Chanice is a poet, Capricorn, and music enthusiast based in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in Studio magazine, No, Dear magazine, The Recluse, TheBeliever, and other publications. You can find her online at chanicehughesgreenberg.com.
What’s the purpose of a museum—and who decides which objects are worthy of value, attention, and care? These two questions, along with decades of inventive and collective artmaking, are at the core of “Young Lords and Their Traces” at the New Museum, the Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates’s first-ever museum survey exhibition to be staged in New York City (on view through February 5, 2023).
“African Americans have played a major role in creating the foundation for what we know as American food,” food anthropologist and writer Debra Freeman says on the trailer for Setting the Table, the podcast she hosts. “From soul food to barbecue and almost everything in between, African American cuisine has essentially changed the palate of America.” It’s a subject fitting for Freeman, whose work explores the intersection of race, culture, and food. Curious and perceptive, she skillfully interviews chefs, food historians, and other culinary experts, illuminating how Black Americans have been—and still are—integral to shaping the food and drinks we consume.
How do the generation of Black Americans who grew up in the past 25 years reckon with the tragedies that play out in their daily lives? And how do these forces shape them and their worldviews? In her new book, The Trayvon Generation (Grand Central Publishing), poet, educator, and scholar Elizabeth Alexander—who currently serves as the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the largest humanities philanthropy in the United States (and who was the guest on Ep. 52 of our Time Sensitive podcast)—explores these questions, and others, by meditating on race, class, trauma, justice, and memory, and their influences on contemporary creativity. At this vital point in time and American culture, Alexander—a Black woman, mother, auntie, and lifelong teacher—positions art in her writing as a powerful means for understanding and self-expression, and for radically illuminating the country’s racism and racial violence.
To speak with self-described “citizen artist” vanessa german about her creative practice is to talk with her about art as a means of revitalization and protection. Particularly for the Black community.