On this week’s episode of The Blank Canvas, our host Maddie leads an inspiring discussion with Dr. Ian Bethel Bennett, the Interim Executive Director of NAGB, Dr. Nicolette Bethel, an anthropologist, essayist, poet, playwright, and theatre producer/director, and Dr. Stephen Aranha, a legal historian.
By Dr. Ian Bethell-Bennett. “And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron. The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart. Deuteronomy 28: 23 + 28.” I cannot say why this quote from Los pasos perdidos (1953) by Alejo Carpentier the Cuban writer and musicologist resonates with the work of capturing or documenting cultural heritage in the Southern Bahamas. However, these words capture beyond reason so much of what time has done in these islands. We, as a people, also treat Bahamians as if they were second-class citizens in their country. The system of paradise and exploitation, created during piracy and continued during colonialism, is not about white against black but rather about a system of exploiting those who cannot—or are not allowed—to speak for self because they are repeatedly told they do not have souls, they are not human and they should be grateful to be allowed to be near such greatness.
Lavar Munroe was born in 1982 in Nassau, The Bahamas, and currently lives and works in Maryland, USA. His works have been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Italy; Nasher Museum of Art, USA; and the SCAD Museum of Art, USA. He graduated with a BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2007 and then earned an MA at Washington University in St. Louis. Alongside 5 other Bahamian artists, Munroe represented The Bahamas in the country’s first appearance at the Liverpool Biennale and has been awarded numerous prestigious prizes including a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painting and Sculpture Grant, a Fountainhead Residency and most recently a Post Doc Fellowship at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In other words, Munroe is on the up and up, his star now brighter than it has ever been.
With less than two months left, the Education Department at The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas has accelerated preparations for the Mixed Media Summer Art Camp (MMSAC). Now in its third year, the camp was started in response to the need for an arts-focused camp after the FINCO Summer Art Workshop was discontinued. MMSAC has been popular since its inception and has impacted the lives of 220 students since 2014. The camp is divided into two, three-week sessions that take place between June 19 and July 7 and July 11 and 28, 2017.
During the United Nations Small Islands Developing States symposium held at the Meliá Cable Beach, we saw firsthand the importance of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), once referred to as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but since the end of the first decade of the 21st-Century now called the SDGs. We also understand the need for our participation in disparate events and groups such as the World Fair, Expo 2020, Creative Nassau, Sustainable Nassau and Sustainable Exuma along with Bimini Blue, Save The Bays and other organizations that seek to move us out of the unsustainable downward spiral we are currently on. As has been noted by international and local experts, our culture is fragile, and we cannot survive and thrive, nor can we adapt without understanding where we are and where we would like to go from here. Cultural sustainability, then, relies on environmental sustainability and good policy to promote national longevity.
Visual art and its experiences are no longer confined to classrooms, studios, or the walls of galleries. Thanks to the digital age and an increasing demand for “interactivity” the arts have considered new ways to pique the public’s interest. In The Bahamas, we have seen alternative approaches by gallerists, curators, and artists to engage audiences by creating a bridge between the traditional and contemporary through installations and public art experiences. With last year’s opening of The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas’ (NAGB) sculpture garden and the rapid growth of live art events, we exist in an exciting period of creative expression for our country.
The Transforming Spaces Committee is finalizing plans for this year’s 13th Art Tour scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, April 1 and 2, 2017. The weekend tour will include a morning and afternoon tour on Saturday, and a morning tour on Sunday.Transforming Spaces has always experimented with its format, but this year they will be returning to the original format of a dedicated guided Bus Tour transporting patrons to and from the various participating galleries which will include: the D’Aguilar Art Foundation (DAF), Doongalik Studios Art Gallery, Hillside House, the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB), New Providence Art & Antiques (NPAA), and PopopStudios International Centre for Visual Arts (ICVA)
Images can create wealth, or they can be used to create ideas of paradise that serve only to silence those who occupy the place of paradise. Can we begin to use new art or contextualized images to tell a story that sells a place to the world that builds local and resident brands instead of disempowering them?
Noted local photographer Antoine Ferrier sadly passed away on Sunday, November 6th after a short illness. He died at the Princess Margaret Hospital, on his birthday, at the age of 75. Charles Antoine Ferrier was born in Gonaives on November 6, 1941 in The Republic of Haiti. During the course of his formative years and early adulthood, he pursued and completed his formal education in Port-au-Prince.
Jacqueline Bishop for The Huffington Post shares: “For art historian Krista Thompson, a region like the Caribbean could do with more people studying art history since there is a booming artistic community and not enough curators and writers to document the work now being produced. “I’d wager that in the future it is the people working in more and more niche communities, some of which have formed in the Caribbean, who will have more opportunities available to them in the field of art history.”