Latest news with #CharlesH.WrightMuseumofAfricanAmericanHistory
New York Times
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Corrections: April 27, 2025
The Big City column this weekend on Page 3 about Steven F. Wilson, who ran a charter school network, misspells the given name of an author. She is Robin DiAngelo, not Robyn. An article this weekend on Page 8 about the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History coming under attack by the Trump administration for the diversity it represents misidentifies part of the title of Marie Madison-Patton, MOCAD's co-director. She is also the chief operating officer, not the chief financial officer. The article also describes incorrectly the role of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in the 'Code Switch' exhibition. The exhibition was first held at the center, not in partnership with it; a second part will open at MOCAD on May 2. This article also includes an outdated description of The Kitchen. Initially an artists collective, it is now an arts institution. This article also misstates the participation of community groups at MOCAD during the 'Gun Violence Memorial Project' exhibit. The groups will not be providing antidrug and anti-violence information as part of the exhibit. An article this weekend on Page 26 about the artist Ann Craven misspells the given name of the curator at the Farnsworth Art Museum. It is Jaime DeSimone, not Jamie. This article also misstates who would be organizing rotating displays at the show at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. They will be organized by three curators, not by students and prominent figures in the Maine art community. An article this weekend on Page 34 about Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão's first solo museum exhibit in New York misstates the name of the earliest plate made by Varejão for her show at the Hispanic Society Museum and Library. It is 'Mucura,' not 'Mucara.' An article this weekend on Page 43 about a space photography exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan reverses the descriptions of two images of a barred spiral galaxy that are displayed one above the other in the exhibition. The image on top, from the Hubble Space Telescope, looks like a swirl of light, not a circle of fire, and the bottom image, from the James Webb Space Telescope, resembles a circle of fire, not a swirl of light. An article this weekend on Page 44 about younger museum curators working to broaden audiences while focusing on populations and cultures that were previously ignored misstates the title of Nicola Lees at the Aspen Museum. She is the artistic director and chief executive, not the director. A review this weekend on Page 21 of 'On Air: The Triumph and Tumult of NPR,' by Steve Oney, misstates the reviewer's position at the Columbia Journalism Review. The reviewer, Sewell Chan, is the publication's former executive editor. Errors are corrected during the press run whenever possible, so some errors noted here may not have appeared in all editions.
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
City of Detroit's composer laureate to de-mystify jazz at Friday night concert
April is National Jazz Appreciation Month, and the city of Detroit's Office of Arts, Culture and Entrepreneurship (Detroit ACE) is marking the moment with a Friday, April 25, performance by the city's new composer laureate, Patrick Prouty. Bassist and composer Prouty's first concert in the role will take place at 6 p.m. at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. 'While I write music in all kinds of genres,' he said, 'the thing that I've done most is compose jazz music. I want this concert at the Charles Wright to show jazz composition in two different lights. The first thing is, of course, you write a tune and it's got a melody, chord changes and a groove, and trying to convey some kind of emotion. And then, the song in jazz music is also a vehicle for improvisation. 'When you listen to jazz improvisation, the piano solo you hear? That's a composition that is happening in the moment, and it will never be repeated. And what sometimes gets lost is, it's not just the improvisation of a soloist who's composing in the moment, but the bandmates that are playing with the soloist. It's collective improvisation, that's also part of the composition. That's the first half of the program.' In the second half, Prouty — along with pianist Phil Kelly and drummer Julian VanSlyke — will compose a song in real time before the audience's eyes (and ears). 'These are guys that I have 10,000 hours of making music with,' said Prouty, 'and we're going to go to the audience and ask for some musical direction. Like, 'Give me a tempo, give me a groove. Major key? Minor key? Happy? Sad? Funky? Ballad?' And then, in real time, the three of us are going to compose a song in the moment and then perform the song and solo over the song. We'll tie in both composing in the jazz vernacular, and the soloist and collective improvisation also being part of the compositional process, which is unique only to jazz.' He said that those who are new to jazz or skeptical about it should not be afraid to approach with open ears and hearts. 'You always hear these things: 'Oh, I don't understand jazz.' 'I hate jazz.' 'Jazz makes me nervous,' because you don't understand what it is. Country music, heavy metal, pop music, gives you whatever you need right from the get-go, meaning the listener does not need to be involved in the process. You can tune out, come right back, and it's just here you left off. 'Jazz music asks something of the listener. It asks the listener to come on the adventure with us, to be a passenger on the flight, to listen to where the soloist begins and where they end, and the collective improvisation in between. I've taught music for 15 years, and every time I show a young person how jazz works, they go, 'Oh, okay, now I know what to listen for,' and they sort of have a roadmap. So, if you've never been into jazz, or thought about coming to jazz because you didn't understand it, this is the concept for you.' Prouty also spoke about the larger, ongoing projects he's working on in his laureate role. 'The goals of the laureate position,' he said, 'are to, one, mentor young composers, young musicians. The other is to celebrate Detroit's history with music, so we are planning a digital music lab for young Detroiters, where we'll have multiple classes with stations that have keyboards and interfaces and digital audio workstations, and we'll be working on the artistry of composing digitally.' More: Detroit's first composer laureate says he'll tell the city's story in music More: Detroit's Hannan Center called 'one of Michigan's best-kept secrets' for senior citizens Prouty told the Free Press he's also working on a longform piece that will be performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in late 2025, comprised of five Detroit-inspired vignettes for orchestra. Detroit ACE director Rochelle Riley called Prouty 'wonderful, excellent.' 'The most wonderful thing,' she said, 'about working with someone as talented as Patrick Prouty is that all of his ideas are great. I don't have to give him assignments. We're lucky to have a poet laureate and a composer laureate who don't really need any hand holding. They have amazing spirit, and amazing love of Detroit. I am thrilled by what he's going to be doing Friday and what he's going to be doing all year.' Friday's 'Composing in the Moment' concert was sold out at press time; the event will be recorded for later streaming on the ACE website. Contact Free Press arts and culture reporter Duante Beddingfield at dbeddingfield@ This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit's composer laureate to de-mystify jazz at Friday concert
New York Times
23-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Detroit Art Institutions Resist Political Challenges to Diversity
Back in the 1960s, a prominent Detroit obstetrician had two passions — delivering babies and collecting artifacts that told the African American story. And just as those babies grew up, so did his collection. Today, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, named after that doctor, is one of the nation's pre-eminent and largest museums of its type, second only in size and scope to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Yet, as the Wright prepares to celebrate its 60th anniversary, the diversity it represents is coming under attack by the Trump administration, which has moved to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs wherever it can. Rather than retreat, the museum's leaders say, these attacks make its mission ever more urgent. Located in downtown Detroit, a city that is more than 70 percent Black, the museum traces the African American experience from slavery to the presidency of Barack Obama and beyond. The museum, started by Wright, contains works by Black artists, historical documents and letters, and offers an array of programs including a speaker series and an annual festival. To commemorate its 60 years, the museum is presenting a number of activities along with a special multimedia exhibit, 'Luminosity: A Detroit Arts Gathering,' which features Black artists who have worked, lived or studied in Detroit. (It opened April 4 and runs through March 31, 2026.) However unsettling the political winds from Washington may be, Neil Barclay, president and chief executive of the museum, said its core mission of elevating African American voices, as well as the upcoming celebration, will not change. 'We have to resist and persevere,' Barclay said in a video interview. 'Attempts to undermine the significance of our culture are nothing new to us. We will continue to tell our stories.' He added: 'We see African American history as part of American history and not separate from it. Inclusion is part of our mission. We want to use the resilience and courage of African Americans as a source of unity and not divisiveness.' The Wright museum is one of around 300 museums and institutions in the United States that are focused on African American culture and history. And there are no signs so far that anyone is in retreat. VedetColeman-Robinson, the president and chief executive of the Association of African American Museums, said that the Trump administration's attacks on diversity 'feel like the rug was pulled out from under us.' Even so, she said: 'I have not seen any indication we will slow down.' 'D.E.I. is part of our DNA,' Coleman-Robinson said by video. 'It's nothing we can just stop. We have a duty to tell the truth and make sure people coming to our spaces walk away with something they didn't know before. 'There was a time when we were not allowed to tell our stories and we did,' she added. 'As a community we pulled together and that's what's going to have to happen. We're going to have to depend on each other a little more.' Another leading Detroit institution, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, known as MOCAD and located blocks from the Wright, is also standing firm with two shows opening on May 2 that feature Black artists and themes of interest to Detroit's large Black population. One show focuses on gun violence and the other on African American artists in the internet age. 'D.E.I. is part of our core values,' said Marie Madison-Patton, MOCAD's co-director and chief financial officer, in a video interview. 'There is no change in how we do this work. We have a diverse perspective and our programs are a reflection of that.' The Wright museum traces its origins to Dr. Charles Wright's efforts to commemorate African American history by setting up a museum in 1965 for his collection, first in his medical office and then in a trailer parked outside his downtown Detroit practice. To describe Wright as a passionate collector is an understatement. He amassed rare documents, photographs, African masks, fine art, personal items from key historical figures and all sorts of memorabilia. Over time, the collection grew to include material from the civil rights era and oral histories of Black leaders. Wright also became one of the founders of the Association of African American Museums. He died in 2002. In 1997, with money from the city of Detroit, the 125,000-square-foot Wright museum was built, just a stone's throw from the Detroit Institute of Arts and in the heart of the city's cultural center. Designed by the city's oldest Black-owned architectural firm, Sims-Varner Associates (now SDG Associates), the building is based on an African village, with a central gathering spot as its core and galleries extending from it. The museum's most striking feature is the 140-foot domed Ford Freedom Rotunda and its 'Ring of Genealogy,' a floor installation encircled by bronze nameplates of hundreds of prominent African Americans. Heading the permanent collection is 'And Still We Rise,' a 22,000-square-foot exhibition spanning 20 galleries that looks at the African American experience from the Middle Passage when slave ships crossed the Atlantic Ocean, to the civil rights era, to today. This exhibition includes a life-size slave ship and accounts of those who survived the journey. The museum has hosted memorial services for Rosa Parks and Aretha Franklin, and sponsors the annual African World Festival, a three-day celebration of art, music and food. There have even been — and more are planned — events for residents who were delivered as babies by Wright. 'Our work is about telling the African American story from the point of view of African Americans,' Barclay said. Yet while the story may be of the Black experience, visitors come from a wide range of backgrounds and locations, Barclay said, including Detroit's largely white suburbs, and represent the kind of diversity and inclusion that the museum aims to achieve. Last year, around 53,000 visitors came to the Wright museum. It is considered one of Detroit's top tourist sites. The highlight of the 60th celebration 'Luminosity' is an exhibition of film, sculpture, installation art, collages, sketches and other artistic expressions. Some 97 works will be shown, featuring 69 artists with a link to Detroit. 'There has to be a strong connection,' Vera Ingrid Grant, the show's guest curator, said in a video interview, adding that the show's inspiration came from Marvin Gaye's protest song 'What's Going On.' 'We are focusing on the production of a glorious canopy of art and putting it all together,.' The show is in two parts — 'Daylight" and 'Nightlight.' 'Daylight' features works of brightness and joy, exploring such themes as self-examination, motherhood and family. 'Nightlight' will be darker — and quite literally in a more darkened gallery — and deal with themes of grief, protest and violence. While most of the art selected is contemporary, 'Luminosity' will also display work by Robert S. Duncanson, a 19th-century landscape painter who is considered to be the first African American artist to be internationally known, and who settled in the Detroit area. 'The show will be encyclopedic and show the range of what is out there,' Grant said. 'We want to recognize the significance of the museum and to celebrate the artists of Detroit.' Detroit has long been a city of creativity. For years, designers and engineers working for auto and auto-adjacent companies made the city a leader in industrial design and the arts in general. The Detroit Institute of Arts is considered one of the premier museums in the country. More recently, the city's low cost of living, raw urban space and gritty history have attracted a new wave of young artists from elsewhere. The Wright can stand firm against attacks on D.E.I. in large part because it gets very little federal money. Its biggest support comes from the city of Detroit, which gave the museum $2.6 million in fiscal year 2024, and the state of Michigan, which provided $3.2 million. Other big donors include the Ford Motor Company Fund, the Mellon Foundation and a number of local foundations. The Wright has an operating budget of around $12 million. It recently spent $15 million to upgrade infrastructure and is about two-thirds through a multiyear program for mechanical improvements. The Wright would like to get more of its funding from local homeowners. In 2020, voters in Detroit and nearby suburbs approved a 10-year property tax hike to support the Detroit Institute of Arts. The Wright, along with the Detroit Historical Museum, plans to put a similar property tax proposal on the ballot in 2026 for voters in Wayne and Oakland Counties. MOCAD is the only contemporary museum in Detroit. Housed in a former car dealership, which provides it with 22,000 square feet of raw industrial space, it is not a collecting museum. Rather, it is a space for a rotating group of art exhibitions and events. Next year, it will celebrate its 20th anniversary. The two exhibitions opening on May 2 have been shown at other locations and are now traveling to MOCAD. One is the 'Gun Violence Memorial Project,' a collection of 700 glass bricks arranged into four houses, with each house representing one week of lives lost to gun violence. As part of the exhibit, friends and family members are invited to place remembrance objects from someone lost to gun violence in the glass bricks. Each brick will then have the name and birth and death dates of the person being remembered. During the exhibit, community groups will have tables at MOCAD to provide information on antidrug and anti-violence projects, as well as information on overdose prevention and grief support. 'Gun violence is no stranger to Detroit,' said Jova Lynne, MOCAD's co-director and artistic director, in a video interview. 'This will be presenting a monument to the community.' The other exhibition opening May 2 is 'Code Switch: Distributing Blackness, Reprogramming Internet Art,' presented in partnership with The Kitchen, a New York artists collective, and The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York's Harlem. 'Code Switch' features Black artists — from Detroit and elsewhere — dealing with issues of the internet age, including technology, automation and disruption. Works include paintings, sculpture, video, photographs and other installations. Lynne said one reason the exhibit is in Detroit is because of the city's legacy of creative technologies and industrial innovation. Like the Wright, MOCAD receives little financial support from the federal government. It has an annual operating budget of around $2 million and recently received a $1.6 million grant from the Ford Foundation. Other major donors include the Mellon, Kresge and Hudson-Webber Foundations. 'We are as committed to showing diverse artists as we have ever been,' Lynne said. 'This season it is mostly Black. Other seasons it has been white artists. Diversity to us is celebrating everyone. Our mission is to reflect the world.'
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'More Than Motown' Black History Month lecture will explore Detroit's rich musical legacy
Detroit's dazzling musical history will be brought into focus this weekend when City Historian Jamon Jordan delivers his third annual City Black History Month Lecture at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 2, at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. Titled 'More Than Motown: Detroit's Impact on All Music,' the program will span multiple genres, with Jordan accompanied by renowned pianist Alvin Waddles. 'I'm going to be talking the history of Detroit's role in the creation of so many different forms of music,' said Jordan, 'from spirituals and gospel to the blues, soul music, even rock and roll and of course the Motown sound. But the center of Detroit's role in the production of music was really jazz. Whether we're talking about big band or bebop, it's going to be a major part of the presentation — although we'll be talking about all these other forms, from Aretha Franklin and Berry Gordy, Jr. to Paradise Valley and Black Bottom musicians, all the way up through the techno and hip-hop performers. 'Detroit was so intricately involved in the production of so much music that some people know nothing about. Many people know about Motown. But outside of Motown, people (often) don't understand Detroit's role in both popular music and some of the other genres that may not have been as popular, but are very important.' More: Documentary debuting at Freep Film Fest explores Detroit as powerhouse of musical culture See also: Beloved Luther Vandross documentary finally at theaters, also airing on OWN in February Wright Museum president and CEO Neil A. Barclay said the institution is proud to host the event. "We look forward to kicking off Black History Month with this program and partnership," said Barclay. 'Particularly through such challenging times, Jamon Jordan is an important voice who provides critical historical facts and also the connection of how our past impacts our present and future." Rochelle Riley, director of the city's office of Arts, Culture and Entrepreneurship, seconded Barclay's praise. 'I've visited 28 countries and could stop on any street corner and start singing a Motown song and someone would join me,' she said. 'Techno, jazz, rock and roll, hip-hop — Detroit has been at the forefront of all of it, so it's time we own our city's excellence. No one is better able to tell that story than Jamon. And no one is better to show that story than Alvin Waddles, who has offered brilliance around the world for decades.' Jordan called Detroit 'a music center' that should be recognized nationally and internationally for its contributions. 'Everyone knows New Orleans as a music center,' he said. 'Everyone knows New York and Los Angeles, and some people even know Chicago and St. Louis as music centers; everybody knows Memphis. Well, Detroit is one, too. I'm not taking anything away from all those other places, but Detroit is just as important. 'There are a few reasons why we don't get the acclaim that we should. For instance, Motown is so big that it overshadowed Detroit's role in other forms of music. You can't really talk about jazz without talking about Detroit. You can't talk about gospel without talking about the city of Detroit. You can't talk about techno, for sure, which started in Detroit. And you can't talk about blues and funk music without talking about Detroit. I'm going to raise the consciousness about how Detroit is as important in all these other forms as we are with Motown.' Jordan's Black History Month lecture will be held at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History (315 E. Warren Ave.) T 2 p.m Sunday, Feb. 2. The event is free, but registration is required. Register and find more information at Contact Free Press arts and culture reporter Duante Beddingfield at dbeddingfield@ This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 'More Than Motown' event will explore Detroit's rich musical legacy
