ARTchivist's Notebook: We've been here before
I recently returned from my first trip to Memphis, Tennessee where I visited the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel. I’m writing this on April 4, the 57th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. who was slain on the balcony outside room 306.
The museum tells the story of the Civil Rights Movement led by King until that fateful day. It takes you on a linear, winding pathway carved into the body of the motel, culminating in a walk-through of the now glassed in rooms where King spent his last night.
I’d learned this history before (most cogently from the documentary series, Eyes on the Prize), but to actually walk through it really emphasizes the magnitude of the change that King and his followers achieved. As a child of the 70’s, I don’t think I fully appreciated how big of a shift the Civil Rights Movement was, how it offered a vision beyond the violence, racism, and brutality ingrained and plainly manifest in U.S. culture. Or maybe this history just hits differently in this moment when those traits are more obvious again.
I was moved anew by the plaintive, insistent assertion of the striking sanitation workers that brought King to Memphis: I AM A MAN. The hulking, eviscerated carcass of a bus from the Freedom Rides bombed by white supremacists. And throughout, the underlying influence of Mohandas K. Gandhi, whose protests against British colonial rule in India inspired King to pursue nonviolence. All these moments (and more) impressed me with their radicality, courage, and insistence on Black people’s sheer humanity.
I began to see our current moment through a different lens. I’m not saying that what we are seeing — the wholesale destruction of our government, the persecution of immigrants and protestors, the reckless disregard for safety and life of all kinds — isn’t alarming. It is, absolutely, and terrifying. Yet, the world the current administration is trying to resuscitate is the same one MLK and others dedicated their lives to trying to abolish. We didn’t get there then, and we have been here before.
One of my heroes, critic and author Jeff Chang, is always great at putting things into perspective. His latest Substack post on the takeover of the Kennedy Center is an inspiring reminder that if you’ve ever been on the margins of U.S. culture you already know how to survive dark times. He writes:
If you’ve ever listened to poetry in a dingy backroom, or moshed in the pit at a dark graffitied club, or nodded to beats and rhymes in a loveworn community center, or watched dancers step and spin lively in a park or on a catwalk, or enjoyed the color, tilt, and mirth of some artist’s marks on an alley wall, you already know what it means to be part of the underground.
I love how he frames resistance as engagement with art. Art encapsulates our ability to connect with other people. It’s what makes us human and they can’t ever take that away from us.
Although they are trying…
Please reach out to your Congress people to express concern and anger about the dismantling of the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Here are some campaigns:
And some good news:
Happy to announce that the guide, “Sharing Your Stories Online: A Guide for Community Organizations and Their Partners” is now part of a new resource: “Tools for Community Archives – Academic Relationships” hosted by the Community Archives Collaborative. I wrote the guide last year with the CCAP TEACH team at UC Irvine and the California Digital Library and I’m hopeful it will help to build more respectful and mutually supportive relationships between community organizations and academic institutions.
Save the date: A wonderful documentary about art critics, Out of the Picture, will finally be coming to Los Angeles, June 10, at the Democracy Center at the Japanese American National Museum. I’ve been excited about this film for a few years now and am so looking forward to seeing it with an audience! Stay tuned for more details.
Opportunities:
Arts writers: The 2025 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant application is now open, offering grants from $15,000 to $50,000 for people who write about visual art. I received one of these early in my writing career and it changed my life, giving me time to focus on writing and a much-needed boost of confidence to keep going. The grant has become much more competitive, but please don’t be discouraged. Keep on applying! (It’s also the model for the Irene Yamamoto Arts Writers Fellowship, which will be announcing this year’s winners in June.)
Are you a researcher or data analyst with experience in pop music criticism? Critical Minded, a grantmaking and learning initiative that supports cultural critics of color in the United States, is looking for a researcher/interviewer and a data analyst (two separate contracts) to assist with a research project on the current conditions, opportunities, and challenges faced by popular music critics in the United States. The project will result in a report building on our previous report, Topdogs and Underdogs: Critics of Color and the Theatrical Landscape. Please see these descriptions for more information: