The American Museum of Natural History hosted its annual "Identification Day" Saturday, where people could bring in their shells, rocks, artifacts and more-- and have a scientist take a look.
American Museum of Natural History Hosts Annual 'Identification Day'
Sun, 11 May 2014 19:06:59 GMT
Is it possible to be a shape-shifter while remaining strongly grounded at the same time? Robert Pruitt's crayon series, simply entitled "Women," shows such an existence is not just possible -- it is everywhere.
Pruitt's portraits of contemporary African American women incorporate science fiction, hip-hop, 1960s black power, comic book culture and a romantic allegiance to realism. Conjuring the cultural influences that construct identity, Pruitt presents feminine strength from the inside colliding with external forces to create a captivating and fantastical portrait.
Robert Pruitt's Cosmic Cool 'Women' Come To The Studio Museum In Harlem (PHOTOS)
The Huffington Post News Editors
Mon, 22 Jul 2013 12:06:33 GMT
The Bronx High School of Science on Friday will unveil what may be the most extensive collection of Holocaust artifacts at a U.S. public school.
Bronx High School of Science Holocaust Museum and Study Center opens Friday
JENNIFER H. CUNNINGHAM
Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:00:56 GMT
Marvel's Black Panther, Black Goliath and Luke Cage were among the first black superheroes, but they were far from the last. See how far the representations have come this Saturday at the Schomburg Center.
Festival to honor black comic book pioneers
Clem Richardson
Thu, 10 Jan 2013 01:00:16 GMT
Date: November 17, 2012
Corn husk dolls were made by Native Americans in the Northeastern part of the United States. Both boys and girls played with these dolls that are made from one of the three most important crops – corn. Create your own doll using corn.
Free but advanced registration is required.
Start time: 10:00 am
End time: 12:00 pm
Contact phone: (212) 923-8008
Location: Morris-Jumel Mansion (in Roger Morris Park)
Family Workshop - Corn Husk Dolls
Sun, 11 Nov 2012 05:00:02 GMT
Elsie McCabe Thompson, the president of the Museum for African Art, is leaving after three years of financial problems that have delayed the opening of a new site for the institution.
Elsie Thompson to Step Down at African Art Museum
By PATRICIA COHEN
Sat, 06 Oct 2012 04:53:13 GMT
PS122 & El Museo del Barrio Present: Post Plastica
Carmelita Tropicana & Ela Troyano (NYC). Post Plastica (World Premiere). "Carmelita Tropicana lights up New York's performance venues with colorful, hilarious, and brain-twisting narratives." -Time O...
Event Date & Time: 06/02/2012 07:30 PM
Location: El Museo del Barrio
PS122 & El Museo del Barrio Present: Post Plastica
Fri, 01 Jun 2012 21:41:29 GMT
Cooper-Hewitt Museum to open Harlem satellite while main branch of design museum undergoes renovation
The world-class Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum will take its place in Harlem later this month, opening a satellite branch at 111 Central Park North. The museum's main branch is undergoing a two-year renovation.
Cooper-Hewitt Museum to open Harlem satellite while main branch of design museum undergoes renovation
DOUGLAS FEIDEN
Thu, 03 May 2012 08:00:26 GMT
Michigan Museum Showcases Racist Artifacts
BIG RAPIDS, Mich. — The objects displayed in Michigan’s newest museum range from the ordinary, such as simple ashtrays and fishing lures, to the grotesque – a full-size replica of a lynching tree. But all are united by a common theme: They are steeped in racism so intense that it makes visitors cringe.
That’s the idea behind the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, which says it has amassed the nation’s largest public collection of artifacts spanning the segregation era, from Reconstruction until the civil rights movement, and beyond.
The museum in a gleaming new exhibit hall at Ferris State University “is all about teaching, not a shrine to racism,” said David Pilgrim, the founder and curator who started building the collection as a teenager.
Pilgrim, who is black, makes no apologies for the provocative exhibits. The goal of the $1.3 million gallery, he explained, is “to get people to think deeply.”
The displays are startling. The n-word is prevalent throughout, and many items portray black men as lazy, violent or inarticulate. Black women are shown as kerchief-wearing mammies, sexually charged Jezebels or other stereotypes.
The shocking images exact an emotional cost.
“There’s parts in that room – the main room – where it’s quite gut-wrenching,” said Nancy Mettlach, a student conduct specialist at Ferris. “And the thought that was going through my mind was: `How can one human being do this to another human being?’”
Pilgrim, a former sociology professor at Ferris State, started the collection in the 1970s in Alabama. Along the way, he “spent more time in antique and flea markets than the people who work there.” His quest for more examples was boundless.
“At some point, the collecting becomes the thing,” he said. “It became the way I relaxed.” He spent most of his free time and money on acquisitions.
In 1996, Pilgrim donated his 2,000-piece collection to the school after concluding that it “needed a real home.”
The collection spent the next 15 years housed in a single room and could be seen only by appointment. Thanks to the financial support of the university and donors – notably from the charitable arm of Detroit utility DTE Energy – Pilgrim’s collection now has a permanent home, which will have a grand opening ceremony April 26. Admission is free.
Today, the school has 9,000 pieces that depict African-Americans in stereotypical ways and, in some cases, glorify violence against them.
Not all of the museum’s holdings are on display, but the 3,500-square-foot space in the lower level of the university library is packed with items that demonstrate how racist ideas and anti-black images dominated American culture for decades.
Visitors can forget about touring the exhibits and retiring untroubled to a cafe or gift shop. Some leave angry or offended. Most feel a kind of “reflective sadness,” Pilgrim said.
But that’s not enough. If the museum “stayed at that, then we failed,” he said. “The only real value of the museum has ever been to really engage people in a dialogue.”
So Pilgrim designed the tour to give visitors a last stop in a “room of dialogue,” where they’re encouraged to discuss what they’ve seen and how the objects might be used to promote tolerance and social justice.
Some of the objects in the museum are a century old. Others were made as recently as this year.
Ferris State sophomore Nehemiah Israel was particularly troubled by a series of items about President Barack Obama.
One T-shirt on display reads: “Any White Guy 2012.” Another shirt that says “Obama ’08″ is accompanied by a cartoon monkey holding a banana. A mouse pad shows robe-wearing Ku Klux Klan members chasing an Obama caricature above the words, “Run Obama Run.”
“I was like, `Wow. People still think this. This is crazy,’” Israel said.
One of the first rooms in the museum features a full-size replica of a tree with a lynching noose hanging from it. Several feet away, a television screen shows a video of racist images through the years.
The location of the museum – in the shadow of university founder Woodbridge Ferris’ statue – also catches some by surprise. Ferris, who later served as Michigan governor and as a U.S. senator, founded the school more than a century ago. He once said Americans should work to provide an “education for all children, all men and all women.”
The mostly white college town of Big Rapids is 150 miles from Detroit, the state’s largest predominantly black city.
Pilgrim, who is also Ferris State’s vice president for diversity and inclusion, initially considered giving his collection to a historically black college, but he wanted to be “near it enough to make sure it was taken care of.”
Most of the objects “are anti-black caricatures, everyday objects or they are segregationist memorabilia,” he said. Because they represent a cruel, inflammatory past, they “should either be in a garbage can or a museum.”
Michigan Museum Showcases Racist Artifacts
Associated Press
Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:05:47 GMT
Bronx Museum Says New Exhibit A Real Homerun
For baseball fans, Friday is a big opening day in the Bronx not just at Yankee Stadium, but also a few blocks away at a special baseball exhibit.
Bronx Museum Says New Exhibit A Real Homerun
Thu, 12 Apr 2012 19:09:53 GMT
Black History Museum To Break Ground With Obama
WASHINGTON — A new national museum telling the history of Black life, art, and culture will soon begin taking shape as the 19th museum in the Smithsonian Institution to explore stories that have sometimes been left out on the National Mall.
President Barack Obama and former first lady Laura Bush will join Wednesday in celebrating the start of construction for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which comes during Black History Month.
It will be built between the Washington Monument and the National Museum of American History as a seven-level structure with much of its exhibit space below ground. A bronze-coated “corona,” a crown that rises as an inverse pyramid, will be its most distinctive feature. Organizers said the design is inspired by African-American metalwork from New Orleans and Charleston, S.C., and also evokes African roots.
Some exhibits will eventually include a Jim Crow-era segregated railroad car, galleries devoted to military and sports history and Louis Armstrong’s trumpet, among thousands of items. There will also be a court for quiet reflection, Museum Director Lonnie Bunch said.
“We will have stories that will make you smile and stories that will make you cry,” he told The Associated Press. “In a positive sense, this will be an emotional roller coaster, so you want to give people chances to reflect and to think about what this means to them.”
In many ways, the museum already exists. It has staff collecting artifacts and working to raise $250 million to fund the construction. Congress pledged to provide half the $500 million construction cost. It is scheduled to open in 2015.
The future museum already has a gallery at the Smithsonian’s American history museum with rotating exhibits to showcase its new collection and test different themes and approaches with visitors.
The newest exhibit explores Thomas Jefferson’s lifelong ownership of slaves and his conflict and advocacy against slavery, while also looking at the lives of six slave families who lived on his Monticello plantation in Virginia to humanize the issue of slavery.
Telling such stories has been taboo at many museums in the past and missing from the National Mall. Bunch said that by presenting a fuller view of history and dealing directly with difficult issues like race, the Smithsonian can present a fuller view of history and what it means to be an American.
“What this museum can do is if we tell the unvarnished truth in a way that’s engaging and not preachy, what I think will happen is that by illuminating all the dark corners of the American experience, we will help people find reconciliation and healing,” he said.
Curators estimate that 15,000 to 20,000 artifacts already are in hand. Bunch estimates they will need about 35,000 artifacts to choose from to create the museum’s permanent galleries. The staff is working to collect more material on popular culture and music, earlier materials from military history from World War I and earlier and artifacts to tell stories from the 19th century, including slavery and Reconstruction.
In Washington, the black history museum will follow major museums devoted to the Holocaust and to Native American history. Legislation has also been introduced in Congress to create a Smithsonian American Latino Museum.
Actress Phylicia Rashad, famous from TV’s “The Cosby Show,” is hosting the groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday. In an interview, she said African-American history is interconnected with many other groups.
“This is what makes America really great and unique is that there are different peoples living here who come together as one people, she said, adding that she hopes to be surprised by what the new museum can offer. “I would like to see some stories I’ve never imagined. I’d like to see some stories that aren’t so well talked about but that have documentation to back them up.”
The groundbreaking also marks the start of a public fundraising campaign to build the museum. Officials revealed about $100 million has been raised to date in private funds. This includes $5 million gifts from Wal-Mart, American Express, Boeing, Target and UnitedHealth Group. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Lilly Endowment each gave $10 million in recent years.
Some celebrities also are supporting the project, including Quincy Jones and Oprah Winfrey, whose foundation gave $1 million.
Delphia Duckens, the museum’s associate director for fundraising, said the museum will begin a regional campaign targeting key markets of New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta and Washington.
They are modeling the strategy to seek individual donors on the recent effort to build a Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and on Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, she said. Those campaigns maximized the value of drawing many small gifts online, in addition to major donors, she said.
“This is a museum for everybody,” she said. “We to model it such that everybody can say they had a part in making this a reality.”
Black History Museum To Break Ground With Obama
Associated Press
Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:31:53 GMT
The Pressure of Preserving Our Legacy
A powder horn carried into battle by the black soldier Prince Simbo during the American Revolution. Harriet Tubman's silk shawl -- a gift from Queen Victoria. A Stearman PT-13D plane used to train Tuskegee Airmen. A photographic portrait of Elizabeth Catlett, the renowned sculptor and printmaker. The black fedora from Michael Jackson's Victory tour. These are but a few of the more than 10,000 artifacts in the National Museum of African American History and Culture's collection.
The Pressure of Preserving Our Legacy
Cynthia Gordy
Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:46:00 GMT
Hall of African Peoples
Africa, a continent of nearly 12 million square miles and more than 700 million inhabitants, boasts a rich array of cultures. The Hall of African Peoples explores this great diversity, highlighting th...
Event Date & Time: 02/17/2012 10:00 AM
Location: American Museum of Natural History
Hall of African Peoples
Thu, 16 Feb 2012 07:59:37 GMT
New-York Historical Society: ‘The Battle for Civil Rights’ (Thursday) David Levering Lewis, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of W. E. B. Du Bois, joins the moderator Khalil Gibran Muhammad for a discussion about the civil rights movement and the evolving ways in which its history is told. At 6:30 p.m., 170 Central Park West, at 77th Street, (212) 873-3400, nyhistory.org; $24, or $12 for members.
New-York Historical Society: The 13th Amendment (Friday through Sunday, Tuesday through Thursday) On view at the Society through April 1 is a rare handwritten copy, signed by Lincoln, of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. Viewing hours are Tuesday through Thursday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Friday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $15, $12 for teachers, $10 for students, $5 for those 7 to 13, and free for children under 7; through March 31, visitors showing a MetroCard will receive two-for-one adult admissions. 170 Central Park West, at 77th Street, (212) 873-3400, nyhistory.org.
In search of slave clothes: A museum director’s hunt for a painful symbol
The fantasy find for historian Lonnie G. Bunch III includes a tattered pair of pantaloons made of that old “Negro cloth” and a coarse linen shirt that all but disintegrated on the back of its enslaved owner. Maybe a thrashed pair of brogans, too, worn around the plantation until the soles fell off. “Slave clothing,” Bunch [...]
In search of slave clothes: A museum director’s hunt for a painful symbol
The Admin
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:32:18 GMT
