Carrie Mae Weems, “Untitled (Kitchen Table Series),” gelatin silver print and text, 1953 (© Carrie Mae Weems. Photo: © The Art Institute of Chicago)
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
April 25-27, most events free with museum admission of $18-$22, evening concerts $15-$35
Exhibition continues through May 14
212-423-3587
www.guggenheim.org
In her online biography, Carrie Mae Weems writes, “My work has led me to investigate family relationships, gender roles, the histories of racism, sexism, class, and various political systems. Despite the variety of my explorations, throughout it all it has been my contention that my responsibility as an artist is to work, to sing for my supper, to make art, beautiful and powerful, that adds and reveals; to beautify the mess of a messy world, to heal the sick and feed the helpless; to shout bravely from the roof-tops and storm barricaded doors and voice the specifics of our historic moment.” All this and more is evident in her current exhibition at the Guggenheim, ”Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video.” The show, which continues through May 14, is centered by her subtly powerful 1990 black-and-white “Kitchen Table Series,” which details the evolution of a woman photographed in the same domestic space, sometimes by herself, sometimes with children, sometimes with a man. In many ways it harkens back to painting series by Jacob Lawrence, capturing the African American experience, in this case with the focus on a woman. The show also includes photos from her “Colored People” grids, “Family Pictures and Stories” (accompanied by a voice-over by Weems), “Dreaming in Cuba,” “Roaming,” “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried,” “The Louisiana Project,” and “Sea Islands Series” in addition to such short films as Afro-Chic and ceramic commemoration plates, all of which explore elements of black history from an often extremely personal perspective.
Carrie Mae Weems will cohost three days of art and activism at the Guggenheim this weekend (photo by Scott Rudd)
The Portland, Oregon-born artist will be at the Guggenheim this weekend presenting “Carrie Mae Weems LIVE: Past Tense/Future Perfect,” three days of discussions, live music, processions, readings, and more, cohosted by Weems and multidisciplinary artist Carl Hancock Rux. On Friday, there will be a tribute to conceptual sculptor and saxophonist Terry Adkins, who passed away at the age of sixty in February, with Vijay Iyer, Vincent Chancey, Dick Griffin, Marshall Sealy, and Kiane Zawadi, followed by “The Blue Notes of Blues People,” consisting of four sets of presentations by such visual artists, curators, choreographers, and scholars as Julie Mehretu, Leslie Hewitt, Shinique Smith, Thomas Lax, Michele Wallace, Camille A. Brown, Shahzia Sikander, Mark Anthony Neal, Sanford Biggers, Lyle Ashton Harris, and Xaviera Simmons. Other programs include “Written on Skin: Posing Questions on Beauty,” “Slow Fade to Black: Explorations in the Cinematic,” and “Laughing to Keep from Crying: A Critical Read on Comedy,” with Nelson George. The first two nights will conclude with ticketed concerts and conversations, with Jason Moran and the Bandwagon (Friday, with Weems) and the Geri Allen Trio (Saturday, with Weems and Theaster Gates). on Sunday, visual artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons will lead the procession “Habla Lamadre” before Weems offers closing remarks. Select programs on Friday and Saturday will be streamed live here.
Husband-and-wife filmmakers Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash follow a flock of sheep herded by a family of Norwegian-American cowboys on their last sojourns through the public lands of Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness in the gorgeously photographed, surprisingly intimate, and sometimes very funny documentary Sweetgrass. In 2001, Castaing-Taylor, director of the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard, and Barbash, a curator of Visual Anthropology at Harvard’s Peabody Museum, found out about the Allestad ranch, an old-fashioned, Old West group of sheepherders who still did everything by hand, including leading hundreds of sheep on a 150-mile journey into the mountains for summer pasture with only a few dogs and horses. Director Castaing-Taylor uses no voice-over narration or intertitles, instead inviting the viewer to join in the story as if in the middle of the action, offering no judgments or additional information. The film begins with shearing and feeding, then birthing and mothering, before heading out on the long, sometimes treacherous trail, especially at night, when bears and wolves sneak around, looking for food. Slowly the focus switches to the men themselves, primarily an old-time singing grizzled ranch hand and a cursing, complaining cowboy. Castaing-Taylor and Barbash spent three years with the sheepherders and in the surrounding areas, amassing more than two hundred hours of footage and making to date nine films out of their experiences, mostly shorter works to be displayed in gallery installations or for anthropological reasons; Sweetgrass is the only one that has been released theatrically, offering a fascinating look at something that is destined to soon be gone forever. Sweetgrass is screening April 17 at 6:30 in the Focus on the Sensory Ethnography Lab section of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Art of the Real,” held in conjunction with the Whitney Biennial, and will be followed by a Q&A with Barbash. The inaugural festival runs April 11-26, featuring more than three dozen works that push the boundaries of documentary film.
