The Clemente Course in the Humanities;' National Endowment for the Humanities, 2014, Web
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F1rstAmericanArt ISSUE NO. 23, SUMMER 2019 FEATURES DEPARTMENTS Take a Closer Look: 24 Recent Developments 16 Four Emerging Artists By Mariah L. Ashbacher Shine in the Spotlight and America Meredith By RoseMary Diaz ( Cherokee Nation) (Santa Clara Tewa) Seven Directions 20 Amanda Crowe & Her Legacy: 30 By Hallie Winter (Osage Nation) Eastern Band Cherokee Art+ Literature 96 Woodcarving Suzan Shown Harjo By Tammi). Hanawalt, PhD By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD peepankisaapiikahkia 36 Collections: 100 eehkwaatamenki aacimooni: The Metropolitan Museum of Art A Story of Miami Ribbonwork By Andrea L. Ferber, PhD By Scott M. Shoemaker, PhD Spotlight: Melt: Prayers 104 (Miami), George Ironstrack for the People and the Planet, (Miami), and Karen Baldwin Angela Babby (Oglala Lakota) By Mariah L. Ashbacher Reclaiming Space in Native 44 Calendar 109 Knowledges and Languages By Travis D. Day and America The Clemente Course Meredith (Cherokee Nation) in the Humanities By Laura Marshall Clark (Muscogee Creek) REVIEWS Exhibition Reviews 78 ARTIST PROFILES Book Review 94 D. Y.Begay: 54 Dine Textile Artist By Jennifer McLerran, PhD IN MEMORIAM Benjamin Harjo Jr.: 60 Joe Fafard, OC, SOM (Melis) 106 Absentee Shawnee/Seminole Painter By Gloria Bell, PhD (Metis) and Printmaker Frank LaPefta 107 By Staci Golar (Nomtipom Maidu) By Mariah L. Ashbacher Freddy Mamani Silvestre: 66 Truman Lowe (Ho-Chunk) Aymara Architect By jean Merz-Edwards By Vivian Zavataro, PhD Tyra Shackleford: 72 Chickasaw Textile Artist By Vicki Monks (Chickasaw) COVER Benjamin Harjo 'Jr. (Absentee Shawnee/ Seminole), creator and coyote compete to make man, 2016, gouache on Arches watercolor paper, 20 x 28 in., private collection. Image courtesy of the artist. SUMMER 2019 [ 11 Reclaiming Space in Native Knowledges and Languages THE CLEMENTECOURSE IN THE HUMANITIES ByLauraMarshall Clark (Muscogee Creek) S I GROW OLDER, I laugh to No one knew this better than Earl escape-a microcosm of society where remember how much I strug Shorris (1936-2012), an American jour· force is continually applied by equals and gled in college humanities nalist, lecturer, editor, and novelist who unequals, and one merely reacts to it.3 In A courses. Considering my love held a deep passion for the humanities. this environment he became good friends for the arts-painting, sculpture, music, Shm_:ris also cared for marginalized with female inmate Viniece Walker poetry, and architecture-this didn't make people in the world. As a thought leader from East Harlem who called herself sense. It does make sense, however, when in the early 1990s, Shorris doggedly set "Niece:' She was a high school dropout recalling darkened classrooms and aging out to discover a key to alleviate poverty, who finished her diploma in prison and films whose sound sputtered while yellow crisscrossing the nation and interviewing pursued a college degree in philosophy, scratches wriggled like worms on the more than 600 individuals of diverse helping other inmates with problems of frames. The narrator's voice, reminding me backgrounds over five years. What he family violence. One day Shorris asked of old cigarette commercials, droned on discovered about poverty was what he her, "Why do you think people are poor?" while tinny trumpets played in the back would call an inescapable ((surround of Niece looked at him with a cold eye ground. I cast certain blame, too, on overly force;' relentlessly pressuring the poor and responded, "You've got to teach the thick tomes masquerading as textbooks. I through hunger, illness, isolation, abuse, moral life of downtown to the children. would have never guessed then how much addiction, crime, and racism, among other And the way you do that, Earl, is by taking I would love the humanities today. social ills. 2 What he diddt expect was to them downtown to plays, museums, Humanities in its simplest defi find a solution-what he called his "riches concerts, lectures, where they can learn nition means all that tells the story of for the poor" -in the most unlikely way. the moral life of downtown ... a moral 4 humans, all that expresses humanldnd. It would also become a key to unlocking alternative to the street:' Niece didn't It is the study of histories and cultures, the preservation of Indigenous languages mention jobs or money or God or church languages, cultural practices, spirituality, and cultures for tribal people. or family during any of their talks, he art theory and criticism, music, literature, noted. What Niece saw were the human philosophy, jurisprudence, and more.' The ities. Niece saw an alternative to poverty humanities are not the act of creating art UNLIKELYSPACE in the opening up of new worlds to the or literature or law or music but the exam~ mind and heart, of new understandings, ination and interpretation of such things. THE LIGHT BULB CAME ON for considering paths outside the surround of They are reflexive in the exploration of Shorris during one of his interviews in force, and entering a wider world in which who we once were-individually and a New York women's maximum-security one sees, reflects, and reacts in new ways. collectively-who we are today, and who prison. He called it his "prison epiphany:' None of that was lost on Earl Shorris. we are becoming. Studying the human The prison environment, Shorris Taking Niece's observations to ities can be a journey into wonder, into observed, is a "highly evolved miniature" heart, the author developed an inner• the labors and delights of being human, of the surround of force-a place where city experiment to close the gap between and also into disappointments and pain. there are no constants, no reason, no those in poverty and the humanities in the L "What Are the Humanities?" Oklahoma Humanities, web. 2. Earl Shorris, "IL As a Weapon in the Hands of the Restless Poor;' Harper'sMagazine 295, no. 1768 (September 1997): 50. 3. Earl Shorris, Richesfor the Poor:The Clemente Coursefor the Humanities (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2000), 54-55. 4. Ibid, 96-100. 44 I WWW.FIRSTAMERICANARTMAGAZINE.COM same way that Ivy League college courses functioned. This experimental class first met in lower Manhattan at the Roberto Clemente Family Guidance Center, and Shorris named it the Clemente Humanities Program. It was primarily populated by young people, age 18 or older, whose incomes fell near or below the federal poverty line and who could read a tabloid newspaper. The Clemente program offered the rigor of multiple disciplines by a qualified faculty in liter ature, art history, philosophy, American history, critical thinking, and writing, with no cost to low-income, urban participants. The course provided funds ABOVE Chickasaw Clemente Class and Pan-American Indian Humanities Center for the students' childcare, transportation Organizers. Front row, left to right Geraldine Greenwood, Lona Barrick, Jay Goombi, Earl Shorris, Leerene Frazier. Howard Meredith in doorway with glasses, ca. 2001. on the bus or subway, and even meals. Shorris was convinced that a course in the culture and the restoration of their Mayan Maya. has given me a new life:' Ruby humanities centered in Western classical It language. Among the young people, use thought would help anchor people in a Esmeralda Chay Chuk also spoke about oflanguage had deteriorated and very few sense of self and reflect on the world and her experience: "We had something very could read or write it, so Shorris focused their role in it. And so it did. beautiful, and that is our history. To speak on a revised Clemente Indigenous course In the years that followed, the Maya is to feel strong. Now we know we success of the course would confirm to develop reading, writing, and spoken are Mayas, but when we were born, we K'iche his belief that "people who know the Mayan. Their humanities curric did not know it:'' ulum focused on Maya culture, grounded humanities become good citizens, become In 1999, Shorris traveled to Bethel, active, not acted upon;'' and by 1998, the in the milpa-the small communal farm Alaska, the center of 56 Yupiit Alaska Clemente courses grew exponentially governed by complex, reciprocal relation Native villages, to talk with Alaska from New York's Lower East Side to ships between community members and Humanities Forum leaders and Yupiit 17 sites across North America. Taldng crops-from which many notions of Maya scholars about an Alaska Native human notice, Bard College, a liberal arts college culture were formed. ities course. Among the southwest Alaska in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, This new Clemente course was Native people, two people groups bear began providing college certificates to all led by regional United Nations program the names of the Yup'ik languages, Yupiit graduates of the course. director Raul Murguia Rosete, and hosted and Cupiit. Funding was available to such notable faculty as Alejandra Garcia bring Miguel Angel May May from the Quintanilla (Maya), professor of history Yucatan to meet the Yupiit leadership and INDIGENOUSSPACE at the University of the Yucatan, and poet talk about what the Clemente course had Miguel Angel May May (Maya), a Mayero meant to the Maya people. Alaska Native SHORRISTHEN STEPPEDOUTSIDE (Maya speaker). Each traveled a difficult scholars and committed individuals then of the Clemente Western model of the trip to the village to teach the young collaborated to propose a course to the humanities and into the Indigenous students. They were joined by an anthro University of Alaska for a year-long, worlds of the Yucatan and Alaska. In the pologist and an ecologist who related multidisciplinary approach focused on small farming village of San Antonio Sih6 science to Maya literature and Maya life. Cupiit tradition, language, history, music, on the western edge of the Yucat:in penin The beauty of Maya art also became real dance, art history, and literature.