“A Conversation with Melvin Van Peebles & Walter Mosley”
A CONVERSATION WITH MELVIN VAN PEEBLES AND WALTER MOSLEY
“A Conversation with Melvin Van Peebles and Walter Mosley” took place on Monday night, April 6, 2015 at the Global Center’s Grand Hall at New York University to a full house. It was indeed wonderful to see such a turnout for these two “masters of their crafts”. The event was arranged and moderated by scholar, filmmaker, art historian and Director of the Institute of African American Affairs at New York University, Professor Manthia Diawara. Famed best selling novelist Walter Mosley introduced Melvin.
Melvin Van Peebles in his inimitable style, speaks words of encouragement to the audience at New York University.
It seemed that the night belonged to Melvin. Always as relaxed and comfortable before an audience of thousands as he is before an audience of one, Melvin punctuated film clips of his early films, “Story of a Three Day Pass”, “Sweetback’s Badass Song”, and “Watermelon Man” with his patently humorous background narratives depicting many daily realities of his life on and off the set during each project. Unmasking the wisdom that comes with experience and age, these anecdotes seemed to be both enlightening and entertaining for the audience who, like me, seemed to be unabashedly among the fondest of his fans. One of the things that sticks out in my memory of the evening and that I had not appreciated until that moment was a comment from Gordon Parks in one of the film clips. Gordon Parks remarked that Melvin had been very “courageous” in his work. I think that is “Right On!” for Melvin. The word “courageous” encapsulates the essence of the man in his work and in his life. Good to see an old friend doing good!
Other commitments required me to leave before the conclusion, but I have no doubt that the event will be well remembered by all those in attendance.
Black Portraitures[s] II: Imaging the Black Body and Re-Staging Histories
Headquartered at NYU’s 57 acre, 15th century Florentine Villa “La Pietra” this conference Black Portraiture{s} II: Imaging the Black Body and Re-Staging Histories, will be the sixth in this series and once again, a collaboration between New York University (NYU) and Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. The conference will open in Florence, Italy on Thursday, May 28, 2015 and continue through Sunday, May 31, 2015. This years conference is organized by Deborah Willis, Ellyn Toscano, Awam Ampka, Ulrich Baer, Henry Louis Gates, Robert Holmes, Manthia Diawara, Thelma Golden, and Cheryl Finley.
Attendance is expected to be high with over 800 registered attendees, many of whom will also be visiting the Biennale in nearby Venice, Italy during the same time period.
The conference will once again bring together an international group of artists and scholars to continue an interdisciplinary discussion of historical and contemporary portrayals of the Black Body in Western Civilization.
This blog will report conference activities on a daily basis from locations in Florence. Our aim is to share the experience of attending the BLACK PORTRAITURE{S} II conference with people who would be interested but not able to attend in person. Throughout the conference we will photograph and write commentary on talks and discussions as they take place in the various venues in the city of Florence and at La Pietra, NYU’s 15th century Tuscan Villa overlooking the city.
Stairway to the second level of the Rotunda at the Villa La Pietra
The most recent conference in the series, held in Paris, France in January 2013, attracted a diverse community of scholars, included over 400 attendees, and produced an outstanding body of work on the portrayal of the Black Body in the West. Many scholars, students, as well as non-professionals throughout the diaspora who have become aware of the Paris conference have shown a great interest in the scholarly work in history, art history, and art that has been produced in the past few years as depicted in these conferences.
Black Portraiture{s} II: IMAGING THE BLACK BODY AND RESTAGING HISTORIES
THE EXHIBITION:
This year’s conference will also include an exhibition of a portion of the art collection at La Pietra, the historical Villa that is home to New York University at Florence, Italy. This
African warrior/hunter carries a quiver of arrows on his back and a bow in his right hand.
exhibition will be centered on depictions of the Black Body as “Blackamoors” within La Pietra’s art collections.
These ornamental sculptural representations of the Black Body have been held with some esteem for at least five centuries in many art collections throughout the Western world. Where and why did this practice originate? What does this dichotomy signify when European cultures that have sought to enslave, villainize, and dehumanize African people have at the same time, made them subjects of their ornamental art? “Often encrusted with gold and precious stones and typically immaculately attired in the costumes of their period, these highly prized and costly figures were in ancient times and still are today, placed in prominent high visibility areas in the homes, mansions, and villas of the moneyed elite across the western world. For the owner there is no dichotomy at all. The possession of the black body as represented in the Blackamoor is simply another signifier of the wealth, power, and status of the owner.”
THE CONFERENCE:
While the art exhibition in various museum venues throughout the city of Florence will feature the “Blackamoors,” the conference itself will engage wider discussions about the many ways in which the black body has been imagined in the West. “The art and politics of representing blackness has has been completely controlled and manipulated by non-african powers over the centuries.” The significance of this conference is powerfully expressed in the following statement by the conference organizers .
“Centuries of migration (whether forced or voluntary) encounters and exchanges shaped imbalanced structures of power and knowledge. Representation became, in the hands of those with power, a tool to reconfigure the identities of peoples engaged in these exchanges through various technologies of representation—literature, art, popular culture, etc. Constructs of race and sexuality defined these identities, setting precedents that continue to color our ways of seeing. More recently, the universality of black culture and its global presence have heightened the visibility of the black body in international sports, music, fashion, and the visual arts, with implications worthy of much critique. The conference will examine the ways in which the same technologies of representation can and are being used to contest that knowledge, and to offer counter-images.”
Conference Venues:
THE ODEON THEATRE: FLORENCE, ITALY
Registration and sign-in of all attendees will start on Thursday, May 28th – Day #1 from 5:00-8:00 PM at Villa La Pietra, Via Bolognese 120, 50139 Firenze, Italy. A reception and open house will follow immediately at the Villa Pietra from 6:30 – 9:00 PM.
Day 2 – Friday, May 29th Registration – 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM at the Odeon Theatre which is housed in the fifteenth century Palazzo Strozzino in Metropolitan Florence at Piazza Strozzi, 50123 Firenze, Italy.
The portrait by Johann Zoffany commissioned in 1779 by Lord Mansfield that resurrected the story of “Belle”.
-BELLE –
The Motion Picture
I saw the motion picture “Belle” when it opened in New York City in May 2014 to approving audiences and strong ‘word of mouth’ acclaim. The beautifully written screenplay by Missan Sagay is based on a true story. As told by Ms Sagay she discovered the story under very unlikely circumstances as she took a walk through a nearby palace during a break from her medical studies at St. Andrews University more than a decade ago. During her walk along one corridor in the palace she came upon a room where a large portrait of two women hung on a wall. The way the two women seemed to relate to each other in the painting caught her attention and remained in her mind’s eye for years afterwards. After the completion of her medical degree and a few years of work as a practicing physician and screenplay writer, Ms Sagay decided to revisit and research the portrait that had caught her attention years earlier during that walk in the Scone Palace in Scotland. This research led to the discovery of the story of Dido Elizabeth Bell the daughter of a woman, Maria Belle, who had died over 250 years ago in a British colony deep in the American South*.
The story of Belle was unearthed, wonderfully researched, and masterfully told in the screenplay by the gifted Anglo-Nigerian writer Misan Sagay (‘Secret Lives of Women’, and ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’).Photo (http://thesource.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Misan-Sagay.png)
Maria Belle, a beautiful enslaved African woman, was found in the ‘hold’ of a captured Spanish ship during a naval battle between warships of the Spanish and British governments off the coast of 18th century Cuba. Maria Belle had been rescued from the Spanish warship by Sir John Lindsay, an officer in the British Royal Navy and captain of the 28 gun British warship HMS Trent. Marie and Sir John Lindsay fell in love after her rescue from the Spanish and apparently lived together near Mobile, Alabama where Sir John was stationed after the end of the war with Spain. They had a child, the eponymous Dido Elizabeth “Belle”.
Gugu Mbartha Raw stars as Dido Elizabeth Belle in The Motion Picture “Belle” Born in Oxfordshire to a British mother and a South African father. Gugu (Gugu is short for Gugulethu, a xhosa word meaning “our pride”) has appeared in on stage as Cleopatra (Anthony and Cleopatra), Juliet Capulet (Romeo and Juliet), Monique (Gethsemane), and Ophelia (Hamlet). PHOTO (http://thesource.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/belle-poster.jpg)
The film opens when Sir John Lindsay, having been recalled from his post in Alabama and ordered to report for duty elsewhere in the British Empire, arrives in London to leave his young (perhaps five years old) daughter with his Great Uncle Lord John Mansfield to be brought up and raised with Lord Mansfield’s family in England.
The film depicts a period in the lives of Lord Mansfield and his family as they lived in a small town near London toward the end of the 18th century. Lord Mansfield, his wife, and daughter were people of some ‘means’ who led lives of historical significance but who are perhaps better known now than they were during their lifetimes. Their story though, and the peculiar circumstances of their lives, holds some special relevance in today’s world. The lead character, Dido Elizabeth Belle, a mixed race child, is unceremoniously delivered to her grand uncle to be reared while her father goes off to war. The grand uncle, Lord Mansfield, perhaps the most powerful man in the British Empire during the latter half of the 18th century, is also Lord Chief Justice of England. Mortified at first, Lord Mansfield hesitatingly takes the young girl into his home and raises her as his daughter. During this same time period one of the most important legal cases in the history of the Empire is presented to Lord Mansfield for a decision. The case involves and eventually leads to the abolishment of the slave trade in the British Empire. Thus the stage is set for a wonderful love story against a backdrop of great historical significance centered around the most powerful man in the British Empire during the latter half of the 18th century.
THE DIRECTOR
The film is directed masterfully by the much acclaimed British director Amma Assante.
The film is directed masterfully by the much acclaimed British director Amma Assante. Ms Assante was brought in by producer Damian Jones to direct “Belle” after her directorial debut with the film “A Way of Life” won awards in England and the United States. Ms. Amma Asante began her career as a child actor, became a screen play writer, and has now developed into one of the most promising new film directors in the motion picture business.
The London Film Festival awarded Asante the inaugural Alfred Dunhill UK Film Talent Award, created to recognize the achievements of a new or emerging British writer/director who has shown great skill and imagination in bringing originality and verve to film-making.
Groundbreaking – National Museum of African American History and Culture
On Monday night March 24, 2014, in a reception room on the 52nd floor of the 55 story Bank of America Tower in Manhattan, the Bank of America, represented by its’ Chief Executive Officer Brian Monyhan and other top executives, hosted a very special reception. The occasion celebrated the birth of the new Museum of African American History and Culture now under construction on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.. Brian Monyhan opened the reception by announcing the Bank’s decision to contribute an additional 1 million dollars toward the project’s 500 million dollar budget. This contribution brings the total amount contributed by Bank of America to 2 million dollars and the total amount raised thus far for the project to 410 million dollars of the 500 million dollar budget. Groundbreaking for the museum took place 4 months ago and construction is well underway.
View from 52nd Floor Reception Room
To commemorate the celebration, and in addition to the 1 million dollar contribution, Monyhan announced the gift to the museum of “Daufuskie Island”, the exhibition of photographs produced by Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe during her photographic documentation of the Gullah culture thirty five years ago. The Gullah community had thrived as a society of freed African people who had been enslaved during the antebellum years on the sea islands off the coast of South Carolina. The slaveholders moved away from the islands during the civil war leaving the plantations in the care of the formerly enslaved Gullah people. At the close of the Civil War the Gullah people were given the opportunity to buy plots of land that had been subdivided by the union army for this explicit purpose. This community grew and prospered on the islands for many years in relative isolation after the war ended. In so doing the Gullah people were able to preserve “more of their original African language, and cultural heritage than any other community in the United States”. During the early twentieth century a series of natural disasters along with increasing contact with the outside world brought attention to the islands. Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe began the work of documenting the Gullah culture in 1977-1981 as the Gullah culture was about to be completely absorbed into the twentieth century world of tourism and mega-resorts. Twenty-five years later a collection of Moutoussamy-Ashe’s photographs was sponsored by Merrill Lynch as a traveling exhibition of the Gullah culture. The book “Daufuskie Island: Photographs by Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe” with Foreword by Alex Haley, was originally produced to accompany the traveling exhibition. This book has been updated with additional photographs from Moutoussamy-Ashe’s collection, a new Preface by Deborah Willis, Ph.D., and an epilogue by Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe. The work came into the possession of Bank of America when the company acquired Merrill Lynch in 2009. As a result of the Bank of America’s gift of the exhibition to the museum this unique and priceless work of art by Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, depicting the Gullah culture and the memory of the Gullah people, will now be preserved and secured into the distant future at the National Museum for African American History and Culture.
Construction Site – Museum of African American History and Culture
Lonnie Bunch, Director of the new museum, the man for whom the reception was held, spoke to the A-list gathering of board members, financial executives, business entrepreneurs, wealthy contributors, and to the scholars, historians, and artists who study and produce work in the African American culture, about his journey and his vision for the future of the museum.
In 2003 the indefatigable Congressman John Lewis, after 18 failed attempts, succeeded in moving his fellow congressmen to pass the act that created the National Museum of African American History and Culture as one of the museums that make up the Smithsonian Institution. The congressional act provided for the appropriation of $250 million in federal construction financing with another $250 million to come from the private sector to complete the $500 million budget. The museum is to be devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, art, history, and culture.
Lonnie Bunch was named as the founding director of the new museum. Bunch is no neophyte to the museum business. During the 1980’s he was curator and program manager for the California Afro American Museum in Los Angeles which he helped to build. He has taught at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. Bunch left his position as head of the Chicago Historical Society in 2005 to take the position of Director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Now, nine years later, enough money has been raised to start the construction of the 380,000 sf, 5 story structure on the 5 acre site next to the Washington Monument at the National Mall. Construction completion is projected for early 2016.
It is worthwhile now to applaud the monumental achievement of Lonnie Bunch, his staff and all of the collaborators on this project in recognition of the accomplishment of an amazing task.
This is a major step toward systematically compiling a history of the lives, art, and culture of the African American People. This museum will allow us to collect our artifacts, music, art, and history and to tell our own storyfor the benefit of future generations. It is very appropriate that the first two artifacts to arrive for installation at the museum are a Jim Crow-era rail car, and a 1930’s guard tower from Angola, the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary.
I enclose a list of the private contributors toward the 250 million dollars necessary for the completion of the museum development. As Americans we can be as proud of them as we are of Lonnie Bunch and John Lewis.
The major focus remains on raising the $90 million balance that will be necessary to complete the financing of the museum development.
Although construction continues over 30,000 artifacts have been contributed already for exhibition.
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE
Washington Square Park
Garibaldi is always here. The marble and granite statue has been here since it’s dedication in 1888.
one of my favorite spots in the city… even on cold days in winter (today the temperature is 14 degrees as I take my morning walk) even after a six-inch snowfall the park is a welcoming place.
Just a peaceful walk in the park
I like the privacy and the intimacy that this public space allows.
Beautiful Music in Bad Weather
Sometimes there is this young musician with his baby grand piano…he’s here today actually…playing Bethoven or Chopin…or another classical piece. He moves the baby grand about…sometimes he is near Garibaldi…other times nearer the fountain or the arch. He plays beautifully in all kinds of weather and the music can be heard throughout the park.
Sometimes there is a jazz group …but I don’t see them here so often in winter.
Young Lovers
There are always young lovers…just happy to be together…and old couples… sometimes happier than the young ones.
Everyone in his or her own bubble.. that sometimes allows for interaction from without…and sometimes not.
Just floating along in a kind of lazy, laid-back way…thats where I am today…
