Articulated: Dispatches from the Archives of American Art

Through many modes and for many aims, feminists have sought to improve equity in and through the visual arts. In this episode, hear from a variety of women as they describe the trajectory of feminism they’ve seen in their lives and careers, including stories from Faith Ringgold, Linda Nochlin, Judy Baca, and Joan Semmel among others.

Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence profoundly shaped the depiction of American history in art through their ambitious and insightful oeuvres. From generating new national traditions through the Harlem Community Art Center to capturing communal experience through paint and collage, they paved the way for subsequent generations of storytellers. In this episode, hear from each artist as they recount the social, political, and artistic currents that guided their paths.

Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

For more than 50 years, Joe Feddersen (Colville) and G. Peter Jemison (Seneca, Heron Clan) have been creating works that extend Native heritage and enrich the stories told by American art. Through an ambidextrous approach to craft and figuration, Feddersen finds consonance between contemporary life and traditional forms and iconographies, while Jemison highlights the continuities and ruptures of Native experiences in our shared spaces. With wide-ranging community education, preservation, and advocacy projects, Feddersen and Jemison show that new paths emerge from the old.

Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Throughout decades of protecting workers and their rights, the United Farm Workers union has been a significant nexus for artists and activists. In this episode, listen to three artists who have been instrumental in illustrating and activating the labor advocacy of the UFW, as Barbara Carrasco, Carlos Almaraz, and Ester Hernandez recount the importance of collective action and working alongside Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.

Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Artistic education takes many shapes, as artists pass down skills and traditions to see them transformed by new hands. In this episode, hear how the classroom shaped artists, both as learners and teachers. Stories include Anni Albers’s descriptions of lessons with Paul Klee at the Bauhaus and her own teaching at Black Mountain College, Carmen Lomas Garza on the activism that shaped her time as a student teacher, and Lee Krasner’s memorable training moments along her artistic journey among others.

Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

As mass media exploded and the American art scene bloomed in the 1950s and 60s, Rosalyn Drexler and Sturtevant pushed back on corrosive cultural assumptions. Drexler’s collage paintings dissect popular attitudes towards fame, violence, and women, and Sturtevant’s replicas spur questions around originality, reception, and perception. Hear how each artist made her own way in her own words.

Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

The fourth in a series on healing and belonging, this episode reflects on art as community care work. In her 2020 pandemic oral history interview, photographer Cinthya Santos-Briones describes tending for her Brooklyn neighbors during a harrowing time. She mentions the care and connection she experienced during sound baths performed by the artist Guadalupe Maravilla. Maravilla, also based in Brooklyn, spoke to us more recently about his sound baths and installations that aim to effect communal healing. This is a bilingual episode in English and Spanish; a full transcript and translations are available at aaa.si.edu/articulated.

This episode was co-curated by Fernanda Espinosa, a National Endowment for the Humanities - Oral History Association Fellow. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of the Oral History Association or National Endowment for the Humanities.

Show Notes, Transcript, and Translations available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

Art emerges through communities within their environments, and in this episode, installation artists Carolina Caycedo and Lita Albuquerque reflect on creating in dialogue with the earth and its inhabitants. From ecological and cultural preservation to the transformation of our relationship with nature, Caycedo and Albuquerque discuss the potential for connection they hope to enable through their work. This is the third of four episodes that reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic, healing and the arts in conversation with the Archives’ Pandemic Oral History Project from 2020 co-curated by Fernanda Espinosa.

This episode was co-curated by Fernanda Espinosa, a National Endowment for the Humanities - Oral History Association Fellow. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of the Oral History Association or National Endowment for the Humanities.

Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

This episode was co-curated by Fernanda Espinosa, a National Endowment for the Humanities - Oral History Association Fellow. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of the Oral History Association or National Endowment for the Humanities.

In this episode, two New York-based artists, Firelei Báez Julia Santos Solomon, explore what it means to create for themselves and for their communities, and how empathy grounds their work while spurring new modes of creativity. Both artists have roots on Hispaniola, and their relationship to tropical landscape and family have profoundly shaped their practices. This is the second of four episodes that reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic, healing, and the arts in conversation with the Archives’ Pandemic Oral History Project from 2020 co-curated by Fernanda Espinosa.

Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated

New York-based artist Koyoltzintli describes her journey from photojournalism to healing through ritual and reclamation. From finding threads with her ancestral roots to linking medium with memory, Koyoltzintli discusses the importance of experimentation and listening in her practice, especially for thinking across time and lineage. New Mexico-based artist Erica Lord also describes creative expression during fraught times as a key to connecting across history. This is the first of four episodes that reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic, healing and the arts in conversation with the Archives’ Pandemic Oral History Project from 2020 co-curated by Fernanda Espinosa.

Show Notes and Transcript available at www.aaa.si.edu/articulated