Rosie Perez Endorses Obama by Going in on Mitt Romney’s Remarks (Video)

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Rosie Perez gives a great explanation on the reason why Hispanics and Latinos are not voting for him.

The other day we saw Jay-Z give a eloquent and poignant endorsement of the president, but now we take a look at the Latino/Hispanic vote; a strong vote that must be won by the presidential candidate in order to win the election.  The Latino numbers are there for President Obama so far and Rosie Perez just hammered the message on home.  Rosie Perez stood in the middle of a white room and laughed with Mitt Romney for a minute…

Mitt Romney’s infamous secretly recorded tape during a private fundraiser dinner is played and he’s talking about how his father was born in Mexico, but “had he been born to Mexican parents, maybe he’d have a better shot at winning this.”  But Rosie has a rebuttal to his ignorant thoughts by first making the point that the population of America is 17 percent Latino.

“All you have to do is look at the statistics and Mitts point becomes crystal clear, Hispanics represent 17 percent of the population and account for less than two percent of all elected and appointed officials.  The advantage is obvious.  Think of all our Hispanic American presidents from Jorge Washington to Jorge Bush …”

But Rosie doesn’t let up.  She shows him how wonderful life could be if he just had a few

“But a clean cut Hispanic American like Julian Castro or Ricky Martin OH…MY…GOODNESS!  What if you were just a little bit gay Mitt think of all the advantages that would provide. What if you had a vagina?! (she gasps) If you were a gay Latina this election would be in the bag for you!  Unfortunately for you Mitt YOU WERE CURSED with the hard knock life of growing up the son of a governor and auto executive…”

But when she gets serious, she drops the bottom line:

“The reason Latinas are not voting for you is because your policies suck!

She goes in, doesn’t she! Check her out!  Another honest and on point celebrity endorsement for Obama!

-J.C. Brooks

Unflinching moving image works by Steve McQueen presented at the Art Institute

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Steve McQueen. Charlotte, 2004. Photo courtesy of the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York /Paris, and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.
CHICAGO, IL.- With the largest collection of work by the artist in the United States, the Art Institute of Chicago presents Steve McQueen, the first museum survey devoted to his career. Fourteen of McQueen’s works, including the never-before-seen End Credits (2012), is expansively presented in the Art Institute’s Regenstein Hall from October 21, 2012 through January 6, 2013, offering visitors a rare opportunity to immerse themselves in his captivating and incisive art. Co-organized with Schaulager Basel, the exhibition will be on view in Switzerland from March 1 through July 7, 2013.
One of today’s leading visual artists, McQueen combines formal and spatial explorations with a potent, and at times confrontational, political consciousness. His moving-image works take a tight focus on the world and explore a manifold of themes, including exoticism, relationships, and violence, all while combining and recombining the fundamental elements of the moving image: light and darkness, motion and stillness, inactivity and change. Equally important to McQueen are the conditions of viewing and the aesthetics of installation, which serve to construct an environment in which layers are stripped away, familiar icons and images are destabilized, and meaning is questioned. The result is a multifaceted and transformative relationship between the work and the viewer—watching a musician record a vocal performance, then, can become a journey to the edges of the singer’s consciousness.
Steve McQueen consists of 12 moving-image works as well as Mees, After Evening Dip, New Years Day, 2002 (2005), a photographic lightbox, and Queen and Country (2006), his installation created as an “official British war artist,” which has never before been seen outside the United Kingdom. The exhibition spans his career, from Bear (1993), which was completed while he was finishing his studies at Goldsmiths College in London, to End Credits, which will debut at the Art Institute to mark this first major solo exhibition. End Credits is a radical and sobering look at the legendary african american singer and social activist Paul Robeson (1898–1976). McQueen has envisioned the main structure of the work as one related to the conclusion of every feature film, the rolling credits. In End Credits, however, the back-story becomes the narrative, raising issues that are both historical and current.

Steven Rodney “Steve” McQueen CBE is a London-born artist and filmmaker. He is a winner of the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, a Turner Prize and BAFTA.

Howard Greenberg Gallery presents two exhibitions marking the centennial of Gordon Parks

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Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama, 1956. Pigment print; printed later, 20 x 16 inches. From an edition of 15. The Gordon Parks Foundation copyright and authentication stamp with signature, print date and edition number in pencil by Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Executive Director, on print verso.

NEW YORK, NY.- In honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Gordon Parks, widely recognized as the most influential african american photographer of the 20th century, Howard Greenberg Gallery in collaboration with the Gordon Parks Foundation presents two simultaneous exhibitions of his work. Contact: Gordon Parks, Ralph Ellison, and “Invisible Man,” curated by Glenn Ligon, and Gordon Parks: Centennial on view from September 14 – October 27, 2012. Parks, a remarkable Renaissance man who was also a writer, filmmaker, and composer, brought poetic style to street photography and portraiture, while exploring the social and economic impact of racism.
Most noteworthy in the exhibitions are a number of color prints from Segregation Story, 1956, a limited edition portfolio with an essay by Maurice Berger. On exhibition for the first time, they were produced in 2012 from a group of transparencies only recently discovered in a storage box at the Gordon Parks Foundation.

Contact: Gordon Parks, Ralph Ellison, and “Invisible Man,” curated by the artist Glenn Ligon, examines a series of works by Gordon Parks entitled Invisible Man. Many were first published in Life magazine upon the release of Ralph Ellison’s award winning novel, which explored racial and social issues facing african americans in the 20th century. A milestone in American literature, the novel is narrated by a black man who feels socially invisible. The exhibition includes the gelatin silver print The Invisible Man, Harlem, New York, 1952, a striking image of a man peering out from underneath a manhole cover in the middle of a deserted street.
As Ligon notes, “The photos for Invisible Man veered back in forth between an attempt to illustrate some of the feverish scenes in the novel and the “reality” of Harlem, which Parks had tried to document in his previous work. Indeed, many of the photos in the exhibition were seemingly created in relationship to Parks’ photo assignments in Harlem, not as illustrations for the novel, although it is hard to distinguish between the two. It is the tension between these motives—to illustrate a fiction and to document a reality—that is the basis of this exhibition.”
Gordon Parks: Centennial surveys nearly 40 works spanning five decades of the artist’s career beginning in the early 1940s, including some of the legendary photographer’s most seminal images. Among the highlights in Gordon Parks: Centennial are American Gothic, 1942. Considered to be Parks’s signature image, the gelatin silver print depicts Ella Watson, a black woman who mopped floors at a government building. Astonished by the prejudice he encountered on his first day in Washington D.C., Parks struck up a conversation with Watson and heard about the difficulties she faced due to bigotry and discrimination. That day Parks himself had been refused service at a clothing store, restaurant, and movie theater. Watson agreed to be photographed by him, holding a broom behind an American flag. Park’s riff on the iconic 1930 painting of the same name by Grant Wood became the symbol of the burgeoning civil rights movement. Another image, Muhammad Ali, Miami, Florida, 1966, shows the boxer looking tense and drenched in sweat. A color photograph of family waiting in front of an ice cream shop on a hot summer day, Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama, 1956, is on view for the first time as part of the Segregation Story series taken for Life magazine.
Gordon Parks Collected Works The exhibitions at Howard Greenberg Gallery coincide with Gordon Parks Collected Works, a five-volume book on his photographs to be published by Steidl in September. The book will be the most extensive publication to document Gordon Parks’s legendary career.
Gordon Parks was born into poverty and segregation on a farm in Kansas in 1912, the youngest of 15 children. He worked at odd jobs before buying a camera at a pawnshop in 1938 and training himself to become a photographer. Parks was a as a photographer at the Farm Security Administration and later at the Office of War Information in Washington D.C. from 1941 to 1945. As a freelance photographer, his 1948 photo essay on the life of a Harlem gang leader won him widespread acclaim and a position from 1948 to 1972 as the first black staff photographer and writer for Life magazine, the largest circulation picture publication of its day. He was also a noted composer and author, and in 1969, became the first african american to write and direct a Hollywood feature film, The Learning Tree, based on his bestselling novel of the same name. This was followed in 1971 by the hugely successful motion picture Shaft. Parks was the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Medal of Arts in 1988 and over 50 honorary doctorates. Photographs by Parks are in the collections of numerous major museums. Gordon Parks lived in New York City for many years and died in 2006 at the age of 93. Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. stated, “Gordon Parks is the most important black photographer in the history of photojournalism. Long after the events that he photographed have been forgotten, his images will remain with us, testaments to the genius of his art, transcending time, place and subject matter.”

More Information: http://artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=57757&b=african%20american#.UITSA1FQjRY[/url]
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New works by multimedia artist Mickalene Thomas in Brooklyn Museum exhibition

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Mickalene Thomas (American, b.1971), Interior: Two Chairs and Fireplace, 2012. Rhinestone, acrylic paint and oil enamel on wood panel, 96 x 72 x 2 in. (243.8 x 182.9 x 5.1 cm). Collection of Pamela K. and William A. Royall, Jr., Richmond, VA. Courtesy of the Artist, Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, and Suzanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. © Mickalene Thomas, Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, and Suzanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Photo: Christopher Burke Studio.

BROOKLYN, NY.- Several new works by multimedia artist Mickalene Thomas influenced by her long-standing interest in interior design, including four installations evoking the sets she creates in her studio for photographing models, are featured in the Brooklyn presentation of her first solo museum exhibition. On view September 28, 2012, through January 20, 2013, Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe includes nearly 100 works, among them paintings and collages of domestic interiors and four room installations, inspired by the artist’s childhood memories and her interest in the 1970s.
The rooms created by Thomas include wood paneling, furnishings, textiles, and works of art and are similar to the backdrops that appear in her paintings of african american women, for which she is best known. The artist’s paintings and collages, most of mid-twentieth-century uninhabited modernist interiors, as well as the installations, were also influenced by her investigation of vintage books on modern decor, such as the 1970 eighteen-volume set The Practical Encyclopedia of Good Decorating and Home Improvement.
Thomas‘s oeuvre investigates the body in relationship to interior spaces and the landscape through a pictorial style that transforms past masterworks by re-imagining them in a modern-day idiom. Her interiors draw on a range of historical periods, from the nineteenth century to the present.
Among the paintings and collages of interiors included in the exhibition are works inspired by Thomas’s 2011 residence at Claude Monet’s home in Giverny, France, such as La Maison de Monet and Interior: Fireplace with Monet Tiles, as well as the rhinestone-studded Interior: Striped Foyer, Interior: Blue Couch with Green Owl, and Interior: Green and White Couch.
Thomas’s work grows from a long study of art history, drawing inspiration from the traditional genres of portraiture, landscape, and still life, as well as from popular culture, whose imagery she uses to explore issues of identity and race, as well as beauty and self. Her work, which synthesizes a wide range of artistic and cultural references, presents a complex perspective on what it means to be a woman and expands common definitions of beauty.
Her signature portraits of vibrant black women in photographs, paintings, and collages explore artifice, masking, and costuming. Working with models drawn from her circle of friends and relatives, she outfits them with carefully selected costumes, wigs, and makeup, and then poses them in carefully composed “rooms” carved out of her studio space.
Born in 1971, Mickalene Thomas received a B.F.A. from Pratt Institute and an M.F.A. from Yale University. She has participated in residency programs at the Versailles Foundation, Munn Artists Program, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; and MoMA PS1, New York. Among the many public institutions whose collections include her work are the Brooklyn Museum; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.More Information: http://artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=58006&b=african%20american#.UITQn1FQjRY[/url]
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American artist Romare Bearden’s “Black Odyssey” debuts at Reynolda House Museum of American Art

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Romare Bearden, Home to Ithaca, 1977, Collage, Courtesy Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, Massachusetts. Gift of the estate of Eileen Paradis Barber (Class of 1929).
WINSTON-SALEM, NC.- The first full-scale presentation outside of New York of Romare Bearden’s “Odysseus Series” debuted at Reynolda House Museum of American Art on October 13, 2012.
“Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey” will be on view through Jan. 13, 2013. In 1977, Romare Bearden (1911–1988), one of the most powerful and original artists of the 20th century, created a cycle of collages and watercolors based on Homer’s epic poem, “The Odyssey.” Rich in symbolism and allegorical content, Bearden’s “Odysseus Series” created an artistic bridge between classical mythology and african american culture. The works conveyed a sense of timelessness and the universality of the human condition, but their brilliance was displayed for only two months in New York City before being scattered to private collections and public art museums.
A new exhibition organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Services (SITES) features 55 Bearden works, including collages from the “Odysseus Series,” and watercolors and line drawings relating to his interest in classical themes. “Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey” will debut at Reynolda House Museum of American Art before continuing on a seven-city national tour through 2014.

The exhibition is curated by renowned English and Jazz scholar Robert G. O’Meally, the Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature and founder and former director of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University.
“In creating a black Odyssey series, Bearden not only staked a claim to the tales of ancient Greece as having modern relevance, he also made the claim of global cultural collage—that as humans, we are all collages of our own unique experiences,” said O’Meally. “Indeed, Bearden does not merely illustrate Homer?he is Homer’s true collaborator, and he invites us as viewers to inherit Homer’s tale and interpret it as our own.”
Born in Charlotte, Bearden moved with his family to Harlem as a young child, part of the Great Migration of african americans from the inhospitable South to greater opportunity in the North. Throughout his career, Bearden created images of the lives of travelers on their way to and from home, a theme no more powerfully explored than in his “Odyssey Series.” Bearden had examined classical themes before, but the “Odysseus Series” expanded his exploration of literary narratives and artistic genres by presenting his own personal reinterpretation of the subject.

More Information: http://artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=58317&b=african%20american#.UITO0lFQjRY[/url]
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Exhibition chronicles the vital legacy of the African American artistic community in Los Angeles

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Betye Saar. Black Girl’s Window, 1969. Assemblage in window. 35 3⁄4 x 18 x 1 1⁄2 in. (90.8 x 45.7 x 3.8 cm). Collection of the artist; Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York.

LONG ISLAND CITY, NY.- MoMA PS1 presents Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980, a comprehensive exhibition that chronicles the vital legacy of the african american artistic community in Los Angeles, examining a pioneering group of black artists whose work, connections, and friendships with other artists of varied ethnic backgrounds helped shape the creative output of Southern California. Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980 will be on view in the First Floor Main galleries at MoMA PS1 from October 21, 2012 through March 11, 2013.
Now Dig This! is organized by the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and was presented there in 2011-12 as part of Pacific Standard Time, a collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California. The exhibition is curated by Kellie Jones, Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, and the presentation at MoMA PS1 is organized at MoMA PS1 by Christophe Cherix, The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Chief Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books, The Museum of Modern Art, and Peter Eleey, Curator, MoMA PS1, in association with Connie Butler, The Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings, the Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition presents 140 works by thirty-three artists active during this historical period, exploring the rising strength of the black community in Los Angeles as well as the increasing political, social, and economic power of african americans across the nation. Several prominent artists began their careers in the Los Angeles area, including Melvin Edwards, David Hammons, Maren Hassinger, Senga Nengudi, John Outterbridge, Noah Purifoy, and Betye Saar.
Their influence, like that of all the artists in the exhibition, goes beyond their immediate creative circles and the geography of Los Angeles and is critical to a more complete and dynamic understanding of twentieth-century American art. By illuminating the richness and complexity of this creative community, Now Dig This! demonstrates how these artists were not working in isolation but were instead integral to the developing U.S. art scene during the latter part of the twentieth century. During this important era of artistic and cultural ferment, artists shifted from more traditional formats, such as painting and works on paper, to modes such as assemblage, Finish Fetish (a West Coast movement parallel to Minimal Art on the East Coast), Postminimal Art, Conceptual Art, and performance. EXHIBITION DESCRIPTION Presented in MoMA PS1’s First Floor Main galleries, Now Dig This! looks at the period through several framing categories. FRONT RUNNERS — By the early 1960s the West Coast became highly visible among the international arts community. african american artists such as Betye Saar and Melvin Edwards made some of their earliest important works during this time. Charles White, a veteran social realist from Chicago, arrived in Los Angeles from New York in 1956, energizing the black art community and inspiring many young artists who studied under him at Otis Art Institute. ASSEMBLING — The Watts Rebellion of 1965 was the largest urban riot at that time in U.S. history and had a profound effect on this community of artists. Many began to approach their craft and materials differently, and assemblage emerged as an important artistic strategy. Noah Purifoy and John T. Riddle, for example, made assemblage works from the detritus of the Watts Rebellion, creating formally impressive pieces that were also highly charged politically.
Purifoy claimed that it was the Rebellion that made him a real artist. ARTISTS/GALLERISTS — Lacking representation in mainstream institutions, african american artists opened their own venues in the 1960s and 70s. Spaces such as Gallery 32, founded by painter Suzanne Jackson, and the Brockman Gallery—established by brothers Dale and Alonzo Davis, became sites for cutting-edge work and havens for discussions, poetry readings, and fund-raisers for social causes. Samella Lewis is an amazing one-woman institution, having opened several galleries and a museum, started a magazine, and published some of the earliest books on this cohort of artists. POSTMINIMAL ART AND PERFORMANCE — This section of the exhibition documents the move away from more didactic subject matter toward abstract and dematerialized practices. Fred Eversley was the most visible african american working with the Finish Fetish style of Los Angeles Minimal Art in the 1960s.
In the 1970s artists such as Senga Nengudi, Maren Hassinger, and David Hammons began to experiment with PostMinimal Art ephemerality, and performance. LOS ANGELES SNAPSHOT / FRIENDS — The exhibition also explores the informal relationships between african american artists in Los Angeles and those in Northern California, like Raymond Saunders, as well as artists of varied ethnic backgrounds, such as Virginia Jaramillo, Ron Miyashiro, and Mark di Suvero. These relationships are an important part of fully understanding and contextualizing the work of this generation.

More Information: http://artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=58440&b=african%20american#.UITLM1FQjRY[/url]
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‘Open Air,’ Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Light Show, Will Beam Recorded Words Into Philly’s Skies

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AP  |  By
Posted: 09/16/2012 11:59 am Updated: 09/17/2012 8:30 am

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A new interactive artwork opening in Philadelphia will make light of your words, but it’s probably not what you think.

Montreal-based artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is preparing to flip the switch on “Open Air,” an interactive work that will translate voice messages into moving beams of light over a tree-lined parkway named for Benjamin Franklin in the heart of Philadelphia’s cultural district.

Record your soapbox declarations, poems, gripes, wishes and shout-outs of up to 30 seconds on the “Open Air” iPhone app or online, then watch 24 robotic searchlights slowly sweep through the night sky in patterns and intensity determined by your vocal signature and GPS location.

The spectacle starts Thursday and runs through Oct. 14, from 8-11 p.m. each night.

“Philadelphia has traditions of free speech and democracy. … We wanted to take that background and implement technology to visualize it,” said Lozano-Hemmer, who was commissioned about four years ago to create the work. “We wanted to take free speech and make it materially visible in the city.”

On clear nights, the artist’s sky-high vox populi will be visible from 10 miles away. His site-specific installations have been presented worldwide, but “Open Air” is his first outdoor searchlight project in the U.S.

Want to beam yourself up? From anywhere in the world, messages can be recorded through the project’s website (www.openairphilly.net) or after downloading a free iPhone app debuting Sept. 20. Loaners will be available at on-site locations for the non-iPhone crowd.

Messages recorded on the parkway — your smartphone’s GPS gives you away — are automatically bumped to the front of the queue. As the light pattern activates, its originator gets a heads-up on their phone and the canopy of roving searchlights briefly form a dome in the air above the person’s location.

Anyone can simultaneously hear the speakers’ messages through the Open Air app or website or through two low-volume listening spots on the parkway. Or people can choose to simply watch the silent display as it travels through the air.

Organizers expect the inevitable “Yo, Vinnie!” and “Go Eagles!” exclamations but urge participants to take the opportunity to say something meaningful, funny, inspirational, challenging — and appropriate. Online entries will be kept in check by users’ votes; on-site messages won’t be censored, but the light canopy and being visible in the crowd should act to deter offensive comments.

“If you’re on the parkway speaking, we all know where you are, and in a way it’s pretty much like any public space: If you say something that’s moronic, well, other people can see you do that and you self-regulate,” Lozano-Hemmer said. “We need to moderate a little bit more online because of the anonymity.”

Interspersed among the everyday people will be prerecorded messages from past and present Philadelphians including filmmaker David Lynch, late Phillies announcer Harry Kalas, hip hop artist Santigold and classical pianist Andre Watts. All messages and corresponding light designs will also be archived on the project website for posterity.

Bird songs also will contribute to the audiovisual mix, a nod to the fall southern migration that coincides with “Open Air.” Mindful of the thousands of migrating birds that have become confused and trapped within the beams of New York City’s “Tribute of Light” recreation of the Twin Towers, “Open Air” will be periodically turned off to allow any disoriented flyers to continue on the wing.

Another green note: The power used during the entire exhibit will equal less than a football game and run on 50 percent renewable biodiesel, he said.

A key goal was making a work that’s as big as the sky overhead also as personal as each individual message. Lozano-Hemmer is mindful of light’s power to intimidate as well as illuminate and the relationship of searchlights with both celebration and entrapment.

“There is that fine line between seduction of participation and the violence of Orwellian surveillance and tracking and policing of the people,” he said. “The light of enlightenment and the light of blindness.”

There are uncertainties inherent in ambitious projects that rely on public participation, however. Despite all the planning and work, what if people don’t show up? Lozano-Hemmer and Penny Balkin Bach, executive director of the Association for Public Art, which commissioned the work, are confident that won’t be the case.

“We don’t know the results — that’s what so fascinating about this,” Bach said. “We can’t wait to see what will happen.”

Questlove Is Now An NYU Professor

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NYU just got slightly more exciting.

Questlove (or ?uestlove, or Amir Thompson), drummer for The Roots (or Jimmy Fallon’s house band), will soon be a professor at New York University. The class he’s teaching? Well, it sounds AWESOME (and we say that as jaded chroniclers of university of classes).

MTV.com has more:

?uestlove and Universal Music’s Harry Weinger are teaching a class called “Classic Albums” at the Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. The class will take an in-depth look at how certain albums were able to stand the test of time, breaking down music, lyrics, production, business aspects, and more.

What might those classic albums be? According to Billboard, “the class is expected to look at albums by Sly & The Family Stone (‘Stand!, There’s A Riot Goin’ On’), Aretha Franklin (‘Lady Soul’), Led Zeppelin (‘IV), Prince (‘Dirty Mind’), Michael Jackson (‘Off The Wall’), and the Beastie Boys (‘Paul’s Boutique’).”

Questlove is not the only celebrity professor. James Franco is teaching a class at the University of Southern California this year, and Todd Rundgren taught for two weeks at Indiana University last year.

Watch Party Presidential Debate Monday, October 22, 2012

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Watch Party Presidential Debate
Monday, October 22, 2012
7165 Restaurant
7165 Germantown Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19119
Doors Open 7 PM   Debate Begins 9 PM
215-629-3939

Admission Free

African-American Pioneer, Bronze Sculptor, and WWI Fighter Pilot Honored by WKU

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WKU is set to induct three new members into the school’s Hall of Distinguished Alumni. The Class of 2012 includes the first African-American to enroll in undergraduate classes on the Hill, a renowned bronze sculptor whose works can be seen throughout WKU’s campus, and a Brigadier General and WWI ace fighter pilot.

Friday’s induction ceremony at the Sloan Convention Center in Bowling Green will honor Margaret Munday (’60), Russ Faxon (’73), and Victor Herbert Strahm (’15).

As WKU Public Radio reported in August, Ms. Munday was an unsuspecting, but willing, pioneer as the first African-American student to enroll in undergraduate classes at what was then known as Western Kentucky State College.

Munday, a native of the Logan County town of Auburn, spent her freshman year of college at the all-black Kentucky State in Frankfort. But Munday’s brother told her their mother deeply missed Margaret, and when Margaret heard Western Kentucky State College was opening its doors to black students, Margaret decided she was moving closer to home and her family.

Munday told WKU Public Radio she never intended to be a trailblazer. She said she assumed she would be joined at Western Kentucky State College by other black students from the southern Kentucky area. But when Margaret showed up in the fall of 1956 to register for classes, she was the only African-American there.

Munday excelled at Western Kentucky State College with the support and encouragement of President Kelly Thompson, Librarian Margie Helm and Professors Ivan Wilson and H.F. McChesney. She graduated in 1960 and began a 30-plus year career of musical education, working in every school in the Logan County school system.

Here is more information about the three new inductees into WKU’s Hall of Distinguished Alumni:

Russell Faxon (’73)

Russ Faxon, a renowned bronze sculptor who lives in Bell Buckle, Tenn., grew up in Bowling Green, Ky., and earned his bachelor’s degree in Art Education from WKU in 1973.

After graduation and teaching in Nashville for two years, Faxon traveled to Europe to study and pursue his passion for sculpture. In Italy, he learned the fine art of bronze casting at the Mariani Foundry in Pietrasanta.

In 1979, he moved to Bell Buckle where he established Selah Studio. In his work, Faxon concentrates on capturing the expression, emotion and spirit of the human figure, modeled in clay and cast in bronze through the “lost wax” casting process. Ranging in size from table models to monumental figures, Faxon’s sculptures are designed for specific locations, personal interiors and public spaces in the United States and Europe.

Faxon has three works on the WKU campus — Robert Guthrie at the Guthrie Bell Tower, Coach E.A. Diddle at Diddle Arena and the Red Towel at Houchens Industries-L.T. Smith Stadium. Two additional pieces — WKU mascot Big Red and former WKU Alumni Association Director Lee Robertson — will soon be added.

Some of Faxon’s other life-size bronze sculptures include Minnie Pearl and Roy Acuff at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tenn.; Chet Atkins at Bank of America in Nashville; John Pemberton, creator of Coca-Cola in Atlanta; Uncle Herschel and Stella at Cracker Barrel Corp. in Lebanon, Tenn.; Gov. Ned McWherter in Dresden, Tenn.; Johnson Memorial Plaza at Nashville’s Belmont University; Bedford County Veterans Memorial in Shelbyville, Tenn.; and the Korean War Memorial for the State of Tennessee at the Legislative Plaza in Nashville.

Faxon has had 26 public commissions to date and has exhibited his work throughout the United States and internationally. He received the Elliot Gantz & Co. Foundry Prize at the National Sculpture Society 75th Annual Exhibition in 2008 and was inducted into the Bowling Green High School Hall of Honor in 1994.

Margaret Munday (’60)

Margaret Munday, a retired music teacher from Auburn, Ky., holds a special place in WKU’s history of diversity as the first African-American undergraduate student to attend classes on the Hill.

Munday attended Auburn Training School and Knob City High School in Russellville. She originally enrolled at Kentucky State College, a historically African-American school but wanted to be closer to home.

On Sept. 15, 1956, after Western Kentucky State College and Kentucky’s other higher education institutions were desegregated, Munday transferred from Kentucky State and enrolled in classes on the Hill.

Munday, a Music major and member of the Western Chorus, received support and encouragement from President Kelly Thompson, Librarian Margie Helm and Professors Ivan Wilson and H.F. McChesney. She successfully pursued her bachelor’s degree despite the sociological aspects associated with her journey into unchartered territory that ushered in an era of social and educational change at WKU and the region.

After her graduation in 1960, Munday taught school at the all-black Johnstown School in Olmstead, Ky. In 1964 she became the first black teacher at Auburn High School and eventually taught at every school in the Logan County, Ky., school system. In 1995, she retired after more than 30 years as a music and chorus teacher.

During her teaching career, Munday received several state and regional music association awards. For 15 years, she was Director of the Union District Youth Choir, which consisted of members from 32 churches. In 1999, she was honored by WKU’s Society of African American Alumni at its Spring Celebration.

She is a member of Macedonia Baptist Church in Auburn, where she has played piano since about age 10.

Victor Herbert Strahm (’15)

Brigadier General Victor H. Strahm was an American hero, an “ace” among World War I fighter pilots with five aerial victories and helped usher in the modern era of aviation.

In 1915, Strahm graduated from Western Kentucky State Normal School where his father, Franz Joseph Strahm, was Director of Music. When World War I began, Strahm enlisted in the U.S. Army Flight Training Program and earned his wings in October 1917.

During 10 months in France, Strahm, who was attached to the 91st Aero Observation Squadron, was credited with five victories and three probable victories. He was awarded the U.S. Distinguished Service Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster, U.S. Silver Star, French Croix de Guerre with Gold and Silver Palms, British Distinguished Flying Cross and Italian Gold Medal for Valor.

After the war, he flew as a stunt pilot in several war movies, participated in National Air Races and was chief test pilot at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio.

At the beginning of World War II, Strahm was a Chief Planner for the U.S. Ninth Air Force and was promoted to Brigadier General in 1942. Strahm was one of the principal planners in preparations for the air support for the D-Day landings at Normandy on June 6, 1944.

Strahm received the U.S. Legion of Merit with one Oak Leaf Cluster, Polish Legion of Honor Commendation, Companion of the British Empire, French Legion of Honor, World War II Victory Medal Commendation, European-African-Middle East Theatre Ribbon, American Theatre Ribbon, American Defense Ribbon and Asian-Pacific Theatre Ribbon with two stars.

Following WWII, Strahm helped organize the Strategic Air Command and served as commander of the 33rd Air Division at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City and as base commander at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, La. He died on May 11, 1957.

‘Romnesia’: Obama Coins Mitt Romney ‘Condition’ (VIDEO)

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FAIRFAX, Va. — At a misty rally designed to gin up enthusiasm among women voters, President Barack Obama’s strongest riff was a mockery of Mitt Romney’s effort to showcase a more moderate front, coining the tactical shift as a case of “Romnesia.”

From his remarks midday Friday on the campus of George Mason University:

We have got to name this condition he is going through. I think it is called Romnesia. I think that’s what it is called. Now I’m not a medical doctor. But I do want to go over some of the symptoms with you because I want to make sure nobody else catches it.If you say you’re for equal pay for equal work but you keep refusing to say whether or not you will sign a bill that protects equal pay for equal work, you might have Romnesia.

If you say women should have access to contraceptive care, but you support legislation that would let employers deny contraceptive care, you might have a case of Romnesia.

If you say you will protect a women’s right to choose but you stand up in a primary debate and say you’d be delighted to sign a law outlawing that right to choose in all cases, then you have definitely got Romnesia.

Obama went through a number of other so-called cases, including tax cuts and the coal industry. The neologism got hearty laughs and applause, especially as the president informed the crowd that the condition was covered under his health care law.

“If you come down with a case of Romnesia and you can’t seem to remember the policies that are still on your website, or the promises you have made over the six years you’ve been running for president, here is the good news: Obamacare covers pre-existing conditions,” Obama bellowed. “We can fix you up. We’ve got a cure. We can make you well.”

The length of time it took to mock Romney on these grounds is, in part, a reflection of how caught off guard the Obama campaign was by the governor’s shift. The first attack line, following the first presidential debate, was to call Romney a great actor hiding a conservative underside, while the second centered around painting Romney as inherently unserious (cut Big Bird?).

The Romnesia line (the campaign confirmed the spelling) hits Romney as a political opportunist. It contrasts slightly with the months-long effort to paint him as the “severe conservative” he claimed he was in that it implies Romney is devoid of principle. But it doesn’t completely contradict it (you can argue that Romney would revert to his conservative self under the political pressure of congressional Republicans if elected).

The event drew 9,000 people, according to campaign officials. The main effort was to further drive a wedge between Romney and women voters. And Obama did his best to do that outside of the Romnesia riff as well, charging the Republican nominee with being a relic of the 1950s.

“Governor Romney wants to take us to policies more suited to the 1950s,” he said earlier in the speech. “Even his own running mate said he’s kind of a throwback to the 50s. That’s one thing we agree on. But he may not have noticed, we are in the 21st century.”

UPDATE: 1:10 p.m. — The Romney campaign responds, with a statement from delegate Barbara Comstock.

“Women haven’t forgotten how we’ve suffered over the last four years in the Obama economy with higher taxes, higher unemployment, and record levels of poverty,” the statement reads. “President Obama has failed to put forward a second-term agenda – and when you don’t have a plan to run on, you stoop to scare tactics. What is really frightening is that we know a second term for President Obama will bring devastating defense cuts that will cost Virginia over 130,000 jobs, more burdensome regulations, and the biggest tax increase in history on our small businesses and families. Mitt Romney’s plan for a stronger middle class will create 12 million new jobs and provide greater opportunity for women across our nation, including Virginia. Mitt Romney is the candidate in this race who will bring us the real recovery we need.”

UPDATE: 4:24 p.m. — Vice President Joe Biden tossed out the Romnesia reference at a campaign event later Friday. Visibly amused, he told a crowd in Fort Pierce, Fla., that Obama has a term for Romney’s inability to remember his positions on issues.

“He calls it Romnesia. Well, I’ll tell you what, I hope you don’t get Romnesia. It’s a bad disease. And it’s contagious,” Biden said, turning his attention to vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan. “Because all of a sudden, the budget hawk, the guy who introduced a whole budget plan that actually passed the House of Representatives, all of a sudden doesn’t remember it … He doesn’t remember what it actually does. He says it doesn’t cut, it just slows growth.”

 

Do Black Dancers Have A Place In Ballet? We Say, Yes. (Video)

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Economic factors forced the disbanding of the Dance Theatre of Harlem Company in 2004. Now, eight years later, reading the series of pieces about the dearth of black dancers that recently ran in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, it is as if Dance Theatre of Harlem never existed.

With increasing frequency, the scarcity of black dancers on the ballet stage bubbles back to the surface–a sure sign of the need for change. The roving finger of blame identifies a different culprit with each round of discussion, yet because there are multiple factors at work, we are still far from a resolution.

In founding Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1969 at the height of the Civil Rights movement, Arthur Mitchell intended to put the question of whether black dancers belonged in ballet to rest for good. As a founding member of the groundbreaking Dance Theatre of Harlem and throughout my 27 years as a ballerina with that company, we demonstrated that dancers of many hues could not only perform ballet, but do so at the highest level. It was gratifying that, ten years into our existence, a second generation of dancers of color began arriving at our doorstep, ready to claim their place in ballet.

The good news is that we are back. The new Dance Theatre of Harlem Company will make its debut performance at the Kentucky Center in Louisville, KY on October 20. As artistic director, I have selected 18 racially diverse artists who will carry the legacy of Dance Theatre of Harlem forward into the 21st century. The idea at the heart of that legacy is that–given access and opportunity–an individual can create for his or herself a future outside of convention.

Once again a different perspective on the art form will enliven the field, but the absence of role models is not the only reason ballet remains so pale. The high cost of training for a career in ballet (though let us not assume that there are no African Americans of means who can afford to do so) and a literal old guard who prized a cookie-cutter similarity in the dancers they put on their stages stood in the way of diversifying the art form are certainly factors, but there are also systemic aesthetic and political issues that contribute to the exclusion blacks from ballet.

One of them is no doubt the notion of an idealized body. This essential aspect of ballet has often been cited as a reason to exclude black dancers. It hardly needs to be stated how great a mistake it is to assume that one group is uniquely qualified and another uniquely unqualified as it is also a mistake to hold the art form hostage to 19th century ideals of beauty in which pale skin was equated with goodness and dark with evil. No thinking person would allow him or herself to indulge in these kinds of discrimination, but such prejudices persist below the level of thought.

Ballet’s aesthetics have evolved. Compare the slope shouldered wasp-waisted Taglioni perched on the petal of a flower with George Balanchine’s ideal of a small-headed, long legged Amazon capable of fleet, space-gobbling, off-kilter movement. Balanchine himself dreamed of a company equally divided between blacks and whites. And even looking at the company he founded, New York City Ballet, the favored body-type has continued to change. And, as has been pointed out, a new, enlightened generation of artistic directors is broadening the perception of what ballet can look like by bringing dancers of color to their companies.

Beyond the physical look of ballet though, is the notion of what the ballet has come to signify an aspirational ideal. Historically, the classical arts, opera, music, ballet have been seen to convey the highest expression of the human spirit. They were closed clubs whose cachet was exclusivity. On the outside were all of those who did not match a particular set of standards. While ballet is an exclusive form of expression–only the truly inspired, strong and exceptionally gifted can master this rigorous artform, none of the aforementioned is contingent on race, ethnicity or nationality.

One of the opportunities we have now that a more substantive discussion of the role of diversity in the classical arts is arising, is the question, not of whether blacks belong in the art form, but what, exactly is the role of art at this point in human history, and how can that best be fulfilled? We are not living in a colonial world in which culture is a weapon of dominance. It is time to think differently: the art of ballet as a common language that transcends difference that can build unity.

WATCH the Dance Theatre of Harlem perform “Contested Space”: