Award Winning Art Show, Question Bridge, opening February 7th

Bloomfield College is hosting Question Bridge, a multimedia art show at the Scott H. Kaplan ’02 Art Gallery beginning Thursday February 7, 2013 and closing on Friday, April 26, 2013. An official selection at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, Question Bridge is a video about diversity and provides an intimate perspective of the complex dialogue between African American men. Exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, the ambition is to transform audiences’ appreciation for the diversity within any demographic group. The piece was created by Chris Johnson, Hank Willis Thomas, Bayeté Ross Smith, and Kamal Sinclair. The Executive Producers are Delroy Lindo, Deborah Willis and Grey’s Anatomy star, Jesse Williams. The Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 12:00 to 7:00 p.m. and Saturday, 12:00 to 6:00 p.m. All events are free. The show is funded by the Predominantly Black Institutions (PBI) Formula Grant.

About the artists:

Hank Willis Thomas is an artist working with themes related to identity, history, and popular culture. His work has exhibited internationally from Paris to Johannesburg and in the Smithsonian, the Museum of Modern Art, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. Thomas’ work is in public collections including The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and The High Museum of Art in Atlanta. His video projects include Winter in America, In Search of the Truth, and Along the Way, which is installed at the Oakland International Airport and Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier. He received a new media fellowship through the Tribeca Film Institute and is a fellow at the Dubois Institute at Harvard. He received a B.F.A. in Photography from NYU ’s Tisch School of the Arts; and his M.F.A./M.A. in photography/visual criticism at the California College of the Arts.

Bayeté Ross Smith is a visual artist, multi-media artist and photographer. His career began as a photojournalist with the Knight Ridder Newspaper Corporation. Bayeté’s work has been shown at the 2008 and 2012 Sundance Film Festival, the Oakland Museum of California, the Brooklyn Museum, Rush Arts Gallery, the Goethe Institute (Ghana), and Zacheta National Gallery of Art (Poland). He has had fellowships with the Jerome Foundation, the McColl Center for Visual Art, the Kala Art Institute and the Laundromat Project. His photographs have been published in numerous books most notably the cover of DisIntegration: The Splintering of Black America. He has worked as a faculty member at the International Center of Photography, The New School and New York University. Bayeté is associate program director of the Kings Against Violence Initiative, a violence prevention program based out of Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, NY.

Chris Johnson originated the Question Bridge concept with a 1996 video installation he created for the Museum of Photographic Arts and the Malcolm X library in San Diego, California. In 1994, he co-produced and directed The Roof is on Fire with Suzanne Lacy, which was broadcast on KRON. Additionally, he authored The Practical Zone System: for Film and Digital Photography; currently in its 4th edition. Currently, he is a professor of photography at the California College of the Arts where for ten years he served as president of the faculty senate. He is also the Media Wall Project manager and Public Art Management Team member for Oakland Museum/Port of Oakland.

Calendar of events:

February 7, 2013

Hank Willis Thomas, will greet visitors at the gallery and speak about his artwork on February 7, 2013 between 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. The reception will begin at 4:00 p.m. The Scott H. Kaplan ’02 Art Gallery is located on the second floor of the Library on the corner of Liberty Street and Oakland Avenue in Bloomfield.

February 23, 2013

A Blueprint Roundtable will be held in the Learning Hub on the lower floor of the campus Library from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. The Blueprint dialogue is a live, inter-generational, interactive conversation with local African-American men. The roundtable invites black males to talk about barriers to intergenerational communication in their personal lives.

March 22, 2013

An educational workshop, featuring Bayete Ross Smith will help educators to develop a 10-module curriculum for grades 6-12 that uses artwork as a catalyst for conflict resolution, identity frameworks, and the process of inclusion. There will be an emphasis on social studies and language arts curricula. The education workshop will be held in the Learning Hub. Please RSVP for the educational workshop to Halima_Taha@bloomfield.edu.

February 8 to April 27, 2013

The film screenings of Little Brother, a film by Bloomfield College professor Nicole Franklin, explores life as young African American boys from the inner city. The film will be shown in the Library media center screening room on the lower floor of the library. A talkback with Ms. Franklin will be on April 13 after the 1:00 screening.

The screening dates are:

Mondays: February 18, 25; March 4, 11, 18; April 1, 8, 15 and 22 at 11:00 a.m. at 3:00 and 5:00 p.m.

Tuesdays: February 12, 19, 26; March 12, 19; and April 23 at 10:00 a.m.

Wednesdays: February 27, March 13, April 10 and 24 at 12:30 p.m. at 3:30 and 5:00 p.m.

Thursdays: February 14, 21, 28; March 7, 14, 21; April 4, 11, 18 and 24 at 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.

Fridays: February 8, 15, 22; March 1, 8, 15, 22; April 5, 12, 19 and 26 at 10:00 a.m., 12:00 and 5:00 p.m.

Saturdays: February 16, 23; March 2, 9, 23, 30; April 6, 20, and 27 at 11:00 a.m., 1:00 and 4:00 p.m. The screening will also be held in the Learning Hub on Saturdays, February 9 and 16 and on April 13 at 11:00 a.m., 1:00 and 4:00 p.m.