The University at Buffalo Art Galleries, with the Burchfield Penney Art Center and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (AKAG) invite community members to partake in a number of interactive online and in-person events on Saturday, April 2 and Sunday, April 3, 2022. The series, titled Black Lunch Table (BLT), is “a collaborative art project founded by artists Heather Hart and Jina Valentine that aims to fill gaps in the documentation of contemporary art history.”
The oral history archiving project intends to host a series of “lunch tables” (literal and metaphorical) that are meant to bring together cultural producers and community members to flesh out and record conversations pertaining to oft-ignored critical issues. These types of conversations and recordings have not previously been implemented in this manner; nor have the topics been addressed in a similar fashion. The participants will be as diverse as the candid discussions evoked.
- On April 2nd, BLT will host two different round table conversations virtually—the People’s Table from 11am -1pm , and then the Artist’s Table from 2pm – 4pm. The People’s Table is open to all members of Buffalo’s communities; the Artist’s Table is open to artists who are part of the African diaspora. BLT will curate the “tables” and develop the questions to ensure a diversity of voices and experience. Lunch vouchers will be provided to all participants, so that they may order a lunch from a Black-owned restaurant of their choice. Lack of access to appropriate technology will not be a barrier to participation in the Black Lunch Table event.
- On April 3rd, BLT is hosting a BLT Wikipedia edit-a-thon from 12-3 pm (EST), training participants to make quality contributions to Wikipedia and focusing on Black artists hailing from or living in the Buffalo metropolitan area. The purpose of this radical archiving is to fill gaps in this highly accessed archive and in the larger (art) historical record. This is a hybrid event: if you would like to participate from home, we will be meeting virtually. If you prefer to meet in-person, the Merriweather Library has provided computer stations for this event. Please note in the registration if you will be attending virtually or in person, as we have limited in-person options available.
To register:
April 2nd, Black Lunch Table sessions: www.surveymonkey.com
April 3 Wikipedia edit-a-thon: www.eventbrite.com
Each of the three hosting organizations are simultaneously presenting exhibitions featuring Black cultural producers.
Organized by UB Art Galleries, Heather Hart: Afrotecture (Re)Collection is an exhibition that stems from artist Heather Hart’s research on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968. At UB CFA Gallery, Hart presents a sculptural installation that quotes the architecture of the motel balcony in order to revisit this critical moment in the Civil Rights Movement. The work explores the intersection of this collective national trauma and the individual and physical experience of the balcony as a site of memorialization. Designed to be activated by visitors, this exhibition serves as a gathering space and site for study and imaginings by UB students and the greater Buffalo communities.The exhibition as well as Black Lunch Table are presented with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Collectively, these three institutions seek to better represent and celebrate Black artists, Indigenous artists, and artists of color in our communities, further defining space for artists to create enduring and fertile forms that challenge dominant narratives.
Concurrently, the Burchfield Penney has mounted two exhibitions featuring the legacy and influence of the great local artist and educator James Pappas. Curated by Tullis Johnson, James G. Pappas: Relative to Music is on view through May 29, 2022 and features a selection of paintings, drawings, screenprints, and photographs that spans the internationally recognized local artist’s prolific career. Coinciding at the Burchfield Penney is Founders: The Early History of the Langston Hughes Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, also on view until May 29. This exhibition, curated by Tiffany Gaines, further considers the intersections of art, Black culture and empowerment, and social justice across Pappas’ work as an artist, educator, and community leader. The exhibition also tracks, along with Pappas, fellow artists Allie Anderson and Clarence Scott, their collective artistic contributions, as well as the formative years and the legacy of the Langston Hughes Center.
And at Albright-Knox Northland through June 5, 2022, In These Truths is an exhibition of works by Black cultural producers, co-curated by two of Buffalo’s most influential, charismatic, and insightful artists, Edreys Wajed and Aitina Fareed-Cooke, in collaboration with Curator of Public Art Aaron Ott. This invitational exhibition focuses on Black artists, emerging and established, who, through a wide range of mediums, provoke and reconsider, defy and embrace, test and talk about our shared reality.
“Our institutions also recognize our responsibility to make space for the diverse experiences of our community members–artists, activists, and cultural leaders. We are honored to invite Black Lunch Table to Buffalo to both facilitate authentic conversations on these topics, and allow the voices of Buffalo’s communities to be not only included, but documented as part of the conversations happening all over this country about race, representation, and access to the arts in America.” – Event organizers