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Cover Story
GRAND OPENING EVENTS Grand Opening & Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony
Saturday, March 8.
Northwest African American Museum
Quincy Jones Extravaganza to Celebrate
the Museum’s Grand Opening
Paramount Theater
CONTACT INFO
2300 S. Massachusetts Street -
Seattle, WA
MUSEUM HOURS
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March 2008 © Copyright 2008 ColorsNW Magazine A Dream Fulfilled Northwest African American Museum Opens its Doors As you step inside the Northwest African American museum’s exhibit gallery, you are greeted by a wall display featuring the images of local African-American leaders past and present standing under the caption, “We Are the Northwest.” A photo of former Mayor Norm Rice, King County Executive Ron Sims and King County Councilmember Larry Gossett anchors the display, welcoming museum visitors to “The Journey.” The Journey is the Museum’s operating metaphor, its invitation to visitors to explore their own personal history by immersing themselves in stories of how the African diaspora has shaped the Pacific Northwest. The Journey is also the name of the gallery that visitors first pass through, a long hall from left to right that traces the history of blacks in the Northwest through timelines that start in the present and work their way all the way back to 17th- and 18th-century Africa. But a more immediate journey will also be celebrated at the Northwest African American Museum’s grand opening ribbon-cutting ceremony on March 8. The opening will bring one journey to an end, fulfilling a generation of dreams and struggles to create a museum in Seattle that would highlight and contribute to the region’s African-American history, arts and culture. And it will inaugurate a new journey to help bring that museum space to life. THE JOURNEY “There are maybe 50 significant African-American museums across the country,” notes Carver Gayton, 69, the museum’s executive director. “And we were one of the few metropolitan areas that did not have an African-American museum. This has been on the hearts and minds of most folks for well over a generation. So we are trying to fulfill the wishes of the community. We see ourselves as stewards of this community desire because it’s been out there for so long.” The idea for the museum was proposed by a group called Community Exchange 27 years ago in 1981. By 1985, the slow pace of city action led a small but dedicated group of black activists to keep the dream alive by occupying the vacant Colman School building in the Central District. Their protest lasted years, as they demanded that the Seattle Public Schools District donate the building to the community for use as the museum space. When government and community leaders failed to agree and move forward with a realistic plan in the 1990s, increasingly contentious debates made it seem unlikely that a museum would ever be built. Between 2001 and 2003, the Seattle Urban League, with its Executive Director James Kelly taking the lead, helped restart the process by brokering a deal to purchase the Colman School building for $800,000, less than half of its reported value. Much of the Urban League’s work since then focused on renovating and redeveloping the building itself, which was no mean feat. Vacant for over two decades, the former school needed structural repairs as well as hazardous-waste specialists to remove lead paint, asbestos, and years of accumulated waste from various animals that had taken up residence there. With more space than necessary for a museum, and a desire to help fund the costly redevelopment, the Urban League originally proposed to develop condos on the three-story building’s top two floors. But a combination of community opposition and economic considerations changed its plans, and instead the building’s top two floors were developed as the “Urban League Village,” 36 units of affordable rental housing that opened in January. In 2003, Kelly tapped Gayton, a former UW football star and civic leader from a prominent African-American family with Seattle roots for over a century, to lead the new museum. In the past three years, he has built an organization independent of the Urban League (which remains the museum’s landlord) with the funding and expertise necessary to turn 18,000 square feet of a derelict and abandoned school building into a vibrant community center. The space for the museum, which it rents from the Urban League, is substantial especially for a new community museum, and is 80 percent larger than the Wing Luke Museum’s original space. The museum’s opening this month honors the accomplishments and contributions of all who helped keep the dream alive for all these years. But rather than looking back on his and others’ accomplishments, Gayton and his museum staff are inviting the public to join them in looking forward. In addition to the exhibits themselves, it’s the staff’s vision for the future of the museum as a community resource that goes on display this month. ARTS AND CULTURE IN CONTEXT As the museum’s deputy director and curator of programs, Barbara Earl Thomas has taken the lead role in crafting a vision for the museum as a community resource and not just a series of historical artifacts. For Thomas, an artist and writer whose sculpture, “How the Crow Created the World With Lightning,” was recently installed at a light rail switching station near Rainier and Martin Luther King avenues, this means bringing the black experience alive by linking it to contemporary arts and culture movements. And it begins with the museum’s first major exhibit: a collection of works by the Northwest’s most accomplished African-American visual artists: painter Jacob Lawrence and sculptor James Washington Jr. “Arts and culture in context,” says Thomas. “That is what I think is the operative word. So when you go and see the James Washington and Jacob Lawrence show, it’s not just their beautiful paintings on the wall. There are images of them, the tools that made the work, there are letters that James had when he went to meet Diego Rivera and (David Alfaro) Siqueiros. There will be Jacob’s duffle bag from when he was in the Coast Guard where he wrote all his ports of call. So there’s this whole, total view of these people that were in our community. And I think it is a different way to think about how we treat arts and culture.” In addition to having exhibits that link history and art, the museum has also developed an artist-in-residence program that will profile the work of a contemporary African-American artist who will present his or her own work as well as give public talks and workshops. Begun in collaboration with the James Washington, Jr. and Janie Rogella Washington Foundation, the museum’s first artist in residence is Georgia sculptor Daniel Minter. Minter, who was born in Georgia but currently resides in Maine, will live in James Washington’s house, use his studio and begin giving public talks at the museum in April. Thomas sees the museum’s arts programming as collaboration with, and complement to, the work of other regional art museums. “I don’t want this to be the only place where people come and find African-American culture and history. I want it to be something that is kinetic and catches on. I would hate to think that the Seattle Art Museum or the Tacoma Art Museum or the Museum of History and Industry stopped any efforts they were planning to include African Americans because this museum is up here.” “There’s a tendency for that kind of thing to happen,” she adds, “and I think it should actually be the opposite and that this … makes richer and broader what they were going to do anyway.” Thomas stresses that her curatorial work has itself been very collaborative. Tacoma Art Museum staff installed the current Washington and Lawrence exhibit, and Thomas credits current and former staff members Greg Bell and Barbara Johns with helping her develop a vision for using the museum’s gallery spaces. An exhibit that follows the Lawrence and Washington exhibit next year will feature the work of the Pacific Northwest African American Quilters group, which also recently exhibited at the Tacoma Art Museum. OUTREACH ACROSS GENERATIONS There is more to the Northwest African American Museum than its exhibits. And for both personal and professional reasons, the museum’s education director, Brian J. Carter, 28, wants to make the museum a multigenerational space where elders in the community will bring children to learn about their history and where students can develop exhibits that make history and culture speak to their needs and interests. “I’m from Yakima, originally,” says Carter, “and I always thought there was a lack of African-American history in the textbooks. We’re always relegated to the little box. So my father would take me down to the local library anytime I had questions… And that’s how I came to learn about my own culture. “But I always thought, ‘why isn’t there a museum?’ I’d go down to the local museum and there weren’t my people there, there wasn’t my story there. And my family would sometimes go to Seattle and it was the same issue. There were no museums or cultural institutions that were dedicated just to our story. So I always thought that was something that I wanted to do.” Carter went on to major in history at Stanford University, where he worked on the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project and studied with African-American and civil-rights historian Clayborne Carson. When he graduated college, Carter entered the University of Washington’s Museum Studies program with the hopes of starting an African-American museum in the Pacific Northwest. He quickly linked up with the Seattle effort, taking on the museum’s community outreach and education activities. In addition to creating a regular volunteer docent program, Carter has brought together students from four local high schools to create a Youth Docent/Curator Program. They will not only give tours of exhibits, but will also work with museum professionals to create their own exhibits. “It’s pulling the curtain back from museums,” Carter says. “Because I know as a youth I thought they were unapproachable and they’re really institutions and you’re just kind of brought there for 30 minutes twice a year.” That can change, Carter says, by giving youth a say in how the museum operates. After being introduced to the museum and exploring a topic that they themselves chose, “they’ll fabricate the exhibit and then mount it in the gallery, and then they’ll act as tour guides and they’ll give tours of their exhibit to school groups, to organizations or individuals. What we want them to do is once they go through they program, they can be ambassadors for the museum.” The museum also plans to host a series of school tours, with the goal of introducing as many as 5,000 students to the exhibits this year, half of whom they hope will also participate in hands-on art workshops that explore the methods of artists Lawrence and Washington. In addition, the museum hopes to develop a series of curriculum packets and trunks of historical artifacts that schools can begin to use next year to teach local African-American history. But while outreach to schools forms a major part of the museum’s mission, its staff members hope that the museum’s various community spaces can serve to facilitate dialogue between generations and provide a space where families can connect in new ways. Based in part on similar learning centers in other museums, particularly the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, the Northwest museum has created a multimedia learning center whose computer databases and library materials will provide visitors a means to research their own genealogy. The learning center grows out of a partnership with the Black Genealogical Research Group of Washington and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (which is noted for its genealogical expertise and donated computers and database access, and provided trained volunteers). Partly to encourage use of these resources, the museum plans to host “Family First Saturdays” and “Grandparents’ Day” in late summer. At these and other events, parents and grandparents will be encouraged to share their stories with their children, not just exploring the museum’s exhibits but creating their own stories in the museum’s multimedia learning room, its arts studio and its 2,340-square-foot multipurpose gallery for community events. EAST BY NORTHWEST Perhaps the most innovative community collaboration the museum hopes to take on and cultural conversation it hopes to facilitate is between local African-American and African communities. The Museum has begun with the premise that, while the two have different stories, the museum should serve both communities. So in 2010, the museum plans to unveil a substantial exhibit called “East by Northwest” which will profile the history and culture of the region’s African immigrant community, with a focus on the majority who come from the East African nations of Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan. “That story is amazing,” says Carter. “You have this historic African-American community on the one hand, and then you have the new East African community on the other hand. And just talking to both groups separately, there are misconceptions that occur and feelings between the two that there haven’t been avenues of communication, there hasn’t been the discourse that should happen. And I think the museum is a perfect place to do that.” “To be honest, we are merging together,” Carter adds. “It’s a redesign of what it means to be African American in the Northwest. Every day is changing and there are new immigrants coming and changing black culture.” WE ARE THE FUTURE The Museum’s exclusive focus on the experience of African Americans rests on an inclusive interpretation of racial identity and flexible notion of community culture. “There’s something really unique about the African-American experience in the Northwest,” says Carter. “There’s a certain intermingling of cultures that has occurred here historically and occurs here to this day. There’s this close enmeshment with different groups. That’s something that’s unique about the Northwest and the museum does not shy away from that.” The museum’s Journey Gallery begins with a display that includes a photo of Julia Jacob, a black woman who was adopted by the Suquamish Tribe’s Chief Jacob in the 1870s and identified herself as Native her entire life. The gallery’s timeline includes recent African immigrants in the Northwest African-American experience, and notes civil-rights movement alliances with Asian-American leaders like Wing Luke in the 1960s. The gallery ends with a display called “We are the Future: The 21st Century,” which focuses on the complicated racial politics of today, created by students involved in the Seattle youth photography program, Youth In Focus. “How do I convey to the next generation that being MIXED RACE is not widely accepted in our society?” the display quotes student photographer Choloe Colleyer. “I fantasize about HAVING PRIDE… Men and women will steal glances at me, not because I’M BEAUTIFUL, but because I AM A REVOLUTIONARY.” With this and other meditations, the Journey Gallery does not end so much as invite visitors to also reflect on how their lives connect with the history of the region’s African-American culture and arts. And next year promises to be a busy one as the museum seeks to include others in this journey. Its staff members hope to attract 15,000 youth, 40,000 adults and over 7,000 seniors during its first year. They are close to meeting fundraising goals for opening the museum, but they still need to build its membership and raise money for an endowment that can keep the museum going in perpetuity. Most importantly, the museum needs people in the community to take ownership of it, to know they can hold events there, research their family history there, take not just history but art students there, and visit the museum cafe while enjoying family outings at nearby Sam Smith and Jimi Hendrix parks. Stephanie Ellis-Smith, executive director of the Central District Forum for Arts and Ideas, is already looking forward to this future. “I think it’s going to have a tremendous effect on the psyche of the African-American community,” she says. “2008 is turning into such an exciting year with the success of (Democratic sen.) Barack Obama and locally with the opening of the museum.” “It’s more than a museum,” says Ellis-Smith. “It’s really a repository for African-American history and a meeting place for people in the community to celebrate that history.” WHERE TO SEND DONATIONS Northwest African American Museum P.O.Box 22889, Seattle WA 98122 HOW TO APPLY FOR HOUSING IN THE URBAN LEAGUE VILLAGE IN THE COLMAN SCHOOL www.hrg.org/download/Flyer%20-%20ULV%20-%20rev.pdf Visit in Person: Housing Resources Group 1651 Bellevue Avenue - Seattle, WA | 206.622.2893 LINKS MUSEUM STAFF
Barbara Earl
Thomas’s artist web site Carver Gayton’s History Link profile http://historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=4305
CURRENT ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE EXHIBIT OPENING IN 2009 The Association of Pacific Northwest African American Quilters COMMUNITY PARTNERS
James Washington,
Jr. and Janie Rogella Washington Foundation http://www.urbanleague.org
© 2008 ColorsNW - All rights reserved. |
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