Join The Greater Harlem Coalition and MMPCIA at next week’s Harlem City Council Candidates’ Forum. The forum will begin at 7 PM on Thursday, April 27th.
Harlem’s current City Councilmember declined to attend.
Make sure to check out the fantastic exhibit at Claire Oliver Gallery by Simone Saunders, called: Unearthing Unicorns The exhibit will be up 17 March – 13 May 2023 and consists of hand-tufted velvet, acrylic and wool yarn on muslin warp artwork. The artist writes:
“Unearthing Unicorns references both literal and figurative iterations of the historical fable,” states Saunders. “I reimagine stories played out in our history, such as the famous and treasured Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries, to show Black women portrayed as being highly valued and respected. Through my work, I want to empower and encourage Black women to never shrink ourselves and instead lean into being the fierce, graceful, and beautiful being that we are – just like the Unicorn. Unearthing Unicorns also allows me to scrutinize the art historical canon and pull fables that are rooted in colonialism. My goal with this exhibition is to remix these allegories and put Black womanhood as the center of a story where she is not present, and define that character as one that embodies joy, strength and resilience.”
The New Yorker has an amazing video of work by the photographer James E. Hinton who made his name memorializing some of the most prominent figures of the civil-rights era. Hinton photographed not only Black leaders of the time (athletes, artists, politicians, thinkers, musicians – including Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali, Mahalia Jackson, and Miles Davis), but also left a huge body of work at Emory University that celebrates ordinary Black life in mid-century America.
Emory University notes that: James E. Hinton (1936-2006) was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He attended college at Howard University (Washington, D.C.) in the 1950s and served in the United States Army from 1960-1962. He studied photography with Roy De Carava at the Kamoinge Photography Workshop for African Americans in 1963. Hinton worked as a freelance photographer throughout the 1960s, capturing images of the Civil Rights Movement in cities such as Atlanta, Georgia; Chicago, Illinois; and Harlem, New York, and photographing unknown activists and foot soldiers in the movement as well as leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr.; Stokely Carmichael; H. Rap Brown; and Huey Newton. He also photographed artists and athletes including singer Mahalia Jackson and boxer Muhammed Ali. In the 1970s, Hinton began working in film and television as a cinematographer and director. He was the first African American to join a cameraman’s union, Local 600 in New York City, and won an Emmy for his direction of WNEW’s program “Black News.”
The New Yorker has highlighted excerpts from two of Hinton’s films: “The New-Ark” and “May Be the Last Time,” that were digitized by the Harvard Film Archive, which holds a collection of Hinton’s work.
Nick Garber from Patch.com has a great, albeit depressing map of vacant storefronts along the 125th Street business corridor
Nick Garber notes:
All told, 42 stores sat empty along that stretch — not counting active construction sites or businesses that shut down during the pandemic but have pledged to reopen at a later date. That’s a rate of nearly one vacancy per block.
