Introduction to Black Arts at Oxy
Professor of Art History
Department of Art and Art History
Occidental College
As of the writing of this introduction in December 2016, this Scalar project represents an emerging body of collaborative research and writing conducted by students in Art History 389, "Modern and Contemporary Art," during the Fall 2016 semester. This has truly been a collaborative effort, one that encompasses the thoughtful work, labor, and creativity of many people, including the students in the course, but also a range of collaborators from on and off campus: staff from the CDLA, Special Collections, and the College Archives; but also two important off-campus collaborators: Thomas Carroll, Visiting Artist and Researcher; and Dale Brockman Davis, one of the co-founders of the Brockman Gallery in Los Angeles. We are all aware of our predecessors in this work -- Dale and Alonzo Davis whose innovative, pathbreaking Brockman Gallery made possible the exhibition at Occidental entitled "Black Art: The Black Experience" in Fall 1971; a former Professor of Art History, Constance Perkins; and her student, Steve Smith (Class of 1971). And then there is our effort to honor the work of the five California-based artists whose work was included in the Occidental exhibition that autumn: David Bradford, David Hammons, Marie Johnson, John Outterbridge, and Noah Purifoy.
This project represents a leap of faith for me, as the "Professor of Record," in that it has meant that I altered a course that is typically one that "delivers content," and prepare students for advanced work in art history, studio art, and visual studies. I changed the course to one that aimed to present some of that foundational content about the later 20th century Euro-American canon, while intervening in my own pedagogical "tradition." I wanted to push my students to conduct, and present publicly, a body of research that helps us to understand not only the history of African American art in Los Angeles (and how that work impacted the students and curriculum at Occidental), but to collaborate with a partner like Dale Brockman Davis to make the history of the Brockman Gallery, and the work of African American artists and curators in LA, visible through publicly accessible projects such as this.
My own departure from a pedagogical "norm" of tests-papers-research projects in which individual students are the units of measure, to one that is overtly collaborative and public-facing began with a serendipitous revelation: the recognition of a history of art at Occidental about which I'd never heard a word, and with which I was confronted when I took students to see the Noah Purifoy: Junk Dada exhibition at LACMA in fall 2015. When I walked into the "archival room" at the LACMA exhibition (brava!), I looked into a vitrine filled with ephemera, and saw the exhibition announcement for a "Black Art" show at Occidental in 1971. I was dumbfounded! I eagerly encouraged my students to look at that announcement. The core of this project in many ways comes from wanting to know more about both Occidental's history - and its history specifically in relation to the curriculum and the experience of African American students - and the history of art in Los Angeles. In the wake of the Fall 2015 student occupation of the AGC Administration building by Oxy United for Black Liberation (OUBL), and the faculty's goal to develop a Black Studies program at the College, I wanted to actively remake my course "Modern and Contemporary Art" for Fall 2016 with our current context in mind - one that includes both OUBL and Black Lives Matter, as we consider our small community in relation to a broader national political movement. How to do this? And to what end? The fact of Occidental's own work back in the Fall of 1971 to mount an exhibition such as "Black Art: The Black Experience" seemed an essential moment to return to, in order not only to understand the College's own history in Los Angeles, but to remind ourselves of the intersecting histories of Oxy AND Los Angeles in order to write our future. And most essentially, to write a future in which we demonstrate a desire for collaboration and community - a future that our own past can teach us about! In this powerful 1971 project, Occidental collaborated with the relatively young Brockman Gallery (founded in Leimert Park in 1967 by brothers Dale and Alonzo Davis), in ways that our current emphasis at the College on collaborative, community-based research have moved us as an academic institution outside of our "Oxy bubble" over the last 15 years. What our research about the "Black Art" exhibition reveals is that this kind of community-centered work is not new at Oxy; and what is more, it is my belief as a faculty member -- in this place, and at this time -- that our public-facing, community-based research must become THE central pedagogical and research agenda of our College.
Questions for you, my dear students and collaborators: what more to add?.
1. Collaboration with Mary Beth + Rafa + Amy (Assemblage; Purifoy Field Trip, ongoing relationship; collaboration across courses with lectures, visual analysis, student critique). I was thinking of asking both Mary Beth and Rafa (and their students) to view our website and provide feedback before the end of the year. What say you?
2. How might we incorporate your own voices into this introduction?
3. I don't really know what else to add right now (December 5 evening and I am very tired).
