NOTwhitSTANDING

San Francisco—on top of everything else, it is literally a ship burial ground.

1. This was much harder to make than it looks! To achieve this resolution with an electron microscope, it took 10 seconds to capture each frame of this “video.” The traditional 30 frames per second video was impossible. Instead, this is stop motion - like those Wallace and Gromit cartoons. Ben Krasnow of the youtube channel Applied Science took a picture, moved the record slightly, then took another image and on and on. Because electron microscopes can’t image electrical insulators, he had to coat the whole thing with a thin, thin layer of silver. You can watch the whole process in this video.

So You Think You Know the Banjo?

If you’ve ever considered banjo music to be an American creation, you don’t know the banjo. In fact, if you think of the banjo as an inherently Southern instrument, you don’t know the banjo.

If you think that the banjo can teach us nothing about American history, Southern culture and modern race relations, then you certainly don’t know the banjo.

And you’ve probably never heard the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

For those of you like me who are not formally trained musicologists, here’s a super-quick summation of the first 400 years of banjo history:

1) The handmade gourd instruments that would become the modern banjo originated in West Africa. 2) Enslaved Africans carried the “banjar” and its music to North America by way of the Caribbean. 3) Traditional string music (and the banjo itself) was appropriated from slave culture and was spread into the greater American popular culture through minstrel shows and blackface performances. And 4) the banjo was popularized throughout the United States and Europe by white performers, with various regional playing styles emerging and evolving simultaneously – from the rhythmic role the banjo played in traditional New Orleans jazz to the fingerpicking sound of bluegrass that bloomed in the Appalachian mountains, among many others.

In short, we owe the banjo’s modern presence in America to Africans who were brought here against their will. Thus has the banjo become like okra, an undeserved gift to all parts of Southern culture, but one that came only from the people our ancestors enslaved.

Club Thrive: Say What You Feel

It’s your right, no matter what.

“Over the years—at work, with friends, and with love—I’ve grown accustomed to saying or acting like I’m OK when I’m far from it. I can’t pinpoint the first time it happened, but like many women and girls, especially women and girls of color, I have been conditioned by dominant culture to dilute or de-prioritize my emotional needs in order to protect, forgive, or support people with more power and privilege than myself—in my case, men and white people.”

In The Forty Part Motet, every single speaker plays a recording of a single singer, which artist Janet Cardiff says is a virtual representation of that person. “It’s like they’re stopped in time." 

Now on view! Our final SFMOMA On the Go exhibition and a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Find out more here →

I’m so sad and disappointed in all of these actors, but work is work right