#greatmigrationbkm

Heritage, signage, and language united.

In 500, Mark Bradford uses caulk to repeat the text of a 1913 advertisement on a grid of painted and oxidized paper on wood panels. The notice seeks five hundred families to inhabit the all-Black settlement of Blackdom, New Mexico, a site that had approximately 150 residents during the early twentieth century until the Great Depression, at which point it was largely uninhabited.

This wanted ad appeared in The Crisis, a quarterly magazine for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), to draw people looking for new opportunities across the country. Knowing only a few details about the migration of his mother’s family to Los Angeles, Bradford found great resonance with the story of Blackdom: a story of those searching for new possibilities and building community with and for other Black people.

See this work by #MarkBradford in #GreatMigrationBkM through June 25.

Language, movement, and Black expression. 🎥

The three intertwine in Steffani Jemison’s film A*ray, made in collaboration with shapeshifter and TikTok performer Lakia Black, a lifelong resident of Uniontown, Alabama. 

Over several months, Jemison and Black worked with acting coach Marishka S. Phillips on a series of filmed acting exercises. Alternating between footage of Uniontown and Black performing three different characters inspired by TikTok personalities, Jemison looks at migration as a process of radical hope and transformation.

See Jemison’s film, which evokes a sentiment of migrants from the past: to desire new possibilities of life outside one’s origin, as part of #GreatMigrationBkM through June 25.

Jamea Richmond-Edwards is an artist from Detroit, Michigan who, after two decades away, recently returned to her home city.

The story of her mother’s family being displaced and traveling across four Southern states due to tragic floods and tornadoes is told in an epic multimedia installation, titled “This Water Runs Deep,” composed of a monumental painting and a sound sculpture of jazz instrumentation in A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration. 

See this work that blends mythological imagery and the artist’s family legacy in A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration through June 25.

Galleries or gateways? 🌏️ ⏳️

Embark on a time-traveling adventure to far-off places without ever leaving the city through our collection highlights and exhibitions.

Plan your visit at the link in our bio and share your memories with us using #MyBkM.

Carrie Mae Weems pays tribute to her grandfather and calls for justice for her family.  

In A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, Weems shares the story of the disappearance of her grandfather Frank Weems, who was attacked by a white mob in Earle, Arkansas in 1936. Presumed dead, he narrowly escaped and made his way to Chicago on foot, never again reuniting with his family. By weaving historical events with fragmented family stories, photographs, poetry, music, and interviews, the artist reveals the tragedy of her grandfather’s disappearance and the aftermath of his vanishing, highlighting her family’s ongoing search for answers. 

Experience the work of this trailblazing artist, community-focused activist, and soon-to-be Brooklyn Artists Ball honoree in #GreatMigrationBkM through June 25. 

Mementos, memories, and musings on Mississippi. 

Shelves lined with canned and pickled foods and the improvisational gospel music of his band, the Black Monks, are just two examples of the ways Theaster Gates Jr. shares his memories of childhood summers spent in Mississippi. The Double Wide (shown here), which the artist made using salvaged old materials from a barn in Indiana and pine flooring from New York’s Park Avenue Armory, represents an experience of dislocation while summoning the tastes, feelings, and sounds of the South. 

Gates Jr.’s work in A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration creates a space for our physical and spiritual senses that preserves and summons the tastes, feelings, and sounds of the South.

See The Double Wide and more of the artist’s artwork in #GreatMigrationBkM through June 25. 

What does it mean to know a place you’ve never been? 

With her three, ground-level sculptural works in A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, Leslie Hewitt explores the migration of her family, who were upholsterers and small-business owners, from Georgia to Chicago. 

This journey is represented through the materials of her sculpture, which stand ceremoniously as fragments of ancestral memory brought together through their relationship with each other. The use of familiar glass vessels, such as the cups, dishes, and jars seen here, further elicits a profound sense of family and home.

Discover Hewitt’s story and more as part of #GreatMigrationBkM through June 25. 

The magnitude of the movement, manifested. 

Torkwase Dyson’s trapezoidal work made of painted steel, glass, painted aluminum, and dry-erase marker welcomes you at the beginning of A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration. Titled “Way Over There Inside Me (A Festival of Inches),” this large-scale work visualizes the exhibition’s name and symbolizes how Black people historically have had to “bend space to have life.” On the surface of the sculpture are Dyson’s drawings. Each reflects findings from her research on Black liberation methodologies, architecture, plantation economies, and environmental crises from the Great Migration era to the present.

Join us on May 3 for our next Poetry Workshop inspired by the Great Migration. We’ll be joined by Candace Williams, a poet and interdisciplinary artist, and Indira A. Abiskaroon, Curatorial Assistant for Modern and Contemporary Art, for this in-gallery writing workshop. 

🎟 http://bit.ly/3Kxg095