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  • ‘I Was Brought to Tears’: Watch Artist Edgar Arceneaux Reinterpret a Tragically Misunderstood 1980s Performance

    In 1981, actor Ben Vereen was invited to perform at a gala to celebrate the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan. His act was an homage to renowned vaudevillian Bert Williams, the first Black man to have a lead role in a feature film.
    The two-part performance began with a minstrel show featuring Vereen in blackface, followed by a critique of such racist acts and a tribute to Williams’s perseverance. But as artist Los Angeles-based Edgar Arceneaux explains in an exclusive interview with Art21, that’s not what Americans saw when it aired on live television.
    “ABC edited out that second part,” Arceneaux explained in the 2016 interview. The station “only showed him doing a minstrel show for Ronald Reagan and 25,000 white Republicans.” In short order, Vereen’s friends and peers abandoned him for what they saw as an unforgivable act. But Arceneaux wondered, even if they had seen the second part of the show, would they have understood?

    Production still from the “Chicago” episode of “Art in the Twenty-First Century,” Season 8. © Art21, Inc. 2016.

    That question is at the heart of a play Arceneaux staged called “Until, Until, Until,” commissioned for Performa 15 and based on Vereen’s original performance. Arceneaux told Art21 that ambiguity like that at the center of the Vereen controversy is the fuel that drives his art practice.
    “The power of what art is, which is distinctive from other fields, is its unruliness,” he said. “Art is not inherently good. It’s not inherently bad. But it is inherently contradictory. Its nature is to ask new questions.”
    Before he staged his rendition of the tragically misunderstood 1981 performance, Arceneaux spoke to Ben Vereen himself. “I was brought to tears during the call,” Arceneaux said, imagining how Vereen must have felt having his work so taken out of context. “I could sense from [Vereen] that, he knows there’s people out there that care now about what he tried to do 30 years ago. Maybe now is that time.”

    Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s series Extended Play, below. This week, Performa is re-broadcasting the play “Until, Until, Until” online. 
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    This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series like New York Close Up and Extended Play and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org.

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  • Photographer Ming Smith’s Dreamlike Portraits of Everyday Life From Harlem to Ethiopia Are the Subject of a Tender New Online Show—See Them Here

    “Painting With Light: The Photography of Ming Smith”Online at Pippy Houldsworth GalleryThrough July 25 What the gallery says: “Containing works from the start of the 1970s to the present day, including a number of never-before-seen archival prints, the exhibition explores the painterly quality of Ming Smith’s photographic work. From photographs taken in the New York neighborhoods […] More

  • Photographer Gordon Parks Captured a Changing America in the Midst of the Civil Rights Era for Life Magazine—See Images Here

    “Gordon Parks: Part One”through August 1, 2020Alison Jacques Gallery, London What the gallery says: “Born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, Gordon Parks was a humanitarian with a deep and life-long commitment to social justice. He rapidly developed a deeply personal style of photography with a focus on race relations, poverty, civil rights, and […] More

  • ‘There Is Meaning in Ugliness’: Watch Artist Fred Wilson Explain Why We Can’t Look Away From the Hideous Parts of History

    What is more powerful: beauty, or ugliness? Artist Fred Wilson, who is known for his interventionist artworks, in which he takes objects from museum collections and rearranges them, decoding and recontextualizing their meaning, was focused on just that question in an exclusive interview with Art21 filmed in 2014. In the interview, Wilson discusses beauty, ugliness, and meaning […] More

  • After Yale Was Forced to Cancel Its MFA Students’ Graduate Show, Perrotin Gallery Revived It Online—See It Here

    “Yale Painting and Printmaking MFA 2020”Online at Perrotin, through July 18 What Yale Ph.D candidate Alexandra M. Thomas says: “These artists take us elsewhere: to the bar with friends; the electricity of queer nightlife; a crowded swimming pool on a sunny day; the affective space of nostalgia for girlhood; the fashion catwalk. We witness earthly pleasures: […] More

  • Beijing-Based Artist Liu Xiaodong Has Been Stranded in New York for Months—Watch Him Traverse the City for Inspiration

    When the Beijing-based artist Liu Xiaodong traveled to New York City earlier this year with his wife and daughter, he never anticipated just how long he would stay. As the city went into lockdown, they found themselves quarantined and unable to travel back home for the foreseeable future. So, for the past four months, the […] More

  • The Public Art Fund Is Transforming New York City’s Kiosks and Bus Shelters Into Canvases for Contemporary Art—See the Striking Works Here

    “Art on the Grid” presented by the Public Art FundVarious locations in New York through September 20, 2020 What the organization says: “The exhibition was conceived in the spring of 2020 in direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As it developed, the parallel epidemic of systemic racism came into sharp and painful focus. Both crises now […] More