Latest news with #MemorializetheMovement
NDTV
4 days ago
- NDTV
How This Artist's Protest Art Preserves George Floyd Legacy
Washington: Kenda Zellner-Smith hauled up a corrugated metal door to reveal hundreds of wooden boards covered with graffiti, each telling a story of the protests that followed George Floyd's killing by a US police officer. The 28-year-old has collected and archived the panels that once protected businesses from rioting in Minneapolis, aiming to preserve the legacy of the 2020 murder that shocked the United States. Five years on, Zellner-Smith said the boards -- kept in a storage unit by an industrial site two miles (three kilometers) from where Mr Floyd died -- still evoke powerful emotions. They range from blank plywood with text reading "I can't breathe" -- the final words Mr Floyd said as Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, knelt on his neck -- to colorful murals depicting rainbows and love hearts. "Every time I look at them there's something different I notice," she told AFP. "They reignite an energy or a fire that was felt years ago during the uprising." Then a university graduate in Minneapolis, Ms Zellner-Smith was among millions of Americans who joined the Black Lives Matter rallies in 2020 that swept US cities. The threat of vandalism saw many businesses protect themselves with wooden boards -- which became canvases for protesters' slogans and drawings demanding justice. 'Resistance' Ms Zellner-Smith said she decided to start collecting the boards after seeing one taken down after the protests and thinking, "Oh my god, these are going to disappear just as fast as they showed up." "Every single day after work, I'd grab my dad's pickup truck and I would just drive around searching for boards," said Ms Zellner-Smith, who searched alleyways and dumpsters. Today, her project called "Save the Boards" counts over 600 in its collection, with each stacked vertically in a pair of storage units measuring 10 by 30 feet (three by nine meters). But with Mr Floyd's legacy under the spotlight on the fifth anniversary of his death as many hoped-for reforms to address racism have not been met, she said the boards are crucial to sustaining the protest movement. "Art serves as a form of resistance and storytelling, and it speaks to real, lived experiences, and that's what these are," Ms Zellner-Smith said. Her next challenge is finding a long-term home for the boards as grants that covered storage costs are running dry. A handful are already being exhibited -- including in a building restored after it was damaged by arson during the 2020 protests -- and most have been photographed to be archived online. "My biggest push is just to make sure they're still seen. The stories they have to tell are still heard, and that people understand there's still a lot of work to be done," Ms Zellner-Smith said. 'Murals Gave Me Hope' Her initiative is similar to another, more expansive one in Minneapolis called Memorialize the Movement. That nonprofit exhibited around 50 boards during a memorial event held Sunday on a recreation ground near George Floyd Square, the name given to the area where the 46-year-old was killed. With Afrobeat music booming from speakers, dozens of people scanned the display that included one piece with squares of black and brown, each filled with phrases like "We matter" and "Protect us". Another mostly bare wooden board had just a black love heart with "No justice, no peace" written in the middle. "I think it is absolutely vital that these murals and this story that they tell are preserved for future generations," said Leesa Kelly, who has collected over 1,000 pieces while running Memorialize the Movement. Asked what drove her to start the project, the 32-year-old replied: "I didn't do this because I was motivated or inspired, I did it because I was experiencing trauma." "A Black man was killed. The murals gave me hope," said Kelly, who also collected many of the boards herself during the 2020 protests. Darnella Thompson, 43, was one of those looking at the boards on a warm, sunny day, stopping to take a photo in front of one saying "Speak up" and "Hope". "It's overwhelming," she told AFP. "As a person of color who has experienced quite a bit here in this country, it definitely resonates very much with me." "It brings up more sadness than anything because this is continuous," Ms Thompson added.
Express Tribune
5 days ago
- Express Tribune
George Floyd lives on through art
Kenda Zellner-Smith hauled up a corrugated metal door to reveal hundreds of wooden boards covered with graffiti, each telling a story of the protests that followed George Floyd's killing by a US police officer. The 28-year-old has collected and archived the panels that once protected businesses from rioting in Minneapolis, aiming to preserve the legacy of the 2020 murder that shocked the United States. Five years on, Zellner-Smith said the boards — kept in a storage unit by an industrial site two miles (three kilometres) from where Floyd died - still evoke powerful emotions. They range from blank plywood with text reading "I can't breathe" — the final words Floyd said as Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, knelt on his neck — to colourful murals depicting rainbows and love hearts. "Every time I look at them there's something different I notice," she told AFP. "They reignite an energy or a fire that was felt years ago during the uprising." Then a university graduate in Minneapolis, Zellner-Smith was among millions of Americans who joined the Black Lives Matter rallies in 2020 that swept US cities. The threat of vandalism saw many businesses protect themselves with wooden boards — which became canvases for protesters' slogans and drawings demanding justice. 'Resistance' Zellner-Smith said she decided to start collecting the boards after seeing one taken down after the protests and thinking "'Oh my god, these are going to disappear just as fast as they showed up.'" "Every single day after work, I'd grab my dad's pickup truck and I would just drive around searching for boards," said Zellner-Smith, who searched alleyways and dumpsters. Today, her project called "Save the Boards" counts over 600 in its collection, with each stacked vertically in a pair of storage units measuring 10 by 30 feet (three by nine metres). But with Floyd's legacy under the spotlight on the fifth anniversary of his death as many hoped-for reforms to address racism have not been met, she said the boards are crucial to sustaining the protest movement. "Art serves as a form of resistance and storytelling, and it speaks to real, lived experiences, and that's what these are," Zellner-Smith said. Her next challenge is finding a long-term home for the boards as grants that cover storage costs are running dry. A handful are already being exhibited - including in a building restored after it was damaged by arson during the 2020 protests - and most have been photographed to be archived online. "My biggest push is just to make sure they're still seen. The stories they have to tell are still heard, and that people understand there's still a lot of work to be done," Zellner-Smith said. 'Murals gave me hope' Her initiative is similar to another, more expansive one in Minneapolis called Memorialize the Movement. That nonprofit exhibited around 50 boards during a memorial event held Sunday on a recreation ground near George Floyd Square, the name given to the area where the 46-year-old was killed. With Afrobeat music booming from speakers, dozens of people scanned the display that included one piece with squares of black and brown, each filled with phrases like "We matter" and "Protect us." Another mostly bare wooden board had just a black love heart with "No justice, no peace" written in the middle. "I think it is absolutely vital that these murals and this story that they tell are preserved for future generations," said Leesa Kelly, who has collected over 1,000 pieces while running Memorialize the Movement. Asked what drove her to start the project, the 32-year-old replied: "I didn't do this because I was motivated or inspired, I did it because I was experiencing trauma." "A Black man was killed. The murals gave me hope," said Kelly, who also collected many of the boards herself during the 2020 protests. Darnella Thompson, 43, was one of those looking at the boards on a warm, sunny day, stopping to take a photo in front of one saying "Speak up" and "Hope." "It's overwhelming," she told AFP. "As a person of color who has experienced quite a bit here in this country, it definitely resonates very much with me." "It brings up more so sadness than anything because this is continuous," Thompson added.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Yahoo
Minneapolis group works to preserve 2020 protest art after George Floyd's death
Five years ago, during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, video of then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of George Floyd until he died shocked the world and sparked widespread protests. Untold pieces of protest art also were created in public spaces across the U.S. – from murals honoring Floyd, to calls for justice and support for the Black Lives Matter movement, which swelled in the wake of Floyd's death. Today, much of that protest art has been taken down. The Black Lives Matter mural painted on 16th Street in Washington, D.C., was removed in March, while other murals, many painted on plywood that boarded up closed businesses during the pandemic shutdown, were removed over the months after Floyd's death. Advocates in Minneapolis, however, have been working over the past five years to save hundreds of pieces of public protest art, hoping to ensure that Floyd is never forgotten and that the message behind the art is memorialized, along with the movement it documented. 'Art can be used as a tool in the present to ignite and propel social movements forward, which is what we're seeing right now with this art,' said Leesa Kelly, the founder of Memorialize the Movement. The group describes itself as "a living archive dedicated to collecting, preserving, and activating the plywood protest murals that were created during the Minneapolis Uprising of 2020 and beyond." According to Kelly, who began her efforts in the summer of 2020, the group has now collected and preserved over 1,000 pieces of 2020 protest art. 'I felt this enormous weight to be the one to decide to protect these stories and to make sure that the movement continues through the preservation of this art,' Kelly told ABC News, reflecting on her five-year journey. 'I feel an enormous sense of pride having the foresight to do this.' 6 months after George Floyd's death, Minneapolis activists scramble to save Black Lives Matter art Kelly said that since 2021, Memorialize the Movement has been 'activating' the 2020 murals via exhibits to ensure that Floyd's legacy is not forgotten. Much of that art was displayed at a weekend Justice for George event in Minneapolis. 'We call ourselves a living archive,' she said, explaining that at the events, they not only display the art from 2020 but also commission artists to create new murals on blank panels. There are also workshops to encourage new and continuing art and activism. 'This is a movement where we are empowering people through art to understand that they have a voice, understand their agency, and learn how to protect and preserve their own stories and histories in real time,' Kelly said. Kelly, who describes herself as an advocate for police reform, said that while there was a 'brief period' of progress after 2020 in that regard, she feels that making a change has been slow and in some ways, it has been 'one step forward, two steps back." 'I think that that progress scared people, and that's how we ended up back here with Trump as president, and in a space where our rights and our freedoms are being threatened right now,' Kelly told ABC News. Justice Department moves to drop police reform agreements with Louisville, Minneapolis The U.S. Department of Justice said on Wednesday that it is moving to drop police reform agreements, known as consent decrees, that the Biden-era department reached with the cities of Louisville, Kentucky and Minneapolis. The court-enforceable agreements were born out of probes launched not only after George Floyd's death, but also the 2020 police killing of Breonna Taylor. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon claimed in announcing the decision on Wednesday that Biden administration officials relied on "faulty legal theories" and "cherry-picked" statistics in order to accuse departments of widespread misconduct. She further claimed that consent decrees can increase bureaucracy for police, which she said makes recruiting and retaining officers more difficult. "It's our view at the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division under the Trump administration that federal micromanagement of local police should be a rare exception and not the norm, and certainly not something that we're seeking to increase in our time here," Dhillon told reporters in an off-camera briefing. Despite the challenges that advocates are facing, Kelly said that locally, in Minneapolis and St. Paul, 'a lot has changed.' '[The community] has really sort of discovered our agency and our power, and we've learned to work together, and we are supporting one another,' she said. 5 years after George Floyd's death, Minneapolis police work to rebuild trust and a 'decimated' force Kelly said that events like Justice for George, which has been held annually since 2021, are huge community efforts and are made possible by a dedicated group of volunteers and funding that Memorialize the Movement obtains through various grants. '[We want] to focus on our resilience as a community,' Kelly said, 'to focus on everything that we've been able to accomplish and everything that we can still accomplish within our power, despite what's going on at the federal level.' Minneapolis group works to preserve 2020 protest art after George Floyd's death originally appeared on
6 days ago
Minneapolis group works to preserve 2020 protest art after George Floyd's death
Five years ago, during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, video of then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of George Floyd until he died shocked the world and sparked widespread protests. Untold pieces of protest art also were created in public spaces across the U.S. – from murals honoring Floyd, to calls for justice and support for the Black Lives Matter movement, which swelled in the wake of Floyd's death. Today, much of that protest art has been taken down. The Black Lives Matter mural painted on 16th Street in Washington, D.C., was removed in March, while other murals, many painted on plywood that boarded up closed businesses during the pandemic shutdown, were removed over the months after Floyd's death. Advocates in Minneapolis, however, have been working over the past five years to save hundreds of pieces of public protest art, hoping to ensure that Floyd is never forgotten and that the message behind the art is memorialized, along with the movement it documented. 'Art can be used as a tool in the present to ignite and propel social movements forward, which is what we're seeing right now with this art,' said Leesa Kelly, the founder of Memorialize the Movement. The group describes itself as "a living archive dedicated to collecting, preserving, and activating the plywood protest murals that were created during the Minneapolis Uprising of 2020 and beyond." According to Kelly, who began her efforts in the summer of 2020, the group has now collected and preserved over 1,000 pieces of 2020 protest art. 'I felt this enormous weight to be the one to decide to protect these stories and to make sure that the movement continues through the preservation of this art,' Kelly told ABC News, reflecting on her five-year journey. 'I feel an enormous sense of pride having the foresight to do this.' Kelly said that since 2021, Memorialize the Movement has been 'activating' the 2020 murals via exhibits to ensure that Floyd's legacy is not forgotten. Much of that art was displayed at a weekend Justice for George event in Minneapolis. 'We call ourselves a living archive,' she said, explaining that at the events, they not only display the art from 2020 but also commission artists to create new murals on blank panels. There are also workshops to encourage new and continuing art and activism. 'This is a movement where we are empowering people through art to understand that they have a voice, understand their agency, and learn how to protect and preserve their own stories and histories in real time,' Kelly said. Kelly, who describes herself as an advocate for police reform, said that while there was a 'brief period' of progress after 2020 in that regard, she feels that making a change has been slow and in some ways, it has been 'one step forward, two steps back." 'I think that that progress scared people, and that's how we ended up back here with Trump as president, and in a space where our rights and our freedoms are being threatened right now,' Kelly told ABC News. Justice Department moves to drop police reform agreements with Louisville, Minneapolis The U.S. Department of Justice said on Wednesday that it is moving to drop police reform agreements, known as consent decrees, that the Biden-era department reached with the cities of Louisville, Kentucky and Minneapolis. The court-enforceable agreements were born out of probes launched not only after George Floyd's death, but also the 2020 police killing of Breonna Taylor. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon claimed in announcing the decision on Wednesday that Biden administration officials relied on "faulty legal theories" and "cherry-picked" statistics in order to accuse departments of widespread misconduct. She further claimed that consent decrees can increase bureaucracy for police, which she said makes recruiting and retaining officers more difficult. "It's our view at the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division under the Trump administration that federal micromanagement of local police should be a rare exception and not the norm, and certainly not something that we're seeking to increase in our time here," Dhillon told reporters in an off-camera briefing. Despite the challenges that advocates are facing, Kelly said that locally, in Minneapolis and St. Paul, 'a lot has changed.' '[The community] has really sort of discovered our agency and our power, and we've learned to work together, and we are supporting one another,' she said. Kelly said that events like Justice for George, which has been held annually since 2021, are huge community efforts and are made possible by a dedicated group of volunteers and funding that Memorialize the Movement obtains through various grants. '[We want] to focus on our resilience as a community,' Kelly said, 'to focus on everything that we've been able to accomplish and everything that we can still accomplish within our power, despite what's going on at the federal level.'
Los Angeles Times
6 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Preserving the George Floyd protest murals: L.A. arts and culture this week
This Memorial Day weekend marks the five-year anniversary of George Floyd's death. Floyd's murder under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer sparked a protest movement that reached the streets of cities across the nation. In Minneapolis, residents, activists and artists painted murals and messages on plywood boards used to protect storefront windows during the unrest. More than 1,000 of those pieces of art have been collected and preserved by the organization Memorialize the Movement. The Minnesota Star Tribune recently ran a fascinating profile by Dee DePass and Alicia Eler of MTM's founder and executive director, Leesa Kelly, along with two other community activists, Kenda Zellner-Smith, who created the group Save the Boards, and Jeanelle Austin, who started George Floyd Global Memorial, now called Rise and Remember. Together, the three women have dedicated themselves to ensuring the Floyd protest art remains visible and accessible to the public. A large portion of their time is spent on fundraising to pay for the costly storage of the boards. According to the Star Tribune, the rent on Memorialize the Movement's warehouse is $3,500 a month, and the group spends another $1,500 on utilities and staff. Fundraising for this kind of work may become more challenging with the Trump administration's ban on diversity, equity and inclusion — not to mention the possible elimination of the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. These headwinds have not dimmed the spirits of the women, who regularly stage exhibitions of the protest murals in places such as Minnesota's Carleton College, Normandale Community College, Franconia Sculpture Park and Roseville Lutheran Church, as well as Watermill Center in upstate New York, For more information on Memorialize the Movement, click here. I'm arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt taking a moment to reflect and remember. Read on for this week's arts news. Haven't yet made plans for Memorial Day? Go to a museum! Here's a quick sampling of places that are open on the holiday: Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. See the new NHM Commons and the dinosaur Gnatalie. The NHM's sister operation at the La Brea Tar Pits & Museum also is open, same hours. The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in L.A. will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. You can take in the new exhibition 'Director's Inspiration: Bong Joon Ho,' centered on the filmmaker behind 'Parasite,' 'Mickey 17' and 'Snowpiercer.' Make a day of it and walk over to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which will be open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena will be open its usual Monday hours, noon to 5 p.m. Times critic Christiopher Knight offers this exceptionally helpful guide to the collection. Unless it's Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Year's Day, the California Science Center in Exposition Park is always opens, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with free admission to the galleries. Bring kids to the just-opened interactive exhibition 'Game On! Science, Sports & Play' or the return of 'Dogs! A Science Tale.' The Huntington in San Marino will be open. 'Don Bachardy: A Life in Portraits' (read Knight's praise for the show) and the Betye Saar site-specific installation 'Drifting Toward Twilight' are on view, and temperatures in those fabulous gardens should be lovely. Times theater critic Charles McNulty spent time in New York talking with Kimberly Belflower about her Tony-nominated play, 'John Proctor Is the Villain,' starring Sadie Sink from the Netflix hit 'Stranger Things.' The play, about students in Georgia reading Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible,' 'casts a mysterious spell that I'm still processing a month later,' McNulty writes. Meanwhile, back in L.A., McNulty praises a lovely revival of playwright Terrance McNally's musical adaptation of the 1994 film 'A Man of No Importance.' The film starred Albert Finney as a Dublin bus conductor obsessed with Oscar Wilde and amateur theater. The musical team behind 'Ragtime' — Stephen Flaherty (music) and Lynn Ahrens (lyrics) — adds whimsical dimensions to the story. Of particular note, McNulty writes, is the 'graceful direction of the company's producing artistic director, Julia Rodriguez-Elliott,' who 'finds freedom in Wilde's iconoclastic example.' Arnold Schoenberg arrived in L.A. after fleeing Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s, and the composer eventually found himself in a meeting with MGM producer Irving Thalberg about scoring 'The Good Earth.' This encounter provided the genesis for Tod Machover's opera, 'Schoenberg in Hollywood,' which staged its West Coast premiere at UCLA's Nimoy Theater. Times classical music critic Mark Swed was present and wrote this review, noting at the end that despite all of his contributions to the city's cultural ecosystem, Schoenberg does not have his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The Theatre Producers of Southern California, a trade group representing nonprofit theaters, is raising alarms about Gov. Gavin Newsom's proposed $11.5-million cut to the Performing Arts Equitable Payroll Fund, which was only recently instituted after years of efforts by struggling arts organizations. 'We understand that the state faces a challenging budget deficit and are prepared to support you in making difficult decisions,' board vice president Beatrice Casagran said in a statement. 'However, the proposed clawback of 100% of the state's entire investment in the Payroll Fund will eradicate six years of bipartisan legislative efforts to address cascading negative impacts that have led to dire economic instability for workers in the live arts.' The Actors Equity Assn., under its president, Brooke Shields, also opposes the proposed cuts. 'At a time when the arts are under attack in Washington, D.C., it's deeply disappointing to also be fighting funding cuts again in Sacramento. California, which now ranks 35th in the nation in arts funding, cannot be a leader in the arts if it continues to cut arts funding year after year,' Shields said in a statement. Concerned voters can ask their senators to sign on to the letter opposing the cuts by state Sen. Ben Allen to the Senate Budget Committee. They also can ask their assemblymembers to sign onto the letter by Assemblyman Matt Haney to the Assembly Budget Committee. Los Angeles Opera is staging a costume shop sale for the first time in more than a decade, and the public is invited. Expect handmade outfits from shows such as 'Carmen,' 'The Magic Flute' and 'Macbeth.' A news release about the event describes the offerings: 'From 16th-century finery to fantastical creations, this sale includes complete costumes in all sizes, along with wigs, accessories, shoes, jewelry, masks, headpieces and more, each piece a work of art designed by visionaries such as Julie Taymor, Constance Hoffman, Gerald Scarfe and Martin Pakledinaz.' The fun gets going in the lobby of Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at 9:30 a.m. on June 21 and lasts until 3 p.m. The Washington Post reports that former Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter is defending the finances of the organization prior to President Trump's takeover. Rutter's leadership has been under attack by the center's new interim director, Ric Grenell, who accused her and other former executives of 'fraud' during a speech at the White House last week. 'I am deeply troubled by the false allegations regarding the management of the Kennedy Center being made by people without the context or expertise to understand the complexities involved in nonprofit and arts management, which has been my professional experience for 47 years,' Rutter said in a statement to the Post. — Jessica Gelt The headlines out of Cannes this year feel a bit subued, if not bleak. But leave it to Times film critic Amy Nicholson to open her latest Cannes diary with a Samoyed walking the red carpet in a ruffled gown. And because I love him and I miss him, I also point you to The Times' former Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, Justin Chang, who has this stellar coverage.
