♪♪ Johnson-Cunningham: I think this exhibition reminds us that artwork can be a part of the public landscape and it doesn't only have to be within museums, tucked away within a brick and mortar, but out in the public.

Palmer: Public space -- it's everyone's, and it's always very contentious.

You can have somebody playing music on the corner and another person who's maybe sitting there and trying to have -- you know, read in silence.

And I think that's a part of the complexity but part, also, of the beauty of public space.

It's yours.

It's mine.

It's everyone's.

I'm Stephanie Johnson-Cunningham, and you are watching "On Display" on All Arts Network.

♪♪ ♪♪ Growing up in New York City, there is always an opportunity to happen upon artwork, whether it be visual art, performance art, whatever medium it has been.

But a lot of the artworks that are permanent fixtures in New York have been around, like, colonial figures and different monuments that we've seen people take issue with.

And so to have public art that reflects the past, the present, and also what we see for the future is also really important.

I am here at the City Hall Park to see Melvin Edwards' exhibition "Brighter Days."

So, City Hall Park is also the stage for many protests here in New York City, from Occupy City Hall to Black Lives Matter protests.

This site is very significant in many different ways, and this exhibition is a really great backdrop to what a lot of people are arguing for, right?

Which is freedom, access, and also connectivity and change in many ways.

This is a very special exhibition for Public Art Fund.

It's working with an artist who is immensely important, Melvin Edwards, bringing together abstract forms with a set of personal iconography.

And in this exhibition in particular, it was very special to bring together works from the 1970s all the way to the present, really focused in on the chain motif, the symbol that partly evokes the many metaphorical implications of change, partly as a tool of bondage or violence or oppression, but then also broken chains showing the work as manifestations of liberation or rupture.

But Mel is also quick to say, chain can have many other implications, not just sort of negative or ones that evoke violence or oppression, but as much, chains of connection, linkages between people, and so likewise, linkages that sometimes show generational connections.

Part of what I love about this vista is that this newly commissioned piece is framed with City Hall behind it, and the figure atop of its cupola has the scales of justice, you know, which are held by a thin chain.

So, thinking about, you know, Mel's work, chains of justice, connection, you know, Mel just put so much in the work.

And it really speaks to the aspirations of our culture, always.

I think him titling the exhibition "Brighter Days" is so telling, too, that it's not just about being stuck in that moment, but really building and growing and changing the framework of our country and maybe also of our democracy, as well, since we are here at the seat of our government in City Hall.

This piece is titled "The Promise," from 1984.

And he really did think about this work as a passageway, you know, of sorts.

And during the election for the mayoral primaries, everyone was using this as a backdrop.

So there's this great, great image of Maya Wiley and AOC with, you know, this behind it.

It was sort of very interesting.

This passage also being an opportunity for us to think about, you know, transformation...

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

...in a sense, also... What to live up to.

...I think is brilliant.

You know, the ideals of a citizen, of a country, or of a community that we have to live up to.

And maybe in a year or two, hopefully we've made progress on some of the issues that this artwork addresses.

And, you know, I'm sure new issues will come up, and hopefully I'm sure there'll be artwork that addresses those at that point.

♪♪ Palmer: Public Art Fund, which was founded in the 1970s by a woman named Doris C. Freedman, has always taken as its mission to bring some of the most important art from all around the world to the public of New York City for free, open access for everyone.

Especially during the pandemic, having exhibitions within public space became even much more critical because our museums were closed.

And what I learned today was that the Public Art Fund, their exhibition and their public art installations increased during the pandemic because there was such a need for it.

In general, people have been so thankful that they've had something to visit beyond themselves in this time.

If you saw an artwork that was on a bus shelter, you know, you could walk down the street, or if you wanted to make a little trip to a park and see something, you know, that everybody has, also, newfound love for their local parks or the parks in our city.

A thriving art scene is a sign of a healthy democracy.

Palmer: Part of what we were hoping to do with this exhibition was draw people's attention to artworks that Melvin has permanently on view throughout New York City.

It really shows the way that artworks can integrate into their communities and become touchstones for those communities, and Public Art Fund really feels that art is essential to a thriving democratic environment and to creating a space that is inclusive, welcoming for everyone, that has beauty and meaning and addresses important issues and ideas.

♪♪ So, I'm here at the African Burial Ground located in Manhattan.

I remember vividly the protests that happened when the site was discovered.

I was a little girl growing up here in New York City, and I remember, you know, seeing it in the news or coming down to the city and seeing it face-to-face.

And it was really incredible how much the community here in New York City and elsewhere really advocated for the excavation of the site and also the preservation of the site.

Brandini: So, the people who are buried at the African Burial Ground, we don't have their names.

We don't know their individual identities.

But the people who are buried at the African Burial Ground are the colony builders of New York City.

They were the ones who really built what would become Broadway.

They built the wall that would later give the name to Wall Street.

What happened in 1991 was they actually found the remains were intact.

So not only were individual remains found, but there was also artifacts with those remains, such as pieces of jewelry, clothing.

In 1991, when the first remains were found, it really brought the community together.

It brought community leaders here to come and speak about the enslaved Africans.

And it really brought a collective movement of people who were protecting and preserving the site.

And really, people were just angry that how can the federal government use taxpayers' money to disrespect the ancestors?

What happened then was you had basically a movement start where people were going to these meetings, calling out the federal government for this disrespect.

What we have over here, we have seven mounds, and under each mound is a crypt or a container, each container holding roughly 60 coffins.

And basically, during the rights of ancestral return, when the remains were brought back from Howard University, they were put back into the ground underneath these seven mounds.

The monument here was actually the winning design in a competition, and the winner was Rodney Léon and AARRIS Architects.

Basically, when they designed this monument, there's many features, each feature representing something different.

There's a lot of symbolism happening inside.

♪♪ Behind me, we do have what's a sankofa.

So, the sankofa resembles a heart.

The sankofa was actually believed to have been found on the lid of a coffin buried here at the African Burial Ground.

The meaning of sankofa, which is a West African symbol, an Adinkra symbol, is believed to mean, "Learn from the past to build for the future."

What can we do to take that information and bring it to the future?

So, as we're walking through the memorial, this is a journey.

So we're basically taking a journey from the physical world to the spiritual world.

As we walk down this ramp, we are getting closer to the ancestors.

Johnson-Cunningham: And so we have here this ancestral realm, in a sense, that we're walking into.

But then, also, we are moving into water, as well.

We can hear the sounds of water.

We can see water.

You know, and that, also, is a huge representation of this space, too.

Almost a meditative sense.

You don't really hear the sounds of the streets of New York.

This really is an escape from the city, a place of quietness, a place for contemplation, meditation, and prayer.

So it's very much an escape from the city.

♪♪ So, we're here in Manhattan.

When people think about slavery, they don't really think about New York.

They think about somewhere in the Deep South that happened, you know, so far away.

But knowing that it happened here in New York is incredibly important.

And, also, that there is now a site that serves as a memorial for both the free and enslaved Africans I think is incredibly remarkable.

Year after year, they celebrate this site with different ceremonies where there are speakers and libations, which is really, really important to continue to commemorate and remember this history.

I mean, the story of the African Burial Ground is a story on slavery and racial inequalities.

From 1600s through 1795, the African Burial Ground was a place where enslaved and freed Africans could gather, bury their loved ones, practice different traditions, different ceremony styles, and really come together in unity.

♪♪ What do you hope that people have a better understanding of when they leave this site?

The African Burial Ground has an incredible story, and it's just one of the many stories within New York City.

When I learned about this site, I just felt like there needs to be more attention on this site.

There needs to be more education about this site.

I learned a little bit about colonial history in school growing up in New York City, but I never took a field trip down here, never really talked about this site.

And this was in the news.

This was in the news since 1991, 2003 when the remains are reinterred, 2007 when the memorial is dedicated and Dr. Maya Angelou and others come and speak.

The museum opens in 2010.

So really, I just felt like there needs to be more education, more history shared with others.

I think it's so incredible as a New Yorker to kind of see this history being lifted and being celebrated, as well, and being acknowledged.

What are some people's reactions to the site?

Everyone reacts differently to the African Burial Ground.

Once people come into the site and learn its history, you have people who do come in and they start crying.

You have people who come in and start laughing because they just don't know how to feel, how to react.

I hope viewers of "On Display" will take away a better sense of appreciation for arts and cultural institutions, the research and all of the work that goes into the existence of these spaces that allow us to learn more in-depthly a range of different histories of culture and of experiences.

♪♪ Bivins: It's not just about the past or who we were in the past.

It's also thinking about how these collections, how these materials can chart a course for the future, right?

So it's both looking back and moving forward.

Ford: One of the things that I really do love about what Arturo Schomburg thought about was he wanted to place his collection at the 135th Street Library specifically because he wanted the black people in the community to have access to their history in a way that he did not have access to, to learn more about themselves, right?

More about themselves, not even in the individual way, but in that sort of African diasporic way.

♪♪ My name is Stephanie Johnson-Cunningham, and you are watching "On Display" on All Arts.

♪♪ I'm here in the heart of Harlem at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

It's really great to see how this space really provides in-depth information and knowledge around the African diaspora.

The Schomburg Center is a repository, a research library, part of the New York Public Research Library System.

And what we do is collect, preserve, interpret, exhibit materials that are related to the cultures and histories of people of African descent.

Our namesake, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, was an Afro Puerto Rican who came to the United States in the early part of the 20th century and became a collector -- an avid collector of all things related to people of African descent around the diaspora.

A story that I've heard repeated many times is that when Arturo was a young man -- a child, really -- he went to his teacher and he said, "Why don't we talk about people from Africa?

Why don't we talk about black people?"

And he was told that black people had no history, had no culture.

And therefore, even as a child, that informed the work that he would do later in life.

And what he did when collecting these objects, these books, and creating scholarship, was really trying to show evidence that what that teacher and really what the world at that time thought was completely untrue.

♪♪ So the Schomburg here in Harlem is a really important space because it has such an incredible collection.

There's over 11 million works that speaks to the African American and African diaspora experience and history.

Johnson-Cunningham: I'm really interested to learn more about this exhibition, "Traveling While Black."

Can you talk more about it?

Ford: Yeah.

So, really, it was looking at the ways in which black people really traverse all of the boundaries that Jim Crow laws and racial segregation really placed on African Americans throughout the country and said, you know, let's look at the ways in which it was troublesome to travel but also the ways in which folks found pleasure and leisure along the way.

And I learned that the Schomburg has the largest collection of Green Books.

Can you share, what exactly is a Green Book?

Victor Green -- he was a Postal Service worker, and he saw the ways in which black people were sort of joining the motor culture of the Americas.

They owned cars, but there was all of these quiet indignities that were happening to African Americans as they were traversing the country.

And so some of them could just be embarrassment, but sometimes they could really put you at peril.

And so what the Green Books did was tell you how to travel safely on the road throughout the country.

This exhibition, "Traveling While Black," what else does it reveal about the black experience?

It reveals the ways in which black people have always advocated for their liberation, for their freedom, freedom of movement, freedom of mobility, right?

So it wasn't just enough to be able to leave your block, but it was you wanted to go from here to the other side of the country.

You know, maybe you wanted to travel outside of the world or maybe you just wanted to exist in the places where you were and just be safe in your body, right?

And so I think that "Traveling While Black" is really about what it means to be safe in your body no matter where you were.

When we talk about the archives, right?

People might think of James Baldwin and Maya Angelou.

I think of those names.

But it's the everyday people who also add to the tools that we have towards our liberation, right?

And so Victor Green was just one person, but there are many people who were part of helping him to bring these Green Books to life.

Yeah.

And they weren't necessarily researchers or historians.

Right.

They just knew about their neighborhood.

Right.

Right?

And where black people could travel.

Right.

Safely.

Safely.

You can never talk too much about these tools because, like I said, they really are tools of liberation, right?

And we may not think of them in that kind of way because it's not like your politics, but it is a political act to, one, decide to own your own car in this country, decide that you want to go wherever you want to go, and that you're going to get there safely and you're going to bypass all of the micro-aggressions that happen when you're out on the road, right?

Underneath Jim Crow and racial segregation, so... And the macro-aggressions, as well.

And the macro-aggressions.

Right.

The real racial violence that people were facing.

Does the legacy of the Green Book continue today?

I mean, I know it ended, like, in the '60s, but...

I mean, sadly, in some ways, it does, right?

Like, on one hand, you know, Victor Green said he wanted these to go away, and they did for a period of time, right?

We had laws that came about that sort of abolished segregation and so forth.

But you have, like, companies like Travel Noire, right?

These websites that once again are helping black people understand how to traverse the globe.

Let's just go ahead and give a little homage to all of these incredible black women on motorcycles, right?

So, Gertrude Jeanette was one of the first, if not the first woman to have a New York City taxi license, right?

But in addition to that, she also may be one of the first women to receive a motorcycle license.

Part of the motorcycle-club culture was also a lot of returning veterans from the war.

And so they were fighting for a democracy or a safer world, you know, in these other countries -- at least, that's what their government told them -- but then coming back to indignity here in the United States, right?

And so these motorcycle clubs were also places where people were finding community but also expressing, you know, some of their politics, as well.

Can you talk more about the exhibition "Subversion and the Art of Slavery Abolition"?

That's right.

It really centers the work of formerly enslaved and enslaved people around their own abolition, right?

And so places at the center of it the way that enslaved people were also doing that and whether or not that was insurrections, you know, whether or not that was rebellions, both on plantations or on the boats, but also in the subversive ways that they were doing it, whether or not it was a slow-down of work or a coded language that they used to use.

I think that's really incredible because usually, when you hear narratives around abolitionists, it's usually those who are not enslaved -- you know, free black people from the north helping or white abolitionists helping, but never really the enslaved.

Why take this directional approach to this exhibition?

Because of what you just said, right?

We don't hear enough about it, right?

And and even if we do hear about it, we miss the story of how the enslaved people, right, operated inside of those apparatuses, sometimes that they were also using the systems in place, right?

So the buying and purchasing of people.

♪♪ Really great to be here to celebrate the incredible work that they've done for almost 100 years.

The Schomburg is celebrating its 95th year, so they have almost reached their centennial.

Bivins: It's a big deal.

Absolutely.

To make it to 100.

It's a big deal to think that we're moving into a second century.

And so we will have big plans to celebrate, but also big plans as we think about what the future of the Schomburg will be, so something to keep your eye on.

It's like a prize to keep your eye on.

But if you're not thinking about what's beyond that, then, you know, we're not doing our work.

Absolutely, and I think it's an incredibly big deal because black institution-building is really important and not a lot of black institutions reach 100 years plus.

And it just speaks to the importance of the Schomburg and the work that you all have been doing here.

Do you have any hopes for the future of the Schomburg?

I do have hopes for the future of the Schomburg, and most of those lie in, how can we make things as accessible as possible?

How can we remove barriers for people to engage our collections?

Because they're not just things for the elite.

They're not just archives for the skilled researcher.

They should be things that open doors across different populations, and so the digital is one of those spaces that we're going to do.

We're going to do that, increasing our digital-exhibition footprint.

The Schomburg has an opportunity to provide access to their world-renowned content through their website so people can learn about the Schomburg.

They can utilize the syllabus for themselves and liberate their own education, their own knowledge.

Collier: The #SchomburgSyllabus is essentially a celebration of self-education in black diasporic history.

It contains 27 themes, 135 items that serve as kind of an introduction to the resources we have here at the Schomburg, and we are really proud of it because it's collectively curated and really speaks to black scholarship and black librarianship.

And so the themes were developed out of that.

We have black feminism.

We have fashion, environmental racism.

I hope that the Schomburg Syllabus just inspires people to just take control of their own lives and their own research, things that they are interested in, and feel empowered to know that anything that you may be interested in, that there are resources and that you can continue to learn about that and explore it in any way that you may see fit.

So, celebrating its 100th year is really important because this space provides agency and also creativity through the black lens, which is really incredible that this space exists within, you know, New York City.

Also because, coming up, I visited the Schomburg and also other places in Harlem -- the Apollo Theater, the Studio Museum, Harlem Children's Zone.

Those are all a part of my own upbringing and my own education and knowledge.

And so I think this space and its legacy continues to give back to the community in a way that Arturo Schomburg would have wanted it to be.

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