Saturday, October 15, 2011

Black Verse: An Exhibit

On October 17 - 27, we are coordinating an exhibit at the Morris University Center Art Gallery. Our exhibit, "Black Verse: Notations on African American Poetry and Knowledge," includes poems, photographs from the Eugene B. Redmond Collection, and approximately 100 images that document black studies-affiliated participants engaged in knowledge-building practices.

Several of the panels are from our Black Poetry Mixed Media series, which we have shown at secondary schools and colleges in the area. Those panels feature photographs by Redmond and poems by Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Jayne Cortez, Lucille Clifton, Nikki Giovanni, Haki Madhubuti, Sonia Sanchez, and Margaret Walker. We also have a section featuring Redmond's photographs and metadata for the images provided by Mary Z. Rose of Lovejoy Library.

The exhibit also includes poems by Allison Joseph, Adrian Matejka, and Treasure Redmond, along with pieces by our black studies contributors Danielle Hall, Cindy Lyles, and Dometi Pongo.  

The series of 'knowledge-building' photographs show a wide range of participants at our events or involved with black studies practices that involve intellectual activities or the practice of acquiring information.

The exhibit panels were designed by my younger brother, Kenton Rambsy. He's a graduate student in literature at the University of Kansas, but gives generously of his time and graphic design talents to our program here at SIUE.

The exhibit is open Monday - Friday from 9 AM to 4 PM.  We will host audio tours in the exhibit space on:

Tuesday, October 18, 11:15 - 12:30
Wednesday, October 19, 11:30  - 1:00
Thursday, October 20, 11:00 - 1:00
Tuesday, October 25, 10:00 - 12:30 (Style, Politics, and Black Women)
Wednesday, October 26, 11:30 - 12:30 (The Malcolm X Mixtape)

Funding for the exhibit was made possible by Black Studies @ SIUE and a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council. 

Related: 
Installation of African American Poetry exhibit
Black Verse flyer 
Handwritten & Typed Versions of Rhymes by Dometi Pongo
A Glimpse at the Black Verse Exhibit 
The Process of Creating a Poetry Exhibit 
Knowledge-building Images from the Exhibit
The X Image

1 comment:

Mary Rose said...

I really enjoyed this exhibit and the audio tour. It was great to hear the voices of poets like Lucille Clifton. The poem by Cindy Lyles is fantastic. Thanks to everyone involved in putting this together.