With the University of Texas still closed, the Art Galleries at Black Studies has launched a new online resource to explore the art and material culture of Black people.
Called The Narrative, the web site — the-narrative.org — is an aggregator of resources locally, nationally and internationally.
“If we can’t provide physical access to the art which prompts the conversations, critical thought and ideas which pass through the galleries, we can continue to further access to the narratives behind the works of art,” Lise Ragbir, director of the Art Galleries at Black Studies (AGBS), said in a statement. “For too long, the voices of Black people have been under-heard. In this space, we unapologetically share the layered complexity, of our narrative.”
It offers links to interviews with artists and curators, essays by scholars and students, virtual gallery-tours, films and even a playlist inspired by “In Their Own Form,” the photography exhibition that was on view when UT shut down in mid-March. (The show will remain on view when the campus re-opens.)
There’s coloring pages from the Studio Museum in Harlem and a short film on Haitian machete fencing that was screened at AGBS in 2016. And there’s a short film on photographer Dawoud Bey whose work was exhibited at AGBS in 2018.
Recent media articles include an analysis by John Edwin Mason in National Geographic of how protest photographs shape a view of Black people; ‘The Art of Social Distance in the Era of #BlackLivesMatter’ by Richard Hylton in ArtReview; and Sightlines’ own probe into the solidarity statements issued by Austin art museums.
Related read: ‘More Than One Thing — Lise Ragbir’
