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Art Trip to Brooklyn Museum Featuring Three Innovative Exhibitions Honoring Diverse Cultural Perspectives
A group of Upper School art students and faculty members recently attended several extraordinary art exhibits at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Art Department Chair Susan Cole shares the group's experience:
Forty upper school Art students spent Wednesday, March 25 investigating Kehinde Wiley’s first world retrospective, “A New Republic.” The exhibition features portraits of a new royalty. At 38, Wiley is one of the most celebrated artists of his generation. He incorporates an innovative creative approach of asking young black people that he sees on the street if they would be willing to pose for him. Then he asks them to select a famous portrait from the annals of art history and has them replicate the pose, so he creates a portrait of a modern-day “Judith Beheading Holofernes,” or a young person adopting the famous pose of Napoleon leading his army over the Alps. This brings “everyman/everywoman” into a new place in portraiture, since historically famous and wealthy people were the sole subjects of portraits. In these paintings Wiley corrects a stereotypical representation of black youth. Although his subjects are painted in casual clothes, they are posed in strong stances and powerful gazes, looking at the viewer with cool confident eyes, confronting art traditions that don’t acknowledge black cultural experience. Wiley describes his portraits as long-form autobiography. “I know how young black men are seen… They’re boys, scared little boys oftentimes. I was one of them.“
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The second exhibition was “Bound and Unbound,” a retrospective of the sculptures
of Judith Scott. Born in Ohio with Down syndrome, Scott (1943-2005) spent her
first 35 years in an institutional setting. In 1987 she was introduced to the Creative
Growth Art Center, where she began to fashion unique sculptures. Using yarn,
thread, electrical cord and fabric scraps, Scott wrapped and wove found objects into
complex, innovative three-dimensional works of art. Thanks to her twin sister, who
recognized her unique artistic accomplishments, Scott found gallery and museum
representation. The Brooklyn Museum organized this first comprehensive US
retrospective of Scott’s work.
Students next viewed Judy Chicago’s 1979 permanent installation “The Dinner
Party” in the museum’s Sackler Center for Feminist Art. This iconic artwork honors
39 mythical and historical women at place settings designed to reflect the period of
time in which they lived as well as their major contributions to civilization. These
place settings started with the Primordial Goddess, and included feminist role
models such as Sacajawea, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Virginia Wolff,
ending with Georgia O’Keefe. 999 other important women’s names are written in
gold on the white tiles of the Heritage floor on which the open triangular table rests. Students had fun finding their favorite place settings, the ones that most spoke to them.
Seeing these innovative artworks, groundbreaking in subject matter, prompted
great observations and conversations among our group. Photos from this inspiring trip were taken by Jessica Yankura.
St. Luke’s School is a secular (non-religious), private school in New Canaan, CT for grades 5 through 12 serving over 40 towns in Connecticut and New York. Our exceptional academics and diverse co-educational community foster students’ intellectual and ethical development and prepare them for top colleges. St. Luke’s Leading with Humanity curriculum builds the commitment to serve and the confidence to lead.
