were played by Caucasian actors. Shocker: all of the villains were Brown people. It’s not that M.Night couldn’t cast Asian actors that would better resemble the characters on the TV show, though, because he had plenty of them running through the background. Anyway, many from the digital community have put the idea of racebending on its head by creating ethnic versions of their favorite characters from books, film and TV. It’s a fairly common practice among online artists. Julia, in particular, has gone on a run of re-doing Disney heroines with an Indian version of Rapunzel and a Latina incarnation of Merida from “Brave.” Her work is flaw-free. Go check it out. You will live for her human version of Nala.
It’s all for fun, but some Disnephiles are not feeling her vision. There are grown people having full-on conniptions over someone drawing the characters as Black. The problem for them, supposedly, is that her art is not accurate to the fable’s Scandanavian origins. There will be privilege-laced arguments–nasty little flame wars–all to defend the idea that the characters should remain as originally created…which is White. To that, I say, “Girl, bye.” God forbid anyone should use their creativity to imagine the beloved characters as an under-represented segment of society.
Julia’s not suggesting that Disney should re-do the movies to include Black people. She’s creating a reflection of herself (and many little girls that love Disney movies) that is missing from the cultural landscape in a fun little project. People want to see a piece of themselves in the art that they enjoy. In an odd way, it’s a form of validation that people who look like you matter, and that you can be an important part of a larger narrative. And in the case of Disney films, there has not been a great track record of having Black characters in their feature animation films. It took Disney 72 yeas to put a Black princess on screen. When we finally did get one with “The Princess And The Frog,” they turned her into an animal for a majority of the film. I love the movie, but WTF! That’s only after having two movies set in Africa with not one Black character in them (“The Lion King” and “Tarzan”).
However, this is not just a problem limited to Disney. It is still a huge surprise when people of color (whether Black, Asian or Latino) are present in the main cast of anything. Whenever a new project is announced, I find myself looking to see if there are any Black characters in the cast. Not that the lack of having a Black person on the cast will keep me from seeing the project, but there is still a twinge of disappointment when I do watch.
Since 1940, the United States Postal Service has paid homage to the countless achievements made by African-American men and women through stamps that immortalize those individuals who had an impact on this country’s history.
Now Robert Robinson Taylor (pictured), the first academically trained black architect in the U.S. and, coincidentally, the great-grandfather of Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama, was honored on USPS’ 38th Black Heritage stamp, issued yesterday, February 12.
Taylor was born in Wilmington, N.C. 1868 to a middle-class family. Taylor’s grandfather was a white slave owner, who freed his son, Henry Taylor, in 1847.Robert’s mother was descended from free blacks since before the Civil War. Upon graduating high school, Taylor worked for his father a bit but then attended the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where prejudice awaited him and the other handful of blacks who dared to attend.
During his four years at MIT, Taylor worked hard and managed to maintain an above average grade point average. He went on to graduate from MIT in 1892 becoming the first black person to receive a degree from the university.
Upon graduating MIT, Taylor married his wife, Nellie and landed a job at Tuskegee as an architect and educator through a close relationship he forged with Booker T. Washington. Taylor designed most of the university’s buildings built before 1932. He retired from his university posts in 1935.
Taylor collapsed and passed away in 1942 while attending a service at the Tuskegee chapel which he had designed.
Last year the USPS honored the meritorious works of such African-American greats as Shirley Chisholm, Ralph Ellison, Jimi Hendrix, C. Alfred “Chief” Anderson, Edna Lewis and Wilt Chamberlain through stamps. article by Ruth Manuel-Logan via newsone.com
Untitled, circa 1960s, from the portfolio Black Beauty Pageants (Photograph: Raphael Albert/Victoria and Albert Museum) “Staying Power: Photographs of Black British Experience 1950s-1990s” is the culmination of a seven-year collaboration between the Victoria & Albert Museum and Brixton’s Black Cultural Archive to increase the number of black British photographers and images of black Britain in the V&A collection. It aims to raise awareness of the contribution of black Britons to British culture and society, as well as to the art of photography.
Over the last seven years the V&A has been working with Black Cultural Archives to acquire photographs either by black photographers or which document the lives of black people in Britain. Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), the Museum has been able to collect 118 works by 17 artists. To complement the photographs, Black Cultural Archives have collected oral histories from a range of subjects including the photographers themselves, their relatives, and the people depicted in the images. Staying Power: Photographs of Black British Experience 1950s-1990sis at the Black Cultural Archive (bcaheritage.org.uk) until June 30th and at the Victoria & Albert Museum from February 16th to May 24th (vam.ac.uk). Some of the images on display follow below: HD-1469 (Pineapple), 1969 (Photograph: The Estate of J. D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere/Victoria and Albert Museum) Miss Black & Beautiful, circa 1970s (Photograph: Raphael Albert/Victoria and Albert Museum) She Rockers (London Rap/Dance Crew), Shepherd’s Bush Green, London, 1988 (Photograph: Normski/Victoria and Albert Museum) 4 Aces Club, Count Shelley Sound System, Hackney, London, 1974 (Photograph: Dennis Morris/Victoria and Albert Museum) article via guardian.com; additions by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (follow@lakinhutcherson)
Sonya Clark, chair of the Department of Craft and Material studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, shared the first prize at ArtPrize, an international competition held annually in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She will split the $200,000 first place cash award. Clark enlisted 12 hairstylists to craft her head into a work of art for the judges consideration.
Clark is a native of Washington, D.C. Both of her parents are from the Caribbean. She is a graduate of Amherst College in Massachusetts. She earned a bachelor of fine arts degree at the Art Institute of Chicago and a master of fine arts degree from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Before joining the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University, Clark was the Baldwin-Bascom Professor of Creative Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. article via jbhe.com
Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison has an eleventh novel coming out late April titled God Help the Child.
Morrison’s previous novels include The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved, for which she received an American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Spare and unsparing, God Help the Child is a searing tale about the way childhood trauma shapes and misshapes the life of the adult. At the center: a woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life; but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love until she told a lie that ruined the life of an innocent woman, a lie whose reverberations refuse to diminish…Booker, the man Bride loves and loses, whose core of anger was born in the wake of the childhood murder of his beloved brother…Rain, the mysterious white child, who finds in Bride the only person she can talk to about the abuse she’s suffered at the hands of her prostitute mother… and Sweetness, Bride’s mother, who takes a lifetime to understand that “what you do to children matters. And they might never forget.”
GBN volunteer Becky Schonbrun recently informed us about an inspiring program out of Chicago for at-risk youth called Storycatchers Theatre, which, according to their website, has been “preparing young people to make thoughtful life choices through the process of writing, producing and performing original musical theatre inspired by personal stories” for over 30 years.
While participating in storytelling, scriptwriting, and performance-skills residencies with Storycatchers artists, the youth participants not only get a chance to write songs, poems, stories and scenes inspired by personal experiences, they get paid to do so. The process reinforces their recognition of choices and consequences, enhancing the ability and desire of participants to make choices that lead to positive outcomes.
In November of 2013, Storycatchers received a NATIONAL ARTS & HUMANITIES YOUTH PROGRAM AWARD in recognition of its work with detained and incarcerated youth. Founder and Artistic Director Meade Palidofsky traveled to Washington DC to accept the award from First Lady Michelle Obama. The National Arts & Humanities Youth Program Awards are an initiative of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH). The President’s Committee partners with the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to administer the program.
To see video of this inspiring program and to hear from the participants in their own words, click here.
“Flip For Your Fate?”, a staged reading of works in progress by Storycatchers Theatre at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center, will be held on Dec. 5 at 6 p.m. Admission is free. Reservations are required.
To learn about other upcoming Storycatchers performances, click here.
Giovanni and 9-month-old Ethan chill on their Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn stoop. (Photo by Marcus Franklin)
By Marcus Franklin This photo essay is part of Life Cycles of Inequity: A Colorlines Series on Black Men. In this installment, we explore and challenge the notion that black families face a crisis of fatherhood. The installment includes a dispatch from Baltimore, in which four dads challenge the easy assumption that all children of unwed mothers have absent fathers.
In June of 2013 I started photographing black men and their children and created The Fatherhood Project, the online home for photos that capture them in ordinary moments. A single dad helping his daughter with math homework during a break at work. A dad teaching his daughter how to walk as they wait to see a doctor. A father and son chilling on a stoop.
Why photograph black men and their children? What’s extraordinary about these subjects?
For starters, black men taking care of our children is, on some level, revolutionary—and a form of resistance to the legacies of laws and other tools used to hinder our ability to parent. During the trans-Atlantic slave trade, for example, fathers were routinely separated from their children as family members were sold. And currently, disproportionately and consistently high incarceration and unemployment rates for black men have made it difficult, if not impossible for many to parent. There’s also the disproportionately high rate of homicide among black men, whether by people in their own communities or at the hands of the state. My own father was murdered by a cop a couple of weeks before my 15th birthday.
As New York Times writer Brent Staples asked in a tweet this past Fathers’ Day: “Imagine yourself jailed on a low-level Rockefeller-era drug charge. Now a felon: denied a job, housing and the vote. How would you ‘Father’”?
Anyway, many from the digital community have put the idea of racebending on its head by creating ethnic versions of their favorite characters from books, film and TV. It’s a fairly common practice among online artists. Julia, in particular, has gone on a run of re-doing Disney heroines with an Indian version of Rapunzel and a 
Since 1940, the United States Postal Service has paid homage to the countless achievements made by African-American men and women through stamps that immortalize those individuals who had an impact on this country’s history.
Sonya Clark, chair of the Department of Craft and Material studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, shared the first prize at ArtPrize, an international competition held annually in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She will split the $200,000 first place cash award.
Clark enlisted 12 hairstylists to craft her head into a work of art for the judges consideration.
Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison has an eleventh novel coming out late April titled God Help the Child.
In November of 2013, Storycatchers received a NATIONAL ARTS & HUMANITIES YOUTH PROGRAM AWARD in recognition of its work with detained and incarcerated youth. Founder and Artistic Director Meade Palidofsky traveled to Washington DC to accept the award from First Lady Michelle Obama. The National Arts & Humanities Youth Program Awards are an initiative of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH). The President’s Committee partners with the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to administer the program.