The SpiceIslander TalkShop
|
|
|
|
|
|
Date: July 24, 2008 at 20:42:38
From: macegirl
Subject: Grenada Museum.....PS
|
URL: http://www.slaveryinnewyork.org/
|
|
|
It is anti-intellectual to deal with what you're reconciled about.
Check out the discussion/representation about slavery in the US...there are many who wish we could just put that aspect of our past and present in a box and just wish it away.
But folks who live the life of the mind understand that often it is through wrestling with difficult things that we come to learn, to grow, to bridge differences and such.
Check out this link attached. The NY Historical Society recognized that there were untold stories about NY's slavery connections and sought to correct the record with one incarnation of the story.
Many were shocked to learn of our fair city/fair state's engagement with that enterprise directly and via investments and such. But now that the NYHS has taken off the blinders so to speak, folks have access to an enhanced narrative that might differently impact our lives individually and collectively.
I am sure that the milieu of activism around the African Burial Ground project here in the city probably turned the light bulbs on for the NYHS...but impetus notwithstanding, as an educator, I was thankful to be able to bring my students -- esp. the African-descent ones -- to help them learn from these teaching spaces.
Put in a temporary or permanent exhibition on the revo...let the kids know it happened...don't put them in the world for strangers to tell them and to give them representations that you would rather they not have.
And am thinking about the whole intellectual space at True Blue because it seems to me that the place just splashing out wider and wider while real estate entrepreneurs just converging on the edge of the pond to see what they can catch from all the rain falling over there.
Nice that they sponsored the Caribbean Women Writers Conference in May...more intellectual stimulation in the place for ordinary people man.
Let them children and them adults ask critical questions of the exhibitions and of each other. Museums today are not passive exhibitors of ancient, modern and contemporary artifacts...these are vibrant places where people get to think about how they are being interpreted and within themselves are challenged to create their own narrative about their history and their present.
Is all....
|
|
| |
View entire thread |
|
|
|
|
| Follow Ups: |
|
|
|
|
| |
| TalkShop 2.77-1 BETA |