0:00:01.000,0:00:04.000
The brilliant playwright, Adrienne Kennedy,

0:00:04.000,0:00:06.000
wrote a volume called

0:00:06.000,0:00:08.000
"People Who Led to My Plays."

0:00:08.000,0:00:10.000
And if I were to write a volume,

0:00:10.000,0:00:12.000
it would be called,

0:00:12.000,0:00:14.000
"Artists Who Have Led My Exhibitions"

0:00:14.000,0:00:16.000
because my work,

0:00:16.000,0:00:19.000
in understanding art and in understanding culture,

0:00:19.000,0:00:22.000
has come by following artists,

0:00:22.000,0:00:25.000
by looking at what artists mean

0:00:25.000,0:00:27.000
and what they do and who they are.

0:00:28.000,0:00:30.000
J.J. from "Good Times,"

0:00:30.000,0:00:33.000
(Applause)

0:00:33.000,0:00:35.000
significant to many people of course

0:00:35.000,0:00:37.000
because of "Dy-no-mite,"

0:00:37.000,0:00:39.000
but perhaps more significant

0:00:39.000,0:00:42.000
as the first, really, black artist

0:00:42.000,0:00:44.000
on primetime TV.

0:00:45.000,0:00:47.000
Jean-Michel Basquiat,

0:00:47.000,0:00:49.000
important to me because [he was]

0:00:49.000,0:00:52.000
the first black artist in real time

0:00:52.000,0:00:54.000
that showed me the possibility of

0:00:54.000,0:00:57.000
who and what I was about to enter into.

0:00:57.000,0:01:00.000
My overall project is about art --

0:01:00.000,0:01:02.000
specifically, about black artists --

0:01:02.000,0:01:04.000
very generally

0:01:04.000,0:01:06.000
about the way in which art

0:01:06.000,0:01:08.000
can change the way we think

0:01:08.000,0:01:11.000
about culture and ourselves.

0:01:11.000,0:01:13.000
My interest is in artists

0:01:13.000,0:01:16.000
who understand and rewrite history,

0:01:16.000,0:01:18.000
who think about themselves

0:01:18.000,0:01:20.000
within the narrative

0:01:20.000,0:01:22.000
of the larger world of art,

0:01:22.000,0:01:24.000
but who have created new places

0:01:24.000,0:01:27.000
for us to see and understand.

0:01:27.000,0:01:30.000
I'm showing two artists here, [br]Glenn Ligon and Kara Walker,

0:01:30.000,0:01:33.000
two of many who really form for me

0:01:33.000,0:01:36.000
the essential questions that I wanted to bring

0:01:36.000,0:01:38.000
as a curator to the world.

0:01:38.000,0:01:41.000
I was interested in the idea

0:01:41.000,0:01:43.000
of why and how

0:01:43.000,0:01:46.000
I could create a new story,

0:01:46.000,0:01:48.000
a new narrative in art history

0:01:48.000,0:01:50.000
and a new narrative in the world.

0:01:50.000,0:01:52.000
And to do this, I knew

0:01:52.000,0:01:55.000
that I had to see the way in which artists work,

0:01:55.000,0:01:57.000
understand the artist's studio

0:01:57.000,0:01:59.000
as a laboratory,

0:01:59.000,0:02:01.000
imagine, then,

0:02:01.000,0:02:04.000
reinventing the museum as a think tank

0:02:04.000,0:02:07.000
and looking at the exhibition

0:02:07.000,0:02:10.000
as the ultimate white paper -- asking questions,

0:02:10.000,0:02:12.000
providing the space

0:02:12.000,0:02:15.000
to look and to think about answers.

0:02:15.000,0:02:17.000
In 1994,

0:02:17.000,0:02:19.000
when I was a curator at the Whitney Museum,

0:02:19.000,0:02:21.000
I made an exhibition called Black Male.

0:02:21.000,0:02:23.000
It looked at the intersection

0:02:23.000,0:02:25.000
of race and gender

0:02:25.000,0:02:27.000
in contemporary American art.

0:02:27.000,0:02:29.000
It sought to express

0:02:29.000,0:02:31.000
the ways in which art

0:02:31.000,0:02:33.000
could provide a space for dialogue --

0:02:33.000,0:02:35.000
complicated dialogue,

0:02:35.000,0:02:38.000
dialogue with many, many points of entry --

0:02:38.000,0:02:40.000
and how the museum could be the space

0:02:40.000,0:02:42.000
for this contest of ideas.

0:02:42.000,0:02:44.000
This exhibition included

0:02:44.000,0:02:46.000
over 20 artists

0:02:46.000,0:02:48.000
of various ages and races,

0:02:48.000,0:02:51.000
but all looking at black masculinity

0:02:51.000,0:02:54.000
from a very particular point of view.

0:02:57.000,0:03:00.000
What was significant about this exhibition

0:03:00.000,0:03:02.000
is the way in which

0:03:02.000,0:03:05.000
it engaged me in my role

0:03:05.000,0:03:07.000
as a curator, as a catalyst,

0:03:07.000,0:03:09.000
for this dialogue.

0:03:09.000,0:03:11.000
One of the things that happened

0:03:11.000,0:03:13.000
very distinctly in the course of this exhibition

0:03:13.000,0:03:15.000
is I was confronted with the idea

0:03:15.000,0:03:17.000
of how powerful images can be

0:03:17.000,0:03:20.000
in people's understanding [br]of themselves and each other.

0:03:20.000,0:03:23.000
I'm showing you two works, one on the right by Leon Golub,

0:03:23.000,0:03:26.000
one on the left by Robert Colescott.

0:03:26.000,0:03:28.000
And in the course of the exhibition --

0:03:28.000,0:03:30.000
which was contentious, controversial

0:03:30.000,0:03:32.000
and ultimately, for me,

0:03:32.000,0:03:34.000
life-changing

0:03:34.000,0:03:36.000
in my sense of what art could be --

0:03:36.000,0:03:39.000
a woman came up to me on the gallery floor

0:03:39.000,0:03:42.000
to express her concern about the nature

0:03:42.000,0:03:44.000
of how powerful images could be

0:03:44.000,0:03:46.000
and how we understood each other.

0:03:46.000,0:03:48.000
And she pointed to the work on the left

0:03:48.000,0:03:50.000
to tell me how problematic this image was,

0:03:50.000,0:03:53.000
as it related, for her, to the idea of

0:03:53.000,0:03:56.000
how black people had been represented.

0:03:56.000,0:03:58.000
And she pointed to the image on the right

0:03:58.000,0:04:01.000
as an example, to me, of the kind of dignity

0:04:01.000,0:04:03.000
that needed to be portrayed

0:04:03.000,0:04:05.000
to work against those images in the media.

0:04:05.000,0:04:08.000
She then assigned these works racial identities,

0:04:08.000,0:04:10.000
basically saying to me that the work on the right,

0:04:10.000,0:04:12.000
clearly, was made by a black artist,

0:04:12.000,0:04:14.000
the work on the left, clearly, by a white artist,

0:04:14.000,0:04:16.000
when, in effect,

0:04:16.000,0:04:18.000
that was the opposite case:

0:04:18.000,0:04:20.000
Bob Colescott, African-American artist;

0:04:20.000,0:04:22.000
Leon Golub, a white artist.

0:04:22.000,0:04:24.000
The point of that for me was

0:04:24.000,0:04:27.000
to say -- in that space, in that moment --

0:04:27.000,0:04:29.000
that I really, more than anything,

0:04:29.000,0:04:31.000
wanted to understand

0:04:31.000,0:04:34.000
how images could work, how images did work,

0:04:34.000,0:04:36.000
and how artists provided

0:04:36.000,0:04:38.000
a space bigger than one

0:04:38.000,0:04:40.000
that we could imagine in our day-to-day lives

0:04:40.000,0:04:43.000
to work through these images.

0:04:43.000,0:04:46.000
Fast-forward and I end up in Harlem;

0:04:46.000,0:04:49.000
home for many of black America,

0:04:49.000,0:04:52.000
very much the psychic heart

0:04:52.000,0:04:54.000
of the black experience,

0:04:54.000,0:04:57.000
really the place where the Harlem Renaissance existed.

0:04:58.000,0:05:01.000
Harlem now, sort of explaining

0:05:01.000,0:05:04.000
and thinking of itself in this part of the century,

0:05:04.000,0:05:06.000
looking both backwards and forwards ...

0:05:06.000,0:05:08.000
I always say Harlem is an interesting community

0:05:08.000,0:05:10.000
because, unlike many other places,

0:05:10.000,0:05:12.000
it thinks of itself in the past, present

0:05:12.000,0:05:14.000
and the future simultaneously;

0:05:14.000,0:05:16.000
no one speaks of it just in the now.

0:05:16.000,0:05:19.000
It's always what it was and what it can be.

0:05:19.000,0:05:21.000
And, in thinking about that,

0:05:21.000,0:05:23.000
then my second project, the second question I ask is:

0:05:23.000,0:05:25.000
Can a museum

0:05:25.000,0:05:27.000
be a catalyst in a community?

0:05:27.000,0:05:29.000
Can a museum house artists

0:05:29.000,0:05:31.000
and allow them to be change agents

0:05:31.000,0:05:34.000
as communities rethink themselves?

0:05:34.000,0:05:37.000
This is Harlem, actually, on January 20th,

0:05:37.000,0:05:40.000
thinking about itself in a very wonderful way.

0:05:41.000,0:05:43.000
So I work now at The Studio Museum in Harlem,

0:05:43.000,0:05:45.000
thinking about exhibitions there,

0:05:45.000,0:05:47.000
thinking about what it means to

0:05:47.000,0:05:49.000
discover art's possibility.

0:05:49.000,0:05:51.000
Now, what does this mean to some of you?

0:05:51.000,0:05:54.000
In some cases, I know that many of you

0:05:54.000,0:05:56.000
are involved in cross-cultural dialogues,

0:05:56.000,0:05:59.000
you're involved in ideas of creativity and innovation.

0:05:59.000,0:06:02.000
Think about the place that artists can play in that --

0:06:02.000,0:06:05.000
that is the kind of incubation and advocacy

0:06:05.000,0:06:08.000
that I work towards, in working with young, black artists.

0:06:08.000,0:06:10.000
Think about artists, not as content providers,

0:06:10.000,0:06:12.000
though they can be brilliant at that,

0:06:12.000,0:06:14.000
but, again, as real catalysts.

0:06:16.000,0:06:19.000
The Studio Museum was founded in the late 60s.

0:06:19.000,0:06:22.000
And I bring this up because it's important to locate

0:06:22.000,0:06:24.000
this practice in history.

0:06:24.000,0:06:26.000
To look at 1968,

0:06:26.000,0:06:28.000
in the incredible historic moment that it is,

0:06:28.000,0:06:31.000
and think of the arc that has happened since then,

0:06:31.000,0:06:34.000
to think of the possibilities that we are all

0:06:34.000,0:06:36.000
privileged to stand in today

0:06:36.000,0:06:38.000
and imagine that this museum

0:06:38.000,0:06:40.000
that came out of a moment of great protest

0:06:40.000,0:06:42.000
and one that was so much about

0:06:42.000,0:06:44.000
examining the history and the legacy

0:06:44.000,0:06:47.000
of important African-American artists

0:06:47.000,0:06:49.000
to the history of art in this country

0:06:49.000,0:06:51.000
like Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis,

0:06:51.000,0:06:53.000
Romare Bearden.

0:06:53.000,0:06:55.000
And then, of course,

0:06:55.000,0:06:57.000
to bring us to today.

0:06:57.000,0:06:59.000
In 1975, Muhammad Ali

0:06:59.000,0:07:01.000
gave a lecture at Harvard University.

0:07:01.000,0:07:04.000
After his lecture, a student got up and said to him,

0:07:04.000,0:07:06.000
"Give us a poem."

0:07:06.000,0:07:08.000
And Mohammed Ali said, "Me, we."

0:07:08.000,0:07:11.000
A profound statement about the individual and the community.

0:07:11.000,0:07:13.000
The space in which now,

0:07:13.000,0:07:16.000
in my project of discovery, of thinking about artists,

0:07:16.000,0:07:18.000
of trying to define

0:07:18.000,0:07:20.000
what might be

0:07:20.000,0:07:23.000
black art cultural movement of the 21st century.

0:07:23.000,0:07:25.000
What that might mean

0:07:25.000,0:07:28.000
for cultural movements all over this moment,

0:07:28.000,0:07:30.000
the "me, we" seems

0:07:30.000,0:07:32.000
incredibly prescient

0:07:32.000,0:07:34.000
totally important.

0:07:34.000,0:07:36.000
To this end,

0:07:36.000,0:07:39.000
the specific project that has made this possible for me

0:07:39.000,0:07:41.000
is a series of exhibitions,

0:07:41.000,0:07:43.000
all titled with an F --

0:07:43.000,0:07:45.000
Freestyle, Frequency and Flow --

0:07:45.000,0:07:47.000
which have set out to discover

0:07:47.000,0:07:49.000
and define

0:07:49.000,0:07:52.000
the young, black artists working in this moment

0:07:52.000,0:07:54.000
who I feel strongly

0:07:54.000,0:07:57.000
will continue to work over the next many years.

0:07:57.000,0:07:59.000
This series of exhibitions

0:07:59.000,0:08:01.000
was made specifically

0:08:01.000,0:08:03.000
to try and question

0:08:03.000,0:08:05.000
the idea of what it would mean

0:08:05.000,0:08:07.000
now, at this point in history,

0:08:07.000,0:08:10.000
to see art as a catalyst;

0:08:10.000,0:08:12.000
what it means now, at this point in history,

0:08:12.000,0:08:15.000
as we define and redefine culture,

0:08:15.000,0:08:17.000
black culture specifically in my case,

0:08:17.000,0:08:19.000
but culture generally.

0:08:19.000,0:08:21.000
I named this group of artists

0:08:21.000,0:08:24.000
around an idea, which I put out there

0:08:24.000,0:08:26.000
called post-black,

0:08:26.000,0:08:28.000
really meant to define them

0:08:28.000,0:08:31.000
as artists who came and start their work now,

0:08:31.000,0:08:34.000
looking back at history but start in this moment, historically.

0:08:35.000,0:08:38.000
It is really in this sense of discovery

0:08:38.000,0:08:41.000
that I have a new set of questions that I'm asking.

0:08:41.000,0:08:43.000
This new set of questions is:

0:08:43.000,0:08:45.000
What does it mean, right now,

0:08:45.000,0:08:48.000
to be African-American in America?

0:08:48.000,0:08:51.000
What can artwork say about this?

0:08:51.000,0:08:54.000
Where can a museum exist

0:08:54.000,0:08:57.000
as the place for us all

0:08:57.000,0:08:59.000
to have this conversation?

0:08:59.000,0:09:01.000
Really, most exciting about this

0:09:01.000,0:09:04.000
is thinking about the energy and the excitement

0:09:04.000,0:09:06.000
that young artists can bring.

0:09:06.000,0:09:08.000
Their works for me are about,

0:09:08.000,0:09:10.000
not always just simply

0:09:10.000,0:09:12.000
about the aesthetic innovation

0:09:12.000,0:09:15.000
that their minds imagine, that their visions create

0:09:15.000,0:09:17.000
and put out there in the world,

0:09:17.000,0:09:19.000
but more, perhaps, importantly,

0:09:19.000,0:09:21.000
through the excitement of the community

0:09:21.000,0:09:24.000
that they create as important voices

0:09:24.000,0:09:27.000
that would allow us right now to understand our situation,

0:09:27.000,0:09:29.000
as well as in the future.

0:09:29.000,0:09:32.000
I am continually amazed

0:09:32.000,0:09:34.000
by the way in which

0:09:34.000,0:09:36.000
the subject of race

0:09:36.000,0:09:39.000
can take itself in many places

0:09:39.000,0:09:41.000
that we don't imagine it should be.

0:09:41.000,0:09:44.000
I am always amazed

0:09:44.000,0:09:46.000
by the way in which artists are willing

0:09:46.000,0:09:48.000
to do that in their work.

0:09:48.000,0:09:50.000
It is why I look to art.

0:09:50.000,0:09:52.000
It's why I ask questions of art.

0:09:52.000,0:09:55.000
It is why I make exhibitions.

0:09:55.000,0:09:57.000
Now, this exhibition, as I said,

0:09:57.000,0:10:00.000
40 young artists done over the course of eight years,

0:10:00.000,0:10:03.000
and for me it's about considering the implications.

0:10:04.000,0:10:06.000
It's considering the implications of

0:10:06.000,0:10:09.000
what this generation has to say to the rest of us.

0:10:09.000,0:10:12.000
It's considering what it means for these artists

0:10:12.000,0:10:14.000
to be both out in the world as their work travels,

0:10:14.000,0:10:16.000
but in their communities

0:10:16.000,0:10:19.000
as people who are seeing and thinking

0:10:19.000,0:10:22.000
about the issues that face us.

0:10:22.000,0:10:24.000
It's also about thinking about

0:10:24.000,0:10:26.000
the creative spirit and nurturing it,

0:10:26.000,0:10:28.000
and imagining, particularly in urban America,

0:10:28.000,0:10:31.000
about the nurturing of the spirit.

0:10:31.000,0:10:34.000
Now, where, perhaps, does this end up right now?

0:10:34.000,0:10:37.000
For me, it is about re-imagining

0:10:37.000,0:10:40.000
this cultural discourse in an international context.

0:10:40.000,0:10:43.000
So the last iteration of this project

0:10:43.000,0:10:45.000
has been called Flow,

0:10:45.000,0:10:47.000
with the idea now of creating

0:10:47.000,0:10:49.000
a real network

0:10:49.000,0:10:51.000
of artists around the world;

0:10:51.000,0:10:53.000
really looking, not so much

0:10:53.000,0:10:56.000
from Harlem and out, but looking across,

0:10:56.000,0:10:59.000
and Flow looked at artists all born on the continent of Africa.

0:10:59.000,0:11:02.000
And as many of us think about that continent

0:11:02.000,0:11:04.000
and think about what if means

0:11:04.000,0:11:06.000
to us all in the 21st century,

0:11:06.000,0:11:08.000
I have begun that looking

0:11:08.000,0:11:10.000
through artists, through artworks,

0:11:10.000,0:11:13.000
and imagining what they can tell us about the future,

0:11:13.000,0:11:16.000
what they tell us about our future,

0:11:16.000,0:11:19.000
and what they create in their sense of

0:11:19.000,0:11:22.000
offering us this great possibility of watching

0:11:22.000,0:11:24.000
that continent emerge as part

0:11:24.000,0:11:26.000
of our bigger dialogue.

0:11:26.000,0:11:28.000
So, what do I discover

0:11:28.000,0:11:30.000
when I look at artworks?

0:11:30.000,0:11:32.000
What do I think about

0:11:32.000,0:11:34.000
when I think about art?

0:11:34.000,0:11:36.000
I feel like the privilege I've had as a curator

0:11:36.000,0:11:39.000
is not just the discovery of new works,

0:11:39.000,0:11:41.000
the discovery of exciting works.

0:11:41.000,0:11:43.000
But, really, it has been

0:11:43.000,0:11:45.000
what I've discovered about myself

0:11:45.000,0:11:47.000
and what I can offer

0:11:47.000,0:11:49.000
in the space of an exhibition,

0:11:49.000,0:11:52.000
to talk about beauty, to talk about power,

0:11:52.000,0:11:54.000
to talk about ourselves,

0:11:54.000,0:11:57.000
and to talk and speak to each other.

0:11:57.000,0:12:00.000
That's what makes me get up every day

0:12:00.000,0:12:02.000
and want to think about

0:12:02.000,0:12:05.000
this generation of black artists and artists around the world.

0:12:05.000,0:12:07.000
Thank you. (Applause)