PRINCETON, NJ – The Princeton University Art Museum presents Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, an exhibition exploring the presence of Africans and their descendants in Europe from the late 1400s to the early 1600s and the roles these individuals played in society as reflected in art. Africans living in or visiting Europe during this time included artists, aristocrats, saints, slaves, and diplomats. The exhibition of vivid portraits created from life—themselves a part of the wider Renaissance focus on the identity and perspective of the individual—encourages face-to-face encounters with these individuals and poses questions about the challenges of color, class, and stereotypes that a new diversity brought to Europe. Aspects of this material have long been studied by scholars, but this exhibition marks the first time the subject has been presented to a wider American public.
Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe will be on view at the Princeton University Art Museum from February 16, 2013 to June 9, 2013, and will feature over 65 paintings, sculptures, prints, manuscripts, and printed books by great artists such as Dürer, Bronzino, Pontormo, Veronese, and Rubens. Organized by the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore in collaboration with the Princeton University Art Museum, the exhibition includes artworks drawn from major museums and private collections across Europe and the United States, including works from both Princeton and the Walters.
“The exhibition focuses new attention on an important but poorly understood aspect of Western history and the history of representation and thus continues our commitment to expanding the borders of scholarship and public understanding,” according to Princeton University Art Museum Director James Steward. “This exhibition affords an exceptional opportunity to discover great works of art and encourages us to reflect on our understanding of cultural identity both past and present.”
The presence of Africans and their descendants in Europe was partially a consequence of the drive for new markets beginning in the late 1400s. This included the importation of West Africans as slaves, supplanting the trade of slaves of Slavic origin. There was also increasing conflict with North African Muslims and heightened levels of diplomatic and trade initiatives by African monarchs.
Posts published in “Arts / Style”
In the three years since a massive 7.0 magnitude earthquake shook up Haiti, the recovery process is still ongoing and today the Timberland clothing company is at the forefront.
In partnership with a local non-governmental organization, the Smallholder Farmers Alliance, Timberland supports an agroforestry program to train Haitian farmers to improve crop yields and has planted 2.2 million trees along the way. According to Forbes.com, An additional 1 million trees will be planted this year as well as in 2014 and 2015.
The project will help improve the environmental, economic and social conditions in the Gonaives region. Timberland and Smallholder Farmers Alliance are helping local farmers learn how to improve crop yields, develop eight community tree nurseries and support agricultural training centers in the region.
article via thegrio.com
Every year, The Root embarks on a nationwide search for 25 of the brightest African-American innovators between the ages of 16 and 22 for its annual Young Futurists list. The Root looks for students and recent graduates who are making waves in the fields of business, green innovation, social activism, science and the arts and who use their talents to make the world a better place.
“We’re helping to shape a change in culture about what young people can and cannot do,” explains Charles Orgbon, a 16-year-old futurist from Dacula, Ga., who founded the environmental organization Greening Forward. “With the right support, young people can do anything.”
The young men and women who make up the 2013 class represent the true promise of our country’s future. There’s Michael Tubbs, a 22-year-old Stanford University graduate who ran for his hometown of Stockton, Calif.’s City Council — and won — after seeing his cousin fall victim to youth violence. And Trinity Russell, a high schooler from Long Island, N.Y., who discovered key behavioral differences between laboratory-raised and wild fruit flies; her findings have major implications for researchers who use the insects in their experiments. Or Thekia Cheeseborough, a Spelman College student from Jacksonville, Fla., who, inspired by the struggles of her own young parents, created a program that connects teen moms to academic and career resources.
Every day in February, we will highlight a different futurist. Check The Root’s home page daily to learn more, and click here to see the full list of 2013 Young Futurists.
article via theroot.com
(Misty Copeland/Photo: Hello Beautiful)
Ballet dancer Misty Copeland has a two-book deal. Copeland, 30, is working on a memoir for Simon & Schuster‘s Touchstone imprint and picture book for G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, part of Penguin Group (USA). Copeland helped break ground as an African-American female soloist for the American Ballet Theatre. According to a release Wednesday by the two publishers, both of her books are scheduled for 2014.
In her memoir, Copeland is expected to describe the battles between her mother and her dance instructors while she was a teen over whether she should be allowed to pursue her career and who was her legal guardian.
article via blackamericaweb.com
KALAMAZOO, MI – A mentor for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Kalamazoo pointed to a black and white photograph of U.S. Army General George S. Patton pinning a Silver Star Medal on an African American soldier during World War II.
“Thank God you’ll never have to see a war like that,” Howard Lynch said to the Little Brother he mentors, Zack Skiles.
The “African Americans in World War II” exhibit at theKalamazoo Valley Museum opened on January 12, displaying 40 photographs of how life was for men and women during the most widespread war in human history.
“It’s interesting we’re finally starting to feature African Americans in military history,” Lynch said. “It’s nice to see them get their day in the sun.”
The exhibit on the first floor gallery is on loan from The National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. On the walls are photographs of famous soldiers such as heavyweight boxer Joe Louis and Benjamin O. Davis, the first African American General Officer in military history, and also unknown privates engaging in everyday military life.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker has teamed up with jewelry designer Jessica Mindich to repurpose some of the guns and bullet casings to create bracelets that raise awareness about gun violence.
Newark has figured out a way to turn bullets into bling. Newark Mayor Cory Booker has teamed up with jewelry designer Jessica Mindich to repurpose some of the guns and bullet casings confiscated by the Newark Police Department. They’re using the metal to create bracelets that raise awareness about gun violence.
The bracelets are part of the Caliber Collection and range from $150 for a simple cuff to $375 for a bangle with an embedded diamond. The steel jewelry collection is melted down from confiscated guns that were used as evidence in Newark trials, according to Mindich. The brass bracelets are made from shell casings found at crime scenes. Twenty percent of each sale will go toward Newark’s gun buyback program.
The State Museum in Albany, NY is marking the 100th birthday of photographer Gordon Parks with an exhibit of his works. The show opens on Jan. 26 and will showcase six decades of Parks’ photographs. It will include his most famous photo, “American Gothic, Washington, D.C.,” which shows a black cleaning woman standing in front of an American flag with a broom and a mop.
State Education Commissioner John King says Parks’ work helped drive the Civil Rights movement by exposing the stark realities of life faced by many African Americans.
The State Museum display is organized by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The exhibit includes images from the Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information collections at the Library of Congress.
article by Associated Press via huffingtonpost.com
State Education Commissioner John King says Parks’ work helped drive the Civil Rights movement by exposing the stark realities of life faced by many African Americans.
The State Museum display is organized by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The exhibit includes images from the Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information collections at the Library of Congress.
article by Associated Press via huffingtonpost.com
Studio Museum in Harlem is awarding its Wein Prize, one of the most lucrative in contemporary art, to Jennie C. Jones, a 44-year-old Brooklyn-based painter and sculptor whose work – which she describes as “listening as a conceptual practice” – centers on music.
The prize, with a $50,000 award, has been given every year since 2006 to established or emerging African-American artists. It was started by George Wein, a founder of the Newport Jazz Festival, in honor of his wife, Joyce Alexander Wein, a longtime trustee of the museum who died in 2005.
The prize, whose announcement was delayed by Hurricane Sandy, will be given at a museum gala on Feb. 4. Thelma Golden, the museum’s director and chief curator, said in an interview that Ms. Jones was chosen “not only to celebrate the rigor and strength of her practice, but also because of the thinking about what this amazingly generous prize could do for her at this point in her career.”
Ms. Jones, who will have a solo exhibition in May at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, has been featured in several shows over the last decade at the Studio Museum and in Chelsea. Her work often uses the language of Minimalism to explore, and sometimes appropriate, avant-garde jazz and other modern music.
“I kept seeing these amazing parallels in ideologies for both disciplines, especially in jazz and abstraction,” Ms. Jones has said. “Conceptualism allows these different media to occupy the same space.”
article by Randy Kennedy via nytimes.com
The prize, whose announcement was delayed by Hurricane Sandy, will be given at a museum gala on Feb. 4. Thelma Golden, the museum’s director and chief curator, said in an interview that Ms. Jones was chosen “not only to celebrate the rigor and strength of her practice, but also because of the thinking about what this amazingly generous prize could do for her at this point in her career.”Ms. Jones, who will have a solo exhibition in May at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, has been featured in several shows over the last decade at the Studio Museum and in Chelsea. Her work often uses the language of Minimalism to explore, and sometimes appropriate, avant-garde jazz and other modern music.
“I kept seeing these amazing parallels in ideologies for both disciplines, especially in jazz and abstraction,” Ms. Jones has said. “Conceptualism allows these different media to occupy the same space.”
article by Randy Kennedy via nytimes.com
Search engine giant Google honors MLK Day with Martin Luther King Jr.’s image on its default page. To remember his life, contributions and the future he envisions, Google has a yearly Google Doodle for the day. Today, the Doodle is in shades of blue, green and yellow. With Dr. King’s face as one of the “O”s in the Google logo.
Google has had a Martin Luther King, Jr. logo since 2003, skipping some years but being consistent with the logo since 2006. To see all the past Google Doodles for Martin Luther King Day, see The Google Doodle directory.
article written by Barry Schwartz via searchengineland.com
(article contributed by Lesa Lakin)
One of Camilo José Vergara’s photographs on view at the New-York Historical Society.
Since the 1970s Camilo José Vergara has been photographing murals of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. painted on walls in cities across the United States. Through them, he has documented social and political changes in the country itself. On a wall in the Callowhill section of Philadelphia, above, Dr. King is the potent orator of the Washington marches; on Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem he’s a solitary, anxious visionary. In Los Angeles his figure is all but buried under fresh graffiti; in the South Bronx, the site of turf wars between blacks and Latinos in the 1970s, his face is scratched out.
Most of the murals were based on published images of Dr. King, edited to context. With trends in immigration, he takes on Latino and Asian features. Over time he is joined by a shifting pantheon of timely heroes: Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Michael Jackson and President Obama. As one person explained to Mr. Vergara: “Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run. Obama ran so we all can fly.” On the evidence of the 30 pictures in “The Dream Continues: Photographs of Martin Luther King Murals by Vergara” at the New-York Historical Society through May 5, the popularity of other heroes brightens and fades while Dr. King’s mystique lives on.
article by Holland Cotter via nytimes.com