CBH Talk | Of Manacles and Monuments - Act 1: History, Monuments, and Reframing the Narrative
Of Manacles and Monuments is a three-part public programming series co-presented by the Center for Brooklyn History and More Art. The series is inspired by Fred Wilson’s public artwork Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds which is on view in Columbus Park, Downtown Brooklyn.
About Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds
Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds is a public artwork by Fred Wilson, commissioned by More Art and currently on view in Columbus Park, Downtown Brooklyn. Wilson’s first ever large-scale public artwork, it features a 10-foot-tall sculpture composed of layers of decorative ironwork and statues of Siibele/Senufo “rhythm pounder” figures. The ornamental gates and fences act as a metaphor for security and insecurity and graphically reference mass incarceration. The title of the work borrows from William Blake’s concept of “Mind Forg’d Manacles”—self-created barriers to personal and societal growth and freedom, built by fear, division, and perceptions of difference. Located just a few short blocks from the Center for Brooklyn History, program attendees are encouraged to visit the artwork. Click here for Google Map directions to Columbus Park.
About Of Manacles and Monuments Act 1: History, Monuments, and Reframing the Narrative
This first program in the series looks at history and monuments and asks the questions, “Who tells our national story?” “What role do our monuments play in that telling?” “How are erased stories brought into the light?” and “How are false narratives seized and disrupted?” Artist Nona Faustine, professor Mabel O. Wilson, and NYC Department of Cultural Affairs Assistant Commissioner of Public Art Kendal Henry unpack issues around race, archives, statue toppling, and the power of monuments in public space. Moderated by Lambent Foundation’s Michelle Coffey, with a response by Fred Wilson.
Following the discussion Fred Wilson will guide interested attendees to Columbus Park for a viewing of Mind Forged Manacles and to reflect on its siting near statues of Henry Ward Beecher, Christopher Columbus, and in front of the Kings County Supreme Court building.
Explore and register for the full series here.
Participants
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Michelle Coffey leads the strategy and drives the vision of Lambent Foundation while mindfully honoring complexity. By nurturing emergent ideas and welcoming uncertainty, Michelle works as an advocate and partner to imagine and build more just and equitable societies.
While working at the Walker Arts Center during the 1990s American culture wars, Michelle learned to fuse her work with her personal and political values and respect the interconnections between art, location, and community. Michelle has built on her background in human rights advocacy and philanthropy to develop Lambent’s approach. She served as Director of Starry Night Fund and Senior Philanthropic Advisor at Tides Foundation. Her portfolio spanned global human rights, women and girls, criminal justice reform, arts and culture, and HIV/AIDS. This challenging work alerted Michelle to the vital role of arts and culture in progressive movements. Michelle serves on several national boards, including Grantmakers in the Arts, Slought Foundation, and Creative Capital.
Nona Faustine (born 1977) is a photographer and visual artist born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts and The International Center of Photography at Bard College’s MFA program. Her work focuses on history, identity, representation, and evoking a critical and emotional understanding of the past, and proposes a deeper examination of contemporary racial and gender stereotypes.
Faustine’s images have received worldwide acclaim and have been published in a variety of national and international media outlets such as Artforum, the New York Times, Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, The Guardian, New Yorker Magazine, and Los Angeles Times. Faustine’s work has been exhibited at Harvard University, the Studio Museum of Harlem, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Schomburg Center for Black Research in Harlem, the International Center of Photography, Saint John the Divine Cathedral, and the Tomie Ohtake Institute in Sao Paulo, among other institutions. Her work is in the collections of the David C. Driskell Center at Maryland State University, the Studio Museum of Harlem, the Brooklyn Museum, and recently, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2019, Faustine was the recipient of the NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship, the Colene Brown Art Prize, the Anonymous Was A Woman grant and was a Finalist in the National Portrait Gallery's Outwin Boochever Competition. In January 2020, she participated in the inaugural class of Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock Senegal Residency. Faustine's My Country silkscreen series, her first body of work published by Two Palms, was featured in an exhibition at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA in 2020.
Photo by Grace Roselli, Pandora's BoxX Project
Kendal Henry is an artist and curator who lives in New York City and specializes in the field of public art for over 30 years. He illustrates that public art can be used as a tool for social engagement, civic pride and economic development through the projects and programs he’s initiated in the US and internationally.
He’s currently the Assistant Commissioner of Public Art at the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and an adjunct professor at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. A guest lecturer at various universities and educational institutions including Rhode Island School of Design Senior Studio; and Pratt Institute’s Arts and Cultural Management Program. Kendal served as the Director of Culture and Economic Development for the City of Newburgh, NY where he created the region’s first Percent for Art Program. Prior to that post he was Manager of Arts Programs at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Arts for Transit for eleven years. During this time, he has overseen the commissioning, fabrication and installation of MTA’s permanent art projects, served as a member of the MTA’s in-house design team, and produced temporary exhibitions at Grand Central Terminal.
Kendal was also the Curator-at-large at the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Art (MoCADA) in Brooklyn, NY and was elected to serve two 3-year terms on the Americans for the Arts Public Art Network Council.
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Fred Wilson is a conceptual artist whose work investigates museological, cultural and historical issues, which are largely overlooked or neglected by museums and cultural institutions. Since his groundbreaking exhibition Mining the Museum (1992) at the Maryland Historical Society, Wilson has been the subject of more than 40 solo exhibitions around the globe. His work has been exhibited extensively in museums including the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Allen Memorial Museum at Oberlin College, Ohio; the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Institute of Jamaica, W.I.; the Museum of World Cultures, Sweden; the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College; the British Museum, and the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne, Australia. His work can be found in several public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Long Museum, Shanghai, the Tate Modern in London and National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia.
Wilson presented his exhibition Afro Kismet at the 2017 Istanbul Biennial, Turkey, which traveled to London, New York and Los Angeles. Since 2008 Wilson has been a member of the Board of Trustees at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He represented the U.S. at the Cairo Biennale (1992) and Venice Biennale (2003). His many accolades include the prestigious MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius” Grant (1999); the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture (2006) the Ford Foundation’s Art of Change fellowship (2018) and Brandeis University’s Creative Arts Award (2019). Most recently Wilson unveiled "Mother", a large-scale installation commissioned by Delta Airlines for New York’s LaGuardia airport.
Mabel O. Wilson teaches Architecture and African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University, where she also serves as the director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies. With her practice Studio&, she was a member of the design team that recently completed the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia.
Wilson has authored Begin with the Past: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture (2016), Negro Building: Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums (2012), and co-edited the volume Race and Modern Architecture: From the Enlightenment to Today (2020). For the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, she was co-curator of the exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America (2021). Her installation (a)way station: The Architectural Spaces of Urban Migration is on exhibit at SFMoMA till May 2023.
Photo by Dario Calmese
The public art piece Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds, commissioned by More Art, is made possible by a grant from the Downtown Brooklyn + Dumbo Art Fund, a partnership with Downtown Brooklyn Partnership and Dumbo Improvement District as part of New York State’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative, and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This project is supported in part by the Lambent Foundation, the Joseph Robert Foundation, the Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation, Pace, The David Rockefeller Fund, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and commissioning sponsor VIA Art Fund. Additional support for educational programming has been provided by the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation. More Art thanks partners, NYC Parks and the Center for Court Innovation.
Of Manacles and Monuments is a three-part public programming series co-presented by the Center for Brooklyn History and More Art. The series is inspired by Fred Wilson’s public artwork Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds which is on view in Columbus Park, Downtown Brooklyn.
About Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds
Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds is a public artwork by Fred Wilson, commissioned by More Art and currently on view in Columbus Park, Downtown Brooklyn. Wilson’s first ever large-scale public artwork, it features a 10-foot-tall sculpture composed of layers of decorative ironwork and statues of Siibele/Senufo “rhythm pounder” figures. The ornamental gates and fences act as a metaphor for security and insecurity and graphically reference mass incarceration. The title of the work borrows from William Blake’s concept of “Mind Forg’d Manacles”—self-created barriers to personal and societal growth and freedom, built by fear, division, and perceptions of difference. Located just a few short blocks from the Center for Brooklyn History, program attendees are encouraged to visit the artwork. Click here for Google Map directions to Columbus Park.
About Of Manacles and Monuments Act 1: History, Monuments, and Reframing the Narrative
This first program in the series looks at history and monuments and asks the questions, “Who tells our national story?” “What role do our monuments play in that telling?” “How are erased stories brought into the light?” and “How are false narratives seized and disrupted?” Artist Nona Faustine, professor Mabel O. Wilson, and NYC Department of Cultural Affairs Assistant Commissioner of Public Art Kendal Henry unpack issues around race, archives, statue toppling, and the power of monuments in public space. Moderated by Lambent Foundation’s Michelle Coffey, with a response by Fred Wilson.
Following the discussion Fred Wilson will guide interested attendees to Columbus Park for a viewing of Mind Forged Manacles and to reflect on its siting near statues of Henry Ward Beecher, Christopher Columbus, and in front of the Kings County Supreme Court building.
Explore and register for the full series here.
Participants
Michelle Coffey leads the strategy and drives the vision of Lambent Foundation while mindfully honoring complexity. By nurturing emergent ideas and welcoming uncertainty, Michelle works as an advocate and partner to imagine and build more just and equitable societies.
While working at the Walker Arts Center during the 1990s American culture wars, Michelle learned to fuse her work with her personal and political values and respect the interconnections between art, location, and community. Michelle has built on her background in human rights advocacy and philanthropy to develop Lambent’s approach. She served as Director of Starry Night Fund and Senior Philanthropic Advisor at Tides Foundation. Her portfolio spanned global human rights, women and girls, criminal justice reform, arts and culture, and HIV/AIDS. This challenging work alerted Michelle to the vital role of arts and culture in progressive movements. Michelle serves on several national boards, including Grantmakers in the Arts, Slought Foundation, and Creative Capital.
Nona Faustine (born 1977) is a photographer and visual artist born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts and The International Center of Photography at Bard College’s MFA program. Her work focuses on history, identity, representation, and evoking a critical and emotional understanding of the past, and proposes a deeper examination of contemporary racial and gender stereotypes.
Faustine’s images have received worldwide acclaim and have been published in a variety of national and international media outlets such as Artforum, the New York Times, Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, The Guardian, New Yorker Magazine, and Los Angeles Times. Faustine’s work has been exhibited at Harvard University, the Studio Museum of Harlem, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Schomburg Center for Black Research in Harlem, the International Center of Photography, Saint John the Divine Cathedral, and the Tomie Ohtake Institute in Sao Paulo, among other institutions. Her work is in the collections of the David C. Driskell Center at Maryland State University, the Studio Museum of Harlem, the Brooklyn Museum, and recently, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2019, Faustine was the recipient of the NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship, the Colene Brown Art Prize, the Anonymous Was A Woman grant and was a Finalist in the National Portrait Gallery's Outwin Boochever Competition. In January 2020, she participated in the inaugural class of Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock Senegal Residency. Faustine's My Country silkscreen series, her first body of work published by Two Palms, was featured in an exhibition at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA in 2020.
Photo by Grace Roselli, Pandora's BoxX Project
Kendal Henry is an artist and curator who lives in New York City and specializes in the field of public art for over 30 years. He illustrates that public art can be used as a tool for social engagement, civic pride and economic development through the projects and programs he’s initiated in the US and internationally.
He’s currently the Assistant Commissioner of Public Art at the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and an adjunct professor at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. A guest lecturer at various universities and educational institutions including Rhode Island School of Design Senior Studio; and Pratt Institute’s Arts and Cultural Management Program. Kendal served as the Director of Culture and Economic Development for the City of Newburgh, NY where he created the region’s first Percent for Art Program. Prior to that post he was Manager of Arts Programs at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Arts for Transit for eleven years. During this time, he has overseen the commissioning, fabrication and installation of MTA’s permanent art projects, served as a member of the MTA’s in-house design team, and produced temporary exhibitions at Grand Central Terminal.
Kendal was also the Curator-at-large at the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Art (MoCADA) in Brooklyn, NY and was elected to serve two 3-year terms on the Americans for the Arts Public Art Network Council.
Fred Wilson is a conceptual artist whose work investigates museological, cultural and historical issues, which are largely overlooked or neglected by museums and cultural institutions. Since his groundbreaking exhibition Mining the Museum (1992) at the Maryland Historical Society, Wilson has been the subject of more than 40 solo exhibitions around the globe. His work has been exhibited extensively in museums including the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Allen Memorial Museum at Oberlin College, Ohio; the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Institute of Jamaica, W.I.; the Museum of World Cultures, Sweden; the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College; the British Museum, and the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne, Australia. His work can be found in several public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Long Museum, Shanghai, the Tate Modern in London and National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia.
Wilson presented his exhibition Afro Kismet at the 2017 Istanbul Biennial, Turkey, which traveled to London, New York and Los Angeles. Since 2008 Wilson has been a member of the Board of Trustees at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He represented the U.S. at the Cairo Biennale (1992) and Venice Biennale (2003). His many accolades include the prestigious MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius” Grant (1999); the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture (2006) the Ford Foundation’s Art of Change fellowship (2018) and Brandeis University’s Creative Arts Award (2019). Most recently Wilson unveiled "Mother", a large-scale installation commissioned by Delta Airlines for New York’s LaGuardia airport.
Mabel O. Wilson teaches Architecture and African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University, where she also serves as the director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies. With her practice Studio&, she was a member of the design team that recently completed the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia.
Wilson has authored Begin with the Past: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture (2016), Negro Building: Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums (2012), and co-edited the volume Race and Modern Architecture: From the Enlightenment to Today (2020). For the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, she was co-curator of the exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America (2021). Her installation (a)way station: The Architectural Spaces of Urban Migration is on exhibit at SFMoMA till May 2023.
Photo by Dario Calmese
Brooklyn Public Library - Center for Brooklyn History MM/DD/YYYY 60