Four new publications for Center-funded projects are now available. Documenting visual exhibitions, historic social movements, and community memories, these catalogues provide insights from a variety of artists and scholars and delve into the projects' artistic and community engagement processes. Learn about the publications below.
Organize Your Own: The Politics and Poetics of Self-Determination Movements
Artist Daniel Tucker's exhibition and event series, Organize Your Own: The Politics and Poetics of Self-Determination Movements, culminated in a new book published by Soberscove Press. The colorful publication features new works by contemporary artists, poets, and writers relating the project's exploration of 1960s and 70s cross-racial social movements to current events and today's conversations on racial justice. Also included are transcripts from five panel discussions that were organized as part of the exhibition. Contributors include Pew Fellows Jennifer Kidwell (2016) and Frank Sherlock (2013).
In his introduction to the book, Tucker writes, "There is an archive at the foundation of this book that you cannot see—a record of practices of freedom that emerged from a deeply oppressive context." He goes on to describe the contemporary relevance of the project, stating, "The participants [of Organize Your Own] are living and breathing new life into their actions and their questions about racial justice and what 'your own' means today."
The publication is available online from Soberscove Press.
reForm
Temple Contemporary's reForm, featuring an immersive installation by Pew Fellow Pepón Osorio (2006), is documented in a new publication, designed to resemble a wirebound, hand-written student notebook. Included are exhibition photographs, school documents, and poems, writings, and drawings by the Fairhill Elementary School students who participated in the project. The book also offers essays from Creative Time's Nato Thompson and The Laundromat Project's Risë Wilson, along with a transcript of a panel discussion on urban education featuring artist Martha Rosler, educator Amalia Mesa-Bains, and community organizer Nijmie Dzurinko. In Wilson's response to the installation, she writes, "This work of art is not simply a physical installation or visual offering, it is also a platform for engaging with a community, for remembering, and for envisioning."
The publication is available online from Cornerhouse Publications and in store at Brickbat Books.
Common Touch: The Art of the Senses in the History of the Blind
The Library Company of Philadelphia has released a catalogue for its exhibition Common Touch: The Art of the Senses in the History of the Blind (on view through Oct. 21), created by visual artist and Pew Fellow Teresa Jaynes (1999). The catalogue documents the multi-sensory artworks included in the exhibition, alongside poetry by visually-impaired writer Stephen Kuusisto, and a conversation with Jaynes conducted by curator and author Sheryl Conkelton. When asked about the impetus for this project, Jaynes explains: "The disjuncture between the dominant cultural depiction of the blind and the actual experience of many blind people—the ingenuity used to overcome that gap, to assert oneself—became the point of tension and provided the initial dialogue and the starting point for the project." Components of the catalogue are accessible to visually-impaired audiences.
The Common Touch catalogue is available at the Library Company of Philadelphia.
Mixing Memories: Sharing History
Cliveden of the National Trust's ongoing historical reinterpretation project, Cliveden's Living Kitchens, compares domestic life in two centuries through the exploration of the 1767 and 1959 kitchens inside the historic Germantown mansion. As part of the project, Cliveden presented Mixing Memories: Sharing History, an exhibition of kitchen objects, recipes, and family memories collected from members of the surrounding Germantown community. These recipes and recollections have now been published in a compilation of the same name, accompanied by historical information on Cliveden and its kitchens. The book's introduction explains Cliveden's community engagement practices and says, "Together, we are building a picture and story of kitchens in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and what these spaces meant to a generation of Americans."
The recipe booklet is available free of charge at Cliveden.