A weekly digest of things to watch, read, and hear from the comforts of your home, selected by Art21-featured artists and Art21 staff.
In this moment when so many members of our community are feeling unsafe, Artists Space supports the protests in New York City and across the country addressing police brutality and systemic racism. The inherent racial inequality in all aspects of our society, the arts included, implicates is too. Pictured is a short, familiar list of just some of the black people killed by police. We are reflecting on their deaths, watching and listening, so that we may help stand with our community as a resource beyond this period of protest.
OMB stands with the #BlackLivesMatter movement. As an institution we are examining how to broaden our collective understanding of the steps needed to confront inequity, exploitation, and white supremacy.
We acknowledge our responsibility to combat systems of injustice and racism within our own spaces and wherever we encounter them—not just in this moment, but as an active, ongoing initiative.
We encourage you to join us in supporting the organizations that are doing this vital work year-round. Below is a list of growing resources, funds, petitions, protest information, and more.
As a means of taking action, please support grassroots organizations, and champion the voices of the movement.
In this moment of profound reckoning for our country, I'm stunned by having witnessed so brazenly the ongoing consequences of whiteness being weaponized against Black bodies. I grieve for the Black lives taken from us: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many others. I'm also pained by the toll COVID-19 has taken on our country, our city, our borough, and our neighbors.
BRIC shares in the loss, rage, and sadness of our community in Brooklyn and across the country. As a group of individuals, we have wrestled with finding the right words and the right actions while doing our civic duty of letting our voices be heard out on the streets. As an institution, we will continue to elevate underrepresented voices by building platforms for them and helping them channel their creativity and message.
Museums are not neutral. In this moment, we are reasserting our commitment to our communities. We are standing in solidarity with and affirm Black Lives Matter. Our stance as an institution is absolutely not neutral on this point.
Founded in 1971, the Bronx Museum has always been committed to community activism and fighting against systemic inequality. We believe it is necessary not just to maintain this fight, but to accelerate our commitment to doing what’s right. This is the time for action through communication, camaraderie, and resource sharing.
Black lives matter. We stand in solidarity with activists and organizers across the country and around the world who are mobilizing against state-sanctioned violence and systemic racism.
“We are tired of calling the names of people who are becoming ancestors before it is their time.” - @chasinggarza Alicia Garza, Co-Founder, #BlackLivesMatter speaking at the 2016 #CTSummit ‘Occupy the Future’.
These words, taken from Garza’s keynote address at the 2016 Creative Summit in Washington D.C, echo with urgency today. Issues of inequity and the systemic violence against black and brown bodies, and other marginalized people, must remain at the forefront of public discourse. We mourn these individuals - George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery - whose lives have been unjustly stolen. Let us not be distracted from the ongoing struggle to dismantle the systems and histories that have allowed their lives, along with too many others, to be cut short.
Danspace Project is standing in solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter and grieving incalculable losses, including Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Tony McDade, Nina Pop, and Breonna Taylor. We are enraged. We are in conversation with staff and colleagues. Mostly, we are listening to Black artists and curators. Staying silent is not an option and we will use our platform to share critical anti-racist resources. We are interrogating the legacy of our historically white-led organization. This is far from enough. [Additional post here]
A personal response to what's happening now through the lens of my past and the pledge of allegiance to “the flag and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.”
As a young student in the segregated and unequal schools in Chicago, I was obliged to repeat this pledge at the beginning of each day. I cannot say when I came to fully understand the lie that covered up the truth of what this country actually stands for. I do not need to cite that here for I believe that it will only be fully unveiled with a “truth and reconciliation commission.”
FREE CRIB 4 Black Lives Matter is a pit stop on the way to attend protests from the streets, for outside people of all kinds. free food, to-go protest kits, medic supplies, and places to take a load off. 150 1st Avenue (Manhattan) 3pm - 7pm. dm @radio.bonita with questions.
As the situation around COVID-19 continues to evolve, we are taking every necessary step to protect the health of our staff and visitors. At this point in time, we have decided to temporarily close the Queens Museum until further notice. This decision has been made to support regional and national efforts limiting the spread of COVID-19. We encourage you to check our website and social media channels for regular updates, and look forward to welcoming you back to the Queens Museum in due course.
Socrates Sculpture Park stands in support of black lives and the fight for racial justice. We continue to believe in the power of art to create change and remain committed to uplifting artists who illuminate our country’s history of systemic racism and inequality.
The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and thousands of other black people at the hands of law enforcement and white supremacists cannot go unpunished or unremembered. We condemn acts of white supremacist violence towards members of our community like Christian Cooper. We protest and stand in solidarity with those who protest these actions.
We write this as the white co-founders of a small not-for-profit organization which is devoted to a niche of the experimental performing arts community that, historically speaking, has been predominantly white. Like many of its peers, The Chocolate Factory Theater has begun the work of undoing its relationship to systemic racism and the continuing oppression of indigenous communities and communities of color. We will not claim any particular successes on this front; the work continues and will continue throughout our lifetimes and the lifetime of this organization. The Chocolate Factory Theater is committed to becoming more accountable and to doing better.
The Kitchen stands in solidarity with protestors throughout the world calling for justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and Ahmaud Arbery, amongst countless others whose lives have been taken at the hands of police brutality and white supremacy. We believe that Black Lives Matter, and that serious reform is needed to address the pervasive structural inequities embedded in our social systems.
As a Black-rooted and POC-centered organization, The Laundromat Project dedicates itself to making art that builds community and creates change so we can manifest a world in which Black life is eternal.
We work from the unshakeable, fundamental belief that Black humanity is a given. No exceptions. We use the awesome power of our collective imaginations and creativity to build a future in which George Floyd, David McAtee, Breonna Taylor, Nina Pop, Ahmaud Arbery, Atatiana Jefferson, Tony McDade, Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, Yusef Hawkins, Eleanor Bumpers, Emmett Till, and every single Black person on Earth can live their life to the fullest and in whatever way they desire.
On supporting and participating in the movement for racial justice via donations, protests, and mutual aid.
Visual AIDS responds to recent anti-Black violence and commits to producing a long-term plan for addressing racism and white supremacy within our organizational structures and practices.
