While last year’s "Open House: Working
in Brooklyn" exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum made huge
strides in introducing the borough to its diversity of artists,
it’s possible that a new borough-wide art exhibit, "Project
Diversity," helmed by gallery owner Danny Simmons, will
expand on that theme while encouraging visitors to break through
the boundaries of their own neighborhoods and cultural myopia.
Simmons told GO Brooklyn Tuesday that intentionally or not, he
believes the art world is segregated.
"If you go into the big galleries in Chelsea and SoHo, who’s
hanging on the walls? It’s 80 percent white males, 10 percent
females and 10 percent other. Females are certainly underrepresented.
And if you go to auction houses and see who’s being auctioned
off in large numbers, it’s mostly white males. There are very,
very few blacks in auction houses.
"Commercial galleries pander to patrons and patrons largely
believe that the only art that’s collectible is [created by]
white males."
Yet Simmons, who is black, believes that Brooklyn is leading
by example, exhibiting artists from a wider swath of humanity
than "white males" alone.
"Brooklyn’s art scene is largely driven by artists. At Momenta
[the owners] are artists, and at Red Clay they are artists and
Florence Neal is an artist at Kentler International Drawing Space.
And they believe in, and are behind, diversity in galleries."
Simmons’ "Project Diversity" features 200 artists (culled
from a pool of 600) in 16 galleries in neighborhoods ranging
from Brooklyn Heights [Rotunda Gallery, 33 Clinton St. at Pierrepont
Street, (718) 875-4047] to Sunset Park’s new Tabla Rasa Gallery
[224 48th St. between Second and Third avenues, (917) 880-8337]
to Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Skylight Gallery [1368 Fulton St., third
floor, between Brooklyn and New York avenues, (718) 636-6949].
Simmons’ Clinton Hill gallery, Corridor, [334 Grand Ave. between
Gates and Greene avenues, (718) 638-8416] will feature 32 artists
with its show opening April 29.
"I know when I started collecting, my gallery was for African-American
artists because that’s what I knew," said Simmons. "As
my neighborhood changed, I met artists with themes that weren’t
African-American. I had to change with the nature of the community,
so the gallery had to change."
While Simmons believes that Brooklyn galleries are more open
to showing artists from a variety of cultural backgrounds, he
believes that they isolate themselves and "tend not to go
out of the boxes they usually know."
"Someone with a Bed-Stuy gallery might never have been to
a Williamsburg gallery and someone from a Williamsburg gallery
may never have been to my gallery. There’s not enough cross-pollination,"
he said.
"We need to get to know each other and what other outlets
there are in the community. There needs to be a dialogue between
different genders, cultures and races."
To that end, "Project Diversity" will host an artist
talk at the Brooklyn Museum [200 Eastern Parkway at Washington
Avenue in Prospect Heights, (718) 638-5000] on May 8, from 2
pm to 4 pm. (The panelists were still being confirmed by press
time.)
On April 30, May 1, May 7-8 and May 14-15, a free shuttle bus
will take viewers to the galleries, from 11 am to 5 pm each day.
At Corridor, artist Teri Richardson’s 1998 acrylic-on-wood panel,
"Soul of the Deepest Roots," will be displayed.
"I thought it was a great idea for a show," Richardson
told GO Brooklyn, explaining why she chose to participate. "I
live and work in Gowanus, so I don’t get a chance to go to other
neighborhoods and galleries as often as I’d like to. And it’s
a fun way to mix it up a bit."
Simmons is a fan of Richardson’s work and owns a couple of pieces
by the artist.
"She’s an abstract painter whose work is very colorful,
but what I like is the layering and the way the color peeks from
behind and the free movement of the hand – mostly the way she
plays with color and depth," he said.
Richardson said it was the very nature of her work that introduced
her to patrons’ narrow views about who creates what kind of art.
"I had a sort of funny discussion in a gallery where I was
showing. A man was looking at my painting and was totally convinced
that I was a guy, which I thought was pretty hysterical,"
said the black, female artist. "It’s the assumptions of
what type of people make what type of artwork where being an
African-American painter comes into play at some point for me.
Historically, there have been many African-American abstract
painters, but the art world doesn’t acknowledge them."
Richardson believes black artists get pigeonholed as political
artists and are generally limited to museums or galleries that
feature new art or art with political content, leaving a formal,
abstract painter like herself out in the cold.
Those misconceptions still have to change, said Richardson, who
also has a work on display at the Skylight Gallery.
"Different types of art are created by all different types
of people," she said.
Project Diversity coordinator Brian Tate, who with Simmons co-founded
the Brooklyn New Music Festival last year, said this exhibit
reflects the borough’s variety of artists and media.
"The work is dynamic and covers such a broad spectrum of
all possible media, as might be expected in Brooklyn," said
the Prospect Heights resident. "It’s a real diversity of
cultural perspective and the artists are from all possible age
groups, gender, ethnicities and neighborhoods where artists live
or work."
"Project Diversity" will host an artist talk at the
Brooklyn Museum [200 Eastern Parkway at Washington Avenue in
Prospect Heights, (718) 638-5000] on May 8, from 2 to 4 pm.
On April 30, May 1, May 7-8 and May 14-15 a free shuttle bus
service will take viewers to the galleries, from 11 am to 5 pm
each day.
For more information, including gallery openings, call (212)
997-3081.
