#bkmevents

[brooklynmuseum]

Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz are starting a revolution to make the world a more creative, equitable and beautiful place. From mentoring and supporting young artists to their commitment to social justice causes, they couldn’t be more perfect Brooklyn Artists Ball honorees. 

Join us on April 3 to dance and celebrate them!

 Alicia Keys and Kasseem Dean (Swizz Beatz) by Inez and Vinoodh 

[brooklynmuseum]

Join curator Rujeko Hockley and artists Simone Leigh, Hugo McCloud, Julie Mehretu, and Jack Whitten in a series of rapid-fire talks reflecting on how a selection of pre-1945 works by African American artists have influenced their practice.

The evening will celebrate, mission-driven art collector Pamela Joyner and the ways she is changing the game when it comes to collecting works by African American artists. In honor of her vision and our Fund for African American Art, we celebrate Joyner and her contributions to the field.

Join us and be inspired!

Posted by Alicia Boone

[brooklynmuseum]

Join us this Thursday for our Who Shot Sports roundtable and hear stories about how world-renowned sports photographers Al Bello, Simon Bruty, John Huet, and Walter Iooss Jr have captured some of the most exciting moments in sports. Moderated by the show’s guest curator Gail Buckland. 

This event is free as part of Thursday Nights hosted by Squarespace, but RSVP required. If you’re unable to attend, tune into the event on Livestream.

Photographer Al Bello photographing US Olympian swimmer Amanda Weir in 2010. Photo courtesy Al Bello.

[brooklynmuseum]

Join us at 7 pm this Thursday Night, October 27, for our Hidden in Plain Sight: Beverly Buchanan panel discussion featuring curator Lowery Stokes Sims, critic Andy Campbell, and artist and curator Park McArthur. They will discuss Beverly Buchanan—Ruins and Rituals which will be on display at the Brooklyn Museum until March 2017. 

These panelists agree that, despite Buchanan’s exclusion from the history of art in the 1960s and 70s, the late artist’s work has a place that must be recognized. Throughout Buchanan’s artistic practice, she dug into the space between place and memory. Her work had a strong connection to her identities as an African American woman from the South, incorporating an exploration of arts and political movements like feminism, Southern vernacular architecture, Land Art, and Post-Minimalism. This event will be held in the 3rd Floor Auditorium and it is free(!) as a part of our Thursday Nights hosted by Squarespace.

Posted by Haley Graham

[brooklynmuseum]

It’s the early days of September and summer is not the only thing that is giving us its last embrace, if you didn’t know the Brooklyn Museum’s otherworldy exhibition Disguise: Masks and Global African Art is also coming to a close and this Saturday we are having a send off day of programs entitled Creation as Ritual: Performing Disguise.

The rupturing exhibition that served as a historical and contemporary dialogue asked us to return to foundation and remember ritual: those things we perform in communion of self and others that contour the hues that engrave meaning into our world. Through this multi-media group effort, the exhibition asked us to think through what its means to perform rituals that have transformed yet in their new form still hold their intended use. It begged us to think through what it means to not only return to the literal replication of ritual in some distant past but to also realize that we have created new rituals, new ways to understand and reckon with our existence in this world.

When violence against anything or anyone who is deemed "other" seems to be the main currency in the western, capitalistic, heteropatriachal anti-Black trap of a "world" that we find ourselves in, ritual: honoring, performing, remembering, creating practices that affirm our humanity our power and the love that lives within us is deeply important, and in many cases is all we have.

So on Saturday we gather to return to the simple yet heavy concepts that this exhibition prompted the many who gave their artistic talents to Disguise and the thousands of visitors who immersed themselves in the show; we return to these concepts, the cornerstones of existence: ritual, tradition, creation. Concepts that when felt and performed through human bones are both new and old at the same time. Remembering and thinking deeply about the rituals we carry with us or that our people used to carry with them helps us understand where we are now and where we have yet to go.

For this day of remembrance and celebration we are BEYOND lucky to be partnering with such powerful artists whose work seems to breathe the air of these essential cornerstones of existence that Disguise presents to us (Click here to peep that dynamic line up). Through our programming we hope to provide an unmasked opportunity for all who come to engage with these immensely talented artists.

Despite the amazing line up, we cannot be naive about where this congregation is taking place. We must not look over the fact that the pillared exterior of “Museum” is where many must go to touch base and tap into the power of past selves through objects left by our ancestors. No! We must have our eyes open that these objects that were once used to hold the understanding that we exist beyond and through and despite of time and space now rest behind glass boxes transformed into relics of colonization, representing the violent theft that occurred. No. Our eyes must be open. Our eyes must be open to the haunting stare that one receives when looking at the Nkisi Nkondi, the Ci-wara Kun, the Ndoli Jowei (the list could go on and on)—we must relish in the eerily knowing gaze that they give us in their display cases as they try to remind us of the power that was superficially stripped from them, but still resides in us waiting to be performed. We must understand that we cannot discount the power of our newness because of our deep mourning of what was lost. We are complex beings and have the ability to do both. We have the ability to to mourn and bear new life (re-imagined traditions, reimagined ritual) at the same time.

So this Saturday, bring yourselves, and your friends, family, and loved ones to take time to appreciate the acts we perform to remind us that we are alive, that we have been alive, and will be living—and that these ancestral truths build our existence. Hope to see you there!

Posted by Omololu Refilwe Babatunde

[brooklynmuseum]

Jasmine Venus Soto says her job title is “VenusX,” that includes creating and building the GHE20 GOTH1K movement, being a DJ, curating, planning parties for people of all ages in New York City warehouses, and much more. Being born and raised in uptown New York City by an Ecuadorian father and Dominican mother, taught her how to be her own boss and value her education. Venus continues to challenge the public and support those who feel like they don't belong through her unique point of views, music, style, and underground parties. And now she is bringing that to the Brooklyn Museum on July 28th at 6pm, as part of the Tom Sachs Boom Box Residency series, along with Acyde, Tremaine Emory, and NY Theo. All four DJs will be selling red velvet cake, USB mixes, and T-Shirts in Tom Sachs`s Bodega while switching roles and playing sets in the Presidential Vampire Booth throughout the night.

In preparation for this upcoming event, get to know VenusX a little more though this conversation I had with her over coffee.

Kiara: How would you describe yourself right now as you navigate through the music and fashion world?  

VenusX: Who I was when I started DJing and touring at 23 years old is different from who I am now. Before I was just living in the moment and now that I've been in the game for a while I realized that the industry is not equal. You really have to outsmart the system in order to survive it. The system is used to women being the sexual objects. They are not used to women who have their own definition of themselves that might not include men. I don't go through the world using my femininity as a tool to get me access to places. I prefer to use my intellect. I prefer to use my ideas and creativity.

K: What is your daily routine like?

V: Lately I've working on opening my store next week. Before that I was on tour. I live two extremes. It`s either I work for 16 hours in the studio planning upcoming events and building my business or I'm on tour and I just wake up, get on a plane, do a show, and do the same for the next few days. I don't know how to live a normal life.

K: How do you handle your job as a DJ?

V: For me as a DJ, I need to be available because that is what DJing is about. It's about providing that soundtrack so people can dance. People need to dance all the time. They don`t need to dance once a year when I drop an album. My job as a DJ is different from my job as a artist. I feel like it's an intimate responsibility. I like DJing often and being reliable to a crowd of people who need that space and time to get some shit off their chest in a sweaty environment with great music.

K: There are many great things happening with GHE20 GOTH1K including that your store will open next week. What is your overall goal for GHE20 GOTH1K and what do you hope for its future?

V: I hope that GHE20 GOTH1K can become a go-to party, website, and store for people that they want to be a part of something that is more authentic. I have a system that might not make people rich, but it's sustainable—it employs a lot of people and their good ideas. The intention is to constantly have a cycle where culture can be created. So we are motivating people to make music, design clothes, design their personalities, and to exist in the world that might not appreciate them or have a place for them.

K: You recently held a GHE20 GOTH1K party for all ages including Kanye`s creative director Virgil Abloh, last week you DJed at the Coney Island bumpers cars, and now you are coming to the Brooklyn Museum on Thursday which is open to everyone for free. I see this theme of accessibility across many of the events you're involved in. Why is that important to you?

V: Sometimes people don't understand culture unless you give them a taste of it. It's not the same as being a commercial artist. I do some events for free because I believe that what I'm doing is important. If there is someone who goes to my event for free, maybe that will turn into them going to ten more shows after because they experienced it and they were so into it. This helps people understand that I really stand up for what I do regardless if I'm getting money for it or not. There's always an opportunity to come the events I'm involved in and experience them one way or another.

K: How do you feel about the Brooklyn Museum and being a part of our DJ event on July 28th?

V: I'm really excited for it. I'm really excited to be a female on that lineup and to be recognized by these cultural forces. They can work with any rapper or DJ but instead they are supporting this specific movement. That's very powerful because even with all the trending issues being brought up, there's still not a lot of diversity in our world.

We still live in a heteronormative white world so if in the Brooklyn Museum Tom Sachs can bring three black men and a Dominican woman to play all different kinds of music. That's powerful. Some kid out there who only knows of one person in the lineup and then discovers me there, might change how they see the world. In every lineup, you never know who's going to walk away from it and what it's going to inspire them to do.

K: You will be selling cake, USB mixes, and shirts in Tom Sach's Bodega and performing a set in the Presidential Vampire DJ Booth. In this exhitibition, the Boomboxes play a playlist curated by Sachs, his friends, and fans.  How do you feel about his work and becoming a part of it through your participation?

V: I think the concept is amazing and I hope that kids are more motivated to go to museums as a result of seeing such a cool event happen. I think that's the whole point is to bridge music and sculpture in these spaces that are traditionally western colonized spaces. When you take art from where it's from for people to perceive it, sometimes you lose a lot of people in that process. So I think it's cool that he did this kind of exhibit where you can engage with it, it`s music, and the different personalities inside that space. I'm excited for it because I never performed at any setting that has been this curated down to the DJ Booth.

K: What can we expect from your set?

V: A world of sounds. My friend and I are working on a mixtape that is predominately Brazilian music and contemporary rap music from the U.S. so I`m probably going to be playing a nice mixture of that.

K: What vibes are you aiming to give off at this event? What do you hope it will accomplish?

V: Always good vibes but I also like to challenge people by playing things that they never heard before in ways that they never thought. I definitely don't aim to please. I hope that my style comes across because sometimes DJs just play a lot of rap and that doesn't mean that they don't have other types of music. They may be playing one type of music because of the pressure from the audience. With that said, I'm going to try to be the wild card out of the four of us.

Posted by Kiara Ventura

[brooklynmuseum]

DJ Mursi Layne, founder of F’EM Magazine, and Hennessy Youngman, creator of the “Art Thoughtz” Youtube series, will take over the boom boxes in Tom Sachs’s installation Boombox Retrospective: 1999–2016. The selection will kick off at 6pm as part of Summer DJ Boom Box Residencies and Thursday Nights hosted by Squarespace. Grab some drinks at the bar and enjoy the music. Check out the event here.

Posted by Kiara Ventura

[brooklynmuseum]

Natasha Diggs is a force to be reckoned with on vinyl. Come for a set with live horns infused with disco, soul, Latin, hip-hop and funk as part of our summer Boom Box Residencies series on Thursday, July 7 from 6-8 p.m.

Full lineup here. Free as part of Thursday Nights hosted by Squarespace.

Posted by Sari Weisenberg