What We're Reading: May 3
A Photographer Looks Deep Into America’s Past
Before he became a photographer, Dawoud Bey trained as a jazz percussionist, looking to John Coltrane as a role model for melding craft with a commitment to social justice. As a teenager in the 1960s, Bey was finely attuned to the social and political upheavals of the civil rights movement, staging sit-ins and demonstrations with his high school classmates and joining the Black Panther Party, whose newspaper he sold on the weekends. By 1968, the struggle for racial equality was converging with demonstrations against the war in Vietnam and the early stages of women’s liberation, forming a pattern of transformation and upheaval that culminated with the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Via NY Times
Billionaire art collector, philanthropist, and entrepreneur Eli Broad—a towering figure in the cultural scene of the United States, and most of all, in his adopted hometown of Los Angeles—has died at 87. His reign culminated with the founding of the Broad, a contemporary art museum showcasing the collection he and his wife, Edythe Broad, built together, which opened in 2015.
Via Artnet
After losing last summer to a pandemic, anyone itching to browse the wares offered by vendors at Chicago’s longstanding Randolph Street Market will have to make a road trip.
The reason why boils down to one word synonymous with the Fulton Market district these days: construction.
The 18-year-old market is moving to Three Oaks, Michigan, for the next few months while its Chicago home, the Plumbers Hall at 1341 W. Randolph St., becomes a construction zone.
Via Chicago Tribune
Black creatives never stopped creating
At this year's "Black Creativity Juried Art Exhibition," [at the Museum of Science and Industry] two works by artist Lexus Giles—titled She's Healed and She is Me—invite visitors into the gallery that houses much of the exhibition's sculptures.
"I'm a storyteller," Giles says. "Those busts came from a poem [I wrote] called 'Tribulations of a Black Woman,' and there are actually three other pieces along with it that kind of broke down that poem."
Via Chicago Reader