Race and Revolution: Still Separate – Still Unequal
April 1 – May 1, 2018
Reception: Friday, April 13 at 6:30pm
Curators: Kathryn Fuller and Larry Ossei-Mensah
Artists:
Mitsuko Brooks, Dennis Redmoon Darkeem, Damien Davis, Dominique Duroseau, Uraline
Setpembre Hager, L. Kasimu Harris, Olalekan Jeyifous, Mona Kamal, jc lenochan, Karen Lomax,
Carina Maye, Kayla Muldrow, Shervone Neckles, Iviva Olenick, Nicole Soto-Rodríguez, Aram
Han Sifuentes, Marvin Toure, and Antoine Williams
| Date |
Program |
April 13, 2018
6:30-8:30pm |
Opening Reception |
April 14, 2018
1:00-2:00pm |
Open Book Test: An engaging performance with Dennis Redmoon Darkeem questioning how much we really know about “American History” and whose narratives are behind our understanding of past in the US. |
April 14, 2018
2:15-3:15pm |
Panel Workshop featuring curators Kathryn Fuller and Larry Ossei-Mensah, Patricia O’Rourke (UConn School of Education), partner teacher and Uraline Septembre Hager, Damien Davis, and jc lenochan from the exhibition. Panelists will provide an introduction and overview to the project, noting both its national and local dimensions, its use of arts-based learning strategies, and the potential of art to serve as both a form of and catalyst for public discourse about difficult subjects. Audience participants will have the opportunities to learn about strategies to design and implement their own initiatives that partner with professional artists, as well as think critically about the issue of school segregation and integration in the Hartford region. |
April 19, 2018
6:00-8:oopm |
Race and Revolutionary Read – Join us for the latest installment of our community reading series, focused on books that spark revolutionary conversations about social justice. In an exciting partnership with Hartford Public Library, this Spring we are featuring Citizen: An American Lyric!
Pick up a copy of the book at Hartford Public Library, Charter Oak Cultural Center, or your local book seller and start reading. On April 19, join us in the Charter Oak Sanctuary for an interactive lecture with UConn’s own Shardé M. Davis, Ph.D. Our current gallery exhibition, “Race and Revolution” will also be open for viewing from 6-8PM!
Cosponsored by UConn Hartford |
Exploring Segregation of Public Schools in the United States
On April 1, The Thomas J. Dodd Research Center will present the Race and Revolution exhibition in a series that utilizes a combination of contemporary artworks and historical documents as a platform to examine patterns of systemic racism in the United States. This edition, entitled Race and Revolution: Still Separate – Still Unequal, investigates the prevalence of segregation in the United States public school system.
Since the inception of #BlackLivesMatter in 2012, the American population is reflecting on what happened after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s-60s. That word “after” is part of the conundrum that surrounds our present-day conversation around race and racism. What exactly came to an end? The exhibition Still Separate – Still Unequal seeks to examine ongoing racial and economic disparity in the U.S. public school system.
Reports in 2014, the year that marked the sixtieth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown V. Board of Education decision declaring segregated schools as unconstitutional, showed an increase in school segregation. How has this happened, and how can we use art to push the conversation into the public discourse in a new and provocative way?
CURATOR BIOS
Katie Fuller was an educator for eleven years before curating her first show, Race and Revolution:
Exploring Human Injustices through Art, in the summer/fall of 2016. As a high school English teacher, she taught literature through the lens of historical events. While working in education at the New-York Historical Society, she wrote curriculum and taught classes on civil liberties and the Fourth Amendment.
Always passionate about social justice issues, she felt a pressing need to examine historical memory around race and racism in the United States. These experiences have led her to this specific path – curating the less known and often unspoken histories of systemic racism in the United States by pairing contemporary art with historical narratives. She has applied all she’s learned and continues to learn and challenge people’s perspectives in regards to history and social justice.
Larry Ossei-Mensah is a Ghanaian-American independent curator and cultural critic who uses contemporary art and culture as a vehicle to redefine how we see ourselves and the world around us. He has organized exhibitions at commercial and nonprofit galleries throughout New York City featuring a roster of critically acclaimed artists including Firelei Baez, ruby amanze, Hugo McCloud and Brendan Fernandes to name a few. Ossei-Mensah is also the Co-Founder of ARTNOIR, a global collective of culturalists who design multimodal experiences aimed to engage this generation’s dynamic and diverse creative class. He has documented contemporary art happenings for various publications and his writings have profiled some of the most dynamic visual artists working today—Derrick Adams, Mickalene Thomas, Kehinde Wiley, Lorna Simpson and street artist JR.
“My foster mother told me … she would save me from being Penobscot.”
Isa Mujahid, Founder and Organizing Director of CTCORE-Organize Now!
