Talk Bronx New York

Turning Stereotypes Into Artistic Strengths 

“More, please” has been the critical response to “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution,” the survey of pioneering feminist art currently installed at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center. The Bronx Museum of the Arts anticipated the demand with “Making It Together: Women’s Collaborative Art and Community,” which focuses on the groups and collectives that linked feminist art to a larger social context.

Organized by the critic Carey Lovelace, “Making It Together” occupies part of the lobby and a small adjacent gallery. Conventional art objects are few and far between: pink-painted walls display archival photographs, manifestoes and other ephemera. The show is much smaller than “WACK!” but includes a wealth of historical material, much of which would be better served by a book or documentary film.

The theme is timely, at least; the current Whitney Biennial is rife with collaborative projects. For female artists of the ’70s and ’80s, collective practice had several advantages. In keeping with the anti-authoritarian spirit of the times, it played down the roles of the individual artist and the marketable artwork. It also turned the stereotype of women as inherently conciliatory and cooperative into a source of strength.

The consciousness-raising session generated ideas for artworks like the “Womanhouse” (1972), an installation created in a rundown Hollywood mansion by students of Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro at California Institute of the Arts. Documentation of the “Womanhouse” in “Making It Together” includes a photograph of Faith Wilding’s wall of crocheted spider webs (a recreated version can be seen in “WACK!”).

Art, especially performance art, was inseparable from activism. Leslie Labowitz and Suzanne Lacy’s “Three Weeks in May” (1977), a series of events including self-defense workshops and a performance on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall, raised awareness of sexual violence. “Making It Together” includes an installation documenting Ms. Labowitz and Ms. Lacy’s project, in which the word “RAPE,” stenciled in bold red letters, figures prominently.

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Bronx Principal Fighting To Give Students Arts Education

After this year’s city budget cuts, one Bronx public school is fighting hard to make sure its kids get a more well-rounded education – one where the arts takes center stage.

Third graders at P.S. 24 in the Bronx play music not in a music class, but in their regular classroom with their regular teacher, who happens to have been taught by the New York Philharmonic how to teach music in her reading and math lessons.

“It incorporates literacy. We put in poetry sometimes,” explained teacher Kerri-Anne Wallace. “It [incorporates] math because they see the tempo, and how it’s stretched out.”

This is known as cross-curriculum teaching, bringing art out of the band room and art room and into every classroom – par for the course at the Bronx school, where the arts are everywhere.

The school’s approach can even be seen in the hallways, where Principal Philip Scharper teaches the Charleston.

It’s not too surprising, since Scharper’s a former professional dancer who is also determined that P.S. 24 kids get the dancing, music, drama, and visual arts education the state requires in every grade school – something a recent survey found most city grade school students are not getting.

According to the Center for Art Education, the situation was only made worse by this year’s budget cuts.

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