Tag: inspirational women

Mlle Bourgeoise Noire || A State of Mind

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Even more than the obvious joy of coming up close with works by renowned artists, I enjoy discovering those I had never seen before; especially the work of an artist that has something to say and does so in such a striking way, as Ms. Lorraine O’Grady.

This is her story:

[”In 1980, artist and critic Lorraine O’Grady left her apartment wearing an evening gown and cape made out of 180 pairs of white dinner gloves and carrying a white whip studded with white chrysanthemums. She was going to a party at Just Above Midtown (JAM), an avant-garde art space in Manhattan representing work by African American and other artists of color.”]

[”At the gallery, O’Grady turned heads. She raised her whip—which she called “the whip-that-made-plantations-move,”referencing the slave drivers on Southern plantations—and gave herself 100 lashes. And she shouted poems of protest—against the exclusion of black people from the mainstream art world in New York, and against black artists who she believed were compromising their identities to make work that was agreeable to white curators and audiences. The white gloves covering her body represented the work growing out of this system as “art with white gloves on.”]

Enough is Enough for Mlle Bourgeoise Noire
Among the poems that Mlle Bourgeoise Noire shouted at the Just Above Midtown (JAM) gallery reception was:

THAT’S ENOUGH!
No more boot-licking…
No more ass-kissing…
No more buttering-up…
No more pos…turing
of super-ass..imilates…
BLACK ART MUST TAKE MORE RISKS!!

Mlle Bourgeoise Noire leaves the safety of home (New Museum performance, 1981)
Mlle Bourgeoise Noire and her Master of Ceremonies enter the New Museum
Mlle Bourgeoise Noire continues her tournée
Crowd watches Mlle Bourgeoise Noire whipping herself
Mlle Bourgeoise Noire shouts out her poem
Mlle Bourgeoise Noire leaves the New Museum
Mlle Bourgeoise Noire celebrates with her friends

[”With this performance, O’Grady introduced a new, fictional persona to the art world: a tempestuous 1950s beauty queen named Mlle Bourgeoise Noire, or Miss Black Middle-Class. She has explained that Mlle Bourgeoise Noire was inspired by the Futurist declaration that art has the power to change the world. The persona was generated out of O’Grady’s anger at the racism and sexism then prevalent in the art world, and her own, complex relationship to race. The daughter of Jamaican immigrants, she was raised in a privileged environment that contrasted with what she described as the “neighboring black working-class culture” and the disadvantaged position of blacks in American society. Through Mlle Bourgeoise Noire, she expressed the conflicts in her own identity, while also, as she stated, “invading art openings to give people a piece of her mind.”]

Lorraine O’Grady / Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The glove dress and b&w photos of Mlle Bourgeoise Noire’s performance, were part of We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85, an exhibition that focused on the work of black women artists. It was on show at the Brooklyn Museum until September 2017.

Black & White highlights from Lorraine O’ Grady’s website. Please view the gallery for more.

Source of Mlle Bourgeoise Noire’s story & poem : MoMA Learning

Brooklyn Museum

July 22nd, 2017

 

 

An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene

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Belle Greene, Librarian

In 1905 Pierpont Morgan hired twenty-six-year-old Belle da Costa Greene (1879-1950) to manage his library. She added to his collections with legendary discernment and went on to become a leading figure in the rare book world. She served as the Morgan’s first director until her retirement in 1948. 

This brief tag accompanies Ms. Greene’s photo at The Lower Level. Nowhere else in the museum, was there anything to be found about this formidable woman and her work. Yet without her, there would be no Morgan Library Collection as we know and enjoy it today.

Greene was a young librarian at Princeton University, when her colleague Junius Morgan, who happened to be J. Pierpont Morgan’s nephew, introduced her to his wealthy uncle, who was looking for someone to catalogue his collection.

Child of two African-American parents of mixed ancestry, identified as ”colored” in her birth certificate, Belle knew that she would not be able to reach her dream of becoming a librarian had she been open about her family background. So she hid it and invented a relative in Portugal (the ”da Costa” part of her name) that would explain her darker complexion. She also shortened her real name from Greener to Green, to distance herself from her father, Richard Greener, the first coloured librarian and professor at the University of South Carolina.

Smart, witty, outspoken and sensual with a great sense of style and an extensive designer wardrobe (”Just because I’m a librarian”, she has been known to exclaim, ”doesn’t mean I have to dress like one!”) Belle was equally at ease among the Bohemian crowd as well as the scholarly elite.

Trusted for her expertise and excellent bargaining skills, Green would handle considerable amounts of money buying and selling rare manuscripts, books and art for Mr. Morgan. She went on doing that for forty-three years, first as librarian, then as the first director of the Morgan Library, when it became a public institution.

Belle Green retired in 1948 and died two years later.

***

More about this amazing woman and her life & work can be found in her biography ”An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene’s Journey from Prejudice to Privilege” by Heidi Ardizzone. 

The Morgan Library & Museum

May 7th, 2017