Latest news with #Ecclesia
Newsroom
29-04-2025
- Politics
- Newsroom
Random people with real power
In 2022, 40 Aucklanders met over five weekends to make a huge decision – how to provide enough drinking water for our biggest city for the next 20 years. These 40 people weren't engineers or hydrologists, planners, or even environmentalists. They were a bunch of randomly selected non-experts: young and old, different nationalities and from all walks of life. And they were there to learn and deliberate and finally make recommendations – to the experts. Listen to the podcast This was New Zealand's first official 'Citizen's Assembly', although the concept – and the way the participants were chosen – dates back to the Ecclesia, the general assembly of Ancient Athens, 2500 years ago. And, spoiler alert, the process worked. Watercare, Auckland's 100 percent council-owned water company, has already commissioned a pilot plant to produce drinking water from the group's preferred option – recycled waste water. Still, when you first hear about random people being entrusted with gnarly political and social decisions, it does sound a bit bonkers. Chris Allen, head of strategic planning for Watercare, Auckland's water supplier, admits he was pretty sceptical when he first heard about the idea. 'I did think it was a bit crazy, because it's taken me 20 years to get to where I am to understand the problem, and I found it difficult to believe that in a much, much shorter period of time, lay people would be able to distill the complications of the work and and come up with a solution everybody could live with.' But as he sat and watched, they did just that. 'It was amazing how quickly they changed from understanding almost nothing to discussing complicated concepts and being quite comfortable talking with each other and with the experts. And much as I hate to say it, they were able to refute and challenge some of the comments the experts were throwing out there.' But why do it at all? Allen says there's a major benefit from a potentially controversial recommendation (making drinking water out of water which might have come from your toilet) coming from a Citizen's Assembly, not from the company: credibility. 'I think the answer of everybody who is in deliberative democracy is that we need more democracy, not less, but we may need a different kind of democracy' Dr Tatjana Buklijas 'As experts, often we will look at all the information, assimilate it, and come up with what we think is the best option for the community. And then we go to the community and say, 'This is what we've done', and they will say, 'Well, how do we know that what you've done was the right thing? We haven't seen any of the background. You're just telling us that that's the right thing. Why should we believe you?' 'The citizens' assembly gave us the mandate to explore, seriously explore, how purified recycled water fits into the water sources available for the Auckland region.' Globally over recent years, citizens' Aasemblies have been used for even more grunty topics – ones the politicians find it hard to touch: abortion reform, for example (Ireland in 2016-2017), and climate change mitigation (France in 2019). The University of Auckland's Matheson Russell, an associate professor in social and political philosophy, and an expert in new models of citizen-led policymaking, says it turns out lay people, regardless of their levels of education and knowledge, are pretty good at making complex decisions – if they are given the chance. 'We typically don't find ourselves in the settings where we're asked to do that kind of work. So if we're asked to vote in a referendum or an election, we don't always have the resources we need in order to make an informed decision. With an election [or a referendum] we know three million other people are also voting, so our vote is not going to count for very much. So there aren't strong incentives to do our homework. 'Whereas, if you're in a citizens' assembly, you're one of several dozen, maybe 50-100, people. You know your contribution matters, and you have the time and the space and the resources to do that job well. And people do.' Citizens' assemblies are part of a movement come to be known as 'deliberative democracy' – where small numbers of people 'deliberate' and come up with a painstakingly considered decision. Jury trials are perhaps the best-known example. But of course deliberative democracy has been happening right here in Aotearoa – and among indigenous people in other parts of the world – for hundreds, if not thousands of years, as Margaret Mutu (Ngāti Kahu, Te Rarawa and Ngāti Whātua), professor of Māori studies at the University of Auckland, knows all too well. 'Māori decision-making is determined by our legal system and our legal system is tikanga, and tikanga is about getting things right. So if there is any issue you must involve everybody who has an interest. Auckland University professor of Māori studies Margaret Mutu. Photo: Supplied 'So you call them all together, usually on a marae, and you make sure everybody has all the information that you have been able to collect so far, and that everybody has a say who needs to. And once you've collected everything you sit down and make a decision.' It can be a slow process, and it's one that often drives Pākehā crazy, she says. 'You just keep talking and keep talking because what you are always aiming for is a decision by consensus and if people are unsettled or don't understand you have to keep going until everybody is settled, until everybody understands and then once you've got that it becomes a decision of the people – literally of the people.' Mutu is familiar with both tikanga and the Pākehā democratic systems – her mum was Scottish, her dad Māori. But increasingly her research and her experience is leading her to question the western, representative democratic model. 'In terms of tikanga, the parliamentary system makes no sense at all because the people who are supposed to look after the wellbeing of this country spend their whole time fighting each other, instead of sitting down and trying to work out what is the best for everybody.' Dr Tatjana Buklijas, a senior research fellow at the University of Auckland and the foremost expert on citizens assemblies in New Zealand, agrees representative democracy often doesn't achieve vital change when it needs to – climate change is a perfect example. There's a temptation for some, she says, to wonder if enlightened authoritarian governments might be a better solution. But that's totally wrong, she says. 'I think the answer of everybody who is in deliberative democracy is that we need more democracy, not less, but we may need a different kind of democracy.'
Forbes
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Amy Sherald: American Sublime' At The Whitney Re-imagines American Realism With Singular Visual Narratives
Installation view of Amy Sherald: American Sublime (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, April ... More 9-August 10, 2025). From left to right: Ecclesia (The Meaning of Inheritance and Horizions), 2024; Trans Forming Liberty, 2024. Two figures – one in a breezy, colorful striped sundress and a white hair band, another with cropped hair in a white t-shirt and denim miniskirt – hold hands. The woman in the dress gazes back at the viewer, while the other woman stares intently at a powerful stream of hot, expanding gases that escape through the nozzle of a rocket that's just launched. The horizon is low and the pale blue sky occupies most of the monumental canvas. The nearly life-size women own the scene, they own the experience, and our role is only to observe. Planes, rockets, and the spaces in between (2018) – at the time, the largest painting executed by Amy Sherald – was some three years in the making after the master painter and storyteller of the contemporary African American experience in the United States stretched the massive canvas. The Columbus, Georgia-born, New York City area-based artist reclaims the quintessentially American experience of gathering to watch a rocket launch, from the white men who rule the U.S. space program. Only 18 of the 360 astronauts enlisted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have been Black, with Guion Bluford becoming the first African American in space in 1983. Amy Sherald, Planes, Rockets, and the Spaces in Between, 2018. Oil on canvas, 100 x 67 x 2 1/2 in. ... More (254 x 170.1 x 6.35 cm). Baltimore Museum of Art, Purchase with exchange funds from the Pearlstone Family Fund and partial gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., BMA 2018.80. Sherald met the two women (a teacher and a recent graduate) who served as her models at the Baltimore Renaissance Academy High School, while raising money to send students to see Black Panther, the superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. At grand scale, an everyday experience became an exceptional painting. On loan from the Baltimore Museum of Art – which purchased it with exchange funds from the Pearlstone Family Fund and partial gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc. – the oil on canvas is among 50 stunning paintings from 2007 to the present on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York through August 10. Amy Sherald: American Sublime, the trailblazing artist's first major museum survey is another must-see blockbuster exhibition at the Whitney, which has made tremendous gains in drawing crowds to recent blockbuster exhibitions – Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night (on view through July 6) and Edges Of Ailey – that make the art itself accessible to a broader audience. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder Publicity Image Sheet Amy Sherald, Breonna Taylor, 2020. Oil on linen, 54 × 43 × 2 1/2 in. The Speed ... More Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, Museum, purchase made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation; and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, purchase made possible by a gift from Kate Capshaw It's impossible not to shudder while admiring Sherald's elegant portrait of Breonna Taylor or to long for less oppressive times when examining her regal portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama, both exemplifying the notion of American Sublime. The title is borrowed from Elizabeth Alexander's fourth collection persona poems, historical narratives, jazz riffs, sonnets, elegies, and a sequence of ars poetica which examines the Black experience through the lens of the slave rebellion on the Amistad and nineteenth-century American art. Sherald's work is imbued with witty literary references (Jane Austen, Octavia E. Butler, Emily Dickinson, Zora Neale Hurston, and Toni Morrison) and clever art historical homage. Amy Sherald, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, 2018. Oil on linen, 72 1/8 × 60 1/8 × 2 3/4 in. ... More (183.1 × 152.7 × 7 cm). National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. The National Portrait Gallery is grateful to the following lead donors for their support of the Obama portraits: Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg; Judith Kern and Kent Whealy; Tommie L. Pegues and Donald A. Capoccia. Sherald rocketed to national prominence when Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance) (2014) became the first woman and the first African American to win the 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. A girl in a v-neck sheath dress, one half solid with white piping the other half adorned in polka dots, looks directly at the viewer, her intense gaze commanding attention under a bold crimson beret. Donning white gloves, she holds an oversize teacup over a saucer, as if she's written into Chapter 7 of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, A Mad Tea Party. Surrealism comes into play in several works, never drawing us away from the real circumstances of Sherald's subjects. Amy Sherald, Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance), 2014. Oil on canvas, 54 × 43 × 2 1/2 in. ... More (137.16 × 109.22 × 6.35 cm). Private Collection. Sherald subverts U.S. history by meticulously posing a gay Black couple in place of an unidentified uniformed sailor and a uniformed nurse (a 2012 book identified them as George Mendonsa and Greta Friedman) in a famous photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt published in Life magazine and became one of the most famous images of the 20th century. The photograph from August 14, 1945, commemorating V-J Day, the day Japan ceased fighting in World War II, is an iconic symbol of emotion and victory, and Sherald extends that raw energy to Black soldiers who returned from the war to a still-segregated nation, and re-imagines masculine identities. Amy Sherald, For Love, and for Country, 2022. Oil on linen, 123 1/4 × 93 1/8 × 2 1/2 in. (313 × ... More 236.5 × 6.4 cm). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Purchase, by exchange, through a gift of Helen and Charles Schwab. Look closely at the faces, gazes, poses, and hand positions of each of Sherald's subjects, and how some interact with landscapes and play with scale and perception. The stories are original, profound, multifaceted, and focused, and each complex visual narrative underscores Sherald's commitment to sharing her world view, her America. Sherald's oeuvre so far is singular in its advancement of the American Realist tradition of artists such as Edward Hopper, who were foundational to the Whitney's founding in 1930, by presenting a new tradition that emerged from art departments and galleries of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), where she first trained as an artist. Amy Sherald: American Sublime is organized by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and curated by Sarah Roberts, former Andrew W. Mellon Curator and Head of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA. The Whitney presentation is organized by Arnhold Associate Curator Rujeko Hockley with curatorial assistant David Lisbon.
NBC News
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- NBC News
From first lady to everyday life, artist Amy Sherald captures the beauty of Black America
More than 40 colorful and arresting paintings of Black American life will soon take the spotlight at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The 'American Sublime' show, which opens April 9, solidifies realist painter Amy Sherald as one of the most important living artists in America. Sherald is renowned for her portraits of former first lady Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor, but she typically finds inspiration in the beauty of strangers and everyday life. One of the show's featured pieces, 'As American as apple pie,' features a warm and stylish Brooklyn couple who collect vintage cars. Sherald said she met the two by chance, sensing something special in them. 'I'm looking for soulmates,' Sherald said. 'I really don't know how to describe it. ... It's energetic. I think they have kind of a weight to their soul, like they've been here before.' Sherald paints all her subjects' skin in shades of gray to emphasize universality and shared experience while centering Black Americans in an artistic genre from which they were historically excluded. Her body of work is both an act of resistance against erasure and a celebration of joy and wonder. One of the show's standout pieces is the massive triptych 'Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons),' featuring three distinct figures standing in watchtowers. It is inspired, in part, by a photo booth in the Wes Anderson film 'Grand Budapest Hotel' and the stained-glass windows of Catholic churches. 'This is just about contemplation,' she said. 'Are they above water? Are they above land? Maybe these are guides waiting to call the ancestors back. I love the big question mark around this one,' she said. As visitors explore the exhibit, they may feel as though they are making direct eye contact with the pieces' subjects, almost as though they are in dialogue. That's by design. Sherald's works are positioned at eye level, lower than most museum exhibits, she said, in hope of creating a deep and lasting connection.
