Accompanying Road to Freedom is an exhibit of contemporary multimedia art responding to the Civil Rights Movement and to Road to Freedom itself. Curated by Jeffrey Grove of the High Museum, After 1968 features African American artists born in or After 1968.
Sergio Bessa, the Director of Programs at the Bronx Museum, says that the exhibit shows “the legacy of the [civil rights] movement through the eyes of contemporary artists.”
In a Hank Willis Thomas piece called “Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America from 1968 to 2008,” the artist has assembled a series of images from advertisements detached from all logos and captions. Together, the images (which feature Grace Jones, O.J. Simpson, Whoopi Goldberg, a watermelon, and athletic calves) interrogate the notion of progress in race relations and offer a colorful, large-format contrast to the photographs in the Road to Freedom exhibit in the next room.
Nearby is a sound installation by Nadine Robinson called “Coronation Theme: Organon.” It is an assemblage of nearly thirty speakers that issue forth organ music, sermons, and sounds from protests. The installation, which is both visually and aurally imposing, is meant to commemorate the May 3, 1963 fire hosings in Birmingham.
“What is important for us here at the Bronx Museum,” says Block, “is to not only reach out to the art world but to really strengthen our ties with our community in big ways.” She says that Road to Freedom and After 1968 have together fostered a rare kind of intergenerational dialogue. “In one of the education programs,” she says, “[a group of kids] did a mock demonstration in the gallery where they made banners and slogans about kid power and then had their pictures taken in the galleries with the photographs.”
The Bronx Museum of the Arts, which is currently the only visual arts museum in the borough, was founded by a group of community activists in 1971. The art the museum collects and displays is meant to reflect the diversity that is present in the Bronx itself, but in recent years some members of the community have felt that the museum focused too much attention on Latin American art and not enough attention on African American art. Next year the Bronx Museum will exhibit the work of Elizabeth Catlett, an African American sculptor and printmaker who resided in Mexico. Road to Freedom and After 1968 will be on display at the Bronx Museum of the Arts until August 29.
