Willie Cole: Dialogues on Black Dimensions in Art: Tang Teaching Museum
Join us Thursday, October 9, at 6 pm, for a dynamic conversation on Black liberation and racial justice. This event is held in conjunction with the Tang exhibition Up to Us: Black Dimensions in Art, 1975–Tomorrow, which presents art, archives, and oral histories on Black Dimensions in Art (BDA), the Capital Region’s longest-running Black arts collective.
Panelists include artist Willie Cole, whose work is on view in All These Growing Things and See It Now: Contemporary Art from the Ann and Mel Schaffer Collection; Saida Grundy, Associate Professor of Sociology and African American Black Diasporic Studies at Boston University; and artist ransome, whose work is on view in Up to Us. They will discuss the Black Arts Movement historically and its legacy today and the continued importance of the critical work of creating and supporting Black arts organizations.
This event is co-sponsored by the Tang and In It 10, Skidmore College’s suite of programs designed to deepen our understanding of different perspectives and foster a more connected community.
About the Participants
Willie Cole (b. Somerville, New Jersey) is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and musician whose conceptually driven practice transforms everyday objects into powerful visual statements on history, identity, and material culture. Raised in New Jersey in a family of makers and musicians, Cole’s early exposure to ingenuity and creativity continues to inform his approach to sculpture, assemblage, sound, and installation. He earned his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and continued his studies at Boston University’s School of Fine Arts and the Art Students League of New York. Cole’s work has been exhibited at prominent public and private institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx; Pérez Art Museum Miami; Tampa Museum of Art; Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey; and the University of Massachusetts Amherst Fine Arts Center, Amherst, Massachusetts, among many others.
Saida Grundy is a feminist sociologist of race & ethnicity studies and the Associate Professor of Sociology and African American Black Diasporic Studies (with a courtesy appointment in Women & Gender Studies) at Boston University. She is the author of the award-winning Respectable: Politics and Paradox in Making the Morehouse Man(University of California Press, 2022). Her research to date has focused upon formations and ideologies of gender and politics within the Black middle class and elites–specifically men.
Prof. Grundy’s research interests span Race & Ethnicity; Gender & Sexuality; Men & Masculinities; Intersectionality; Qualitative Methods; and the Sociology of Elites. She received her joint Ph.D. (2014) in Sociology & Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan. When she has something to say, she contributes to The Guardian and The Atlantic.
ransome received his MFA from Lesley University. In his practice he combines acrylic paint with an array of found, created, and purchased papers. His work embraces the spontaneity in jazz and the resourcefulness of rural Gee’s Bend quilters, utilizing materials at hand to collage and paint to blend a unique yet personal creation.
ransome’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Opalka Gallery in Albany, New York; Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina; and Geary in Millerton, New York. Group shows include the 2023 Center for Maine Contemporary Art Biennial, Rockland, Maine; An Unpredictable Time & Place, MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts; 47th Presentation of Art on Paper, Weatherspoon Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina; as well as exhibitions at the Visual Art Center of New Jersey, Summit, New Jersey; Band of Vices, Los Angeles, California, The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), Winston-Salem, North Carolina; The Dorsky Museum, New Paltz, New York; and the Katonah Museum, Katonah, New York.
