Dawoud Bey’s Harlem photographs part of Harvard Cooper Gallery exhibit

Thursday, June 1, 2017 - 08:41 in Psychology & Sociology

For photographer Dawoud Bey, activism and art have long been linked. Bey, whose portraits of Harlem form the centerpiece of the exhibit “Harlem: Found Ways” now at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art, first connected with his chosen visual medium through a protest. The year was 1969, and Bey, then a 16-year-old living in Queens, had heard of the controversy around the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Harlem on My Mind” exhibition. The show, which contained no paintings or sculptures by African-American artists, was drawing protests and picket lines, and the socially conscious teen decided to check it out. “As it turned out,” Bey explained in a gallery talk, “on the day I got there, there was no demonstration. There was no picket line, so I got to go see the exhibition.” What he found was as powerful as any protest. Describing a “pivotal and transformative moment,” the artist recalled...

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