Friday night I attended a Protest Art opening curated by Richard Beavers at his House of Art Gallery. Its location was not in Midtown, Chelsea, Soho, or the Lower East Side, but at 408 Marcus Garvey Boulevard in Bedford-Stuyesant, a Brooklyn neighborhood for its famed motto ‘Bed-Stuy, do or die’.
Little Harlem fell on hard times in the 60s. Gang wars and race riots led to white flight. Robert F. Kennedy attempted to address the social inequity facing the residents after his election to the Senate and fought against the Democratic gerrymandering of the district. In 1968 Shirley Chisholm was elected to Congress from the 12th and fought hard to keep the Brooklyn Navy Yard open, but the 70s were even harder with Bed-Stuy bottoming out with the 1977 Blackout during which hundreds of businesses were looted or burned to the ground. Crack cocaine robbed the next two decades and only recently has the neighborhood revived thanks to the gentrification of the old brownstones.
Richard Beavers was born in Bed-Stuy and mentioned about the hopelessness of those times, while also praised the works of the four artists featured at this show; Charlotta Jansen, Frank Morrison, Dan Ericson, and Anton & Najee Dorsey. “These paintings are meant to wake up our minds to speaking out against injustice.”
No one spoke about Warhol, Larry G, or Gerhard Richer.
This was art aimed at opening our eyes. I drank wine, conversed with the guests, and then decided to walk to Fort Greene. I hadn’t realized it was so far away from where I lived near the Atlantic Terminal. I cut through streets without a single person on the sidewalk. A few boys played basketball next to a school in the dark. The abandoned lots are cleaned of trash, signaling their extinction. I didn’t see any gangsters or cops either. I didn’t hear any shootings or police sirens. Bed-Stuy isn’t what it was back in the 80s and I arrived at the Fort Greene Observatory foot-weary, but never threatened by danger.
These might not be the best of times, but they are not the worst of times either.
For this is no longer the time of dying, but the time of living.
Go see PROTEST.
It’s well worth the trip.
Even if you take the subway.
