♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> The preservation of fine art during the COVID pandemic in America.

Next, on "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by the following.

At Wells Fargo, diverse representation and perspectives, equity, and inclusion is critical to meeting the needs of our colleagues, customers, and communities.

We are focused on our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, both inside our company and in the communities where we live and work.

Together, we want to make a tangible difference in people's lives and in our communities.

Wells Fargo -- the bank of doing.

American Petroleum Institute.

Through API's Energy Excellence Program, our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental, and sustainability progress throughout the natural-gas and oil industry around the world.

Learn more at api.org/apienergyexcellence.

Reynolds American, dedicated to building a better tomorrow for our employees and communities.

Reynolds stands against racism and discrimination in all forms and is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

At AARP, we are committed to ensuring your money, health, and happiness live as long as you do.

♪♪ ♪♪ >> We are very honored and pleased to invite to "The Chavis Chronicles" some change makers.

Klare Scarborough, Berrisford Boothe, welcome to "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Thank you very much, Doctor.

>> Thank you.

>> Good to be here with you.

>> Klare, tell me something about -- where are you originally from?

>> Originally from south of Houma, Louisiana, tip of the boot, French-Acadian background.

>> How did you get to the Northeast, and how did you first meet Berrisford?

>> I met Berrisford a number of years ago working on a book project for a really wonderful artist named Barbara Bullock, and he at the time was was principal curator for the Petrucci Family Foundation collection, and we enjoyed working together.

>> It was a blast.

>> It was a blast.

And when this opportunity -- well, we kind of created this opportunity.

He was the person I turned to.

A friend of mine asked me, "Who do you want to work with?"

And I said, "Berrisford."

>> So, Berrisford, you're an islander.

You're originally from Jamaica?

>> If we're going to go there, yes, I absolutely am.

Unashamedly born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica.

My father's people from up in the bush in Clarendon, my mother's people from St. Catherine.

I try to get home as many times as I can.

Came to America 1971, and I've been here since.

>> What drew you to the field of fine art?

>> My late brother, Howard McDonald -- so, my mom had eight kids.

I was the last and the only.

And one before me was a rather remarkable character in that not only could he draw akin to the great Charles White when he was 14, 15, that he was so exemplary and exceptional that my parents -- of course, we were, by American standards, poor, by our standards, middle-class, solid people -- found the resources to send him to art school, then to Manley and so forth.

So, that was something.

So, I grew up pretty much not worshiping Superman but getting the whip because I would look at my brother's sketchbook.

So, I was always interested in art.

And it's only later in life that I realized that as a child growing up in Jamaica, I wasn't better.

I certainly was different with my physical deformity, but I was capturing the world in a way that I wasn't able to hold onto later, till later, much later in life.

And it turns out that I was always an artist.

I just didn't know it.

>> How did COVID-19 pandemic implement the field of art?

>> It had a major impact on the cultural field, and that impact is it's changed some of the ways in which these institutions are operating, because there's a lot more now that's hybrid or virtual... >> Mm-hmm.

>> ...in terms of programming.

We didn't used to have that.

>> Even in the post-pandemic, it's still... >> Oh, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

There are actually positions that are looking for to hire that are people who can do this kind of stuff.

>> We were having this talk on the way down in that COVID is over.

But the impact of COVID, the aftershocks, have changed the world forever.

And, you know, it's not something we really think about.

But the first COVID generation is already born.

If you have a 3-year-old, that's a post-COVID child.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> As you said in the introduction to that question, the artist is really someone who works, he or she, in isolation, the noise of our own wheels.

And, really, if you really strip it down, an artist is someone having a conversation with themselves that you get to see.

You know, we think about the glamour life of being an artist or, you know, the sort of popular conceptions of someone who's struggling, you know, the struggling artist, suffering, whatever.

But, fundamentally, no matter what level, the artist is someone who works in isolation.

The rest of the world looked at us and thought we went into a space and just became magicians, when in fact we were digging deep into our souls and trying to mediate what was going on in our culture, trying to give it form.

I felt a more theological or gospel sensibility, and I did not understand that, the weight of the lie, that the world would always be something.

And the fact that that was interrupted by an agent that wasn't something you could demonize besides the leader calling it the China virus or something at the time, but you couldn't isolate the COVID.

You couldn't point a finger at it and demonize it.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> So, we had this thing that had undermined everything we held dear, taken the majority of the population and put them in isolation.

And for me, the really important thing was to witness it.

It wasn't -- I knew I could be an artist later, but I wanted to walk through it.

I went for a walk every day for five, six, seven miles along the river.

I just wanted to feel what it was like to be outside of the parameters that I was told that I could not exist.

>> Well, that's a good bridge to "Shifting Time," the art that you have documented that was generated during this period of the pandemic.

I mean, the whole notion of making an art collection like that, who came up with this idea?

>> Well, it was co-conceived.

>> Yeah.

There were two vectors that came together.

>> That's a word that we use because, you know, he was thinking along some lines.

I was thinking along other lines.

I've put books together before.

Both of us have curated before.

I knew this was possible.

And I convinced you that it was possible.

>> Yes, yes.

>> I had a good rep, and you trusted me.

And we launched, and it took about 18 months, I guess, from beginning to end to put the book together.

We thought we'd have 30 or 40 artists.

We didn't expect over 70.

>> I was going to say, the book is full, every page.

Every other page, there are so many artists that you've been able to curate to show that while the rest of the world was being isolated, artists were at work, generating creativity.

>> That is true.

When we were forced to, as individuals around the world, regardless of constructs of race and gender, to be on the same page, and the artist was still going to have to speak about their relationship to their experiences, but it wasn't going to be homogeneous.

So, it occurred to me initially when I was working with PFF and collecting that I had to pivot.

And so, one of the first things I did was started an online Zoom -- I think I was one of the first ones to do that -- called "Sugar and Water."

So, from that, I had a series, I think a half a dozen or more Zoom calls with artists from around the country that I would never have access to.

And we were able to have discourse and have 200, 300 people watching us around the world.

And, you know, the light bulb went off.

Wait a minute.

We still need community.

We can't get together, but we can get together.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> You know, we can chop it up.

And so, that happened.

Klare was aware of that.

COVID "ended."

Klare picked up the baton, right?

And she called up and made a proposal.

>> Yeah.

And it was -- it was -- it was... You know, when we talk about collaboration, it's always interesting how people come together.

You're an artist/curator.

I'm an art historian.

And we developed the call for participation, and that kind of set the parameters.

But then each of us had a slightly different approach... >> Right.

[ Laughs ] >> ...when we started getting submissions because some artists sent five things or five images.

Some sent ten.

We only asked for three.

So, we had to limit.

So, it was one of these -- we had a lot of discussions.

And the shape of the book, the final shape of the book was really determined by a lot of the conversations we had.

>> But most significantly, it was the first time that anyone had asked these individuals, "How did you respond..." >> To respond, yeah.

>> "...to COVID?"

And it was remarkable, especially when we asked them, based on your idea, that rather than making it a scholarly exercise, where we collected all this art or arresting it or ghettoizing it and saying, "We're just doing black art and that's it," it was really a call for expression at a deeply troubling time from our fellow Americans, who just happened to be people of color.

>> I also see on the horizon you could probably do the same thing, publish a global extension of what you've done for American artists.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> What I think is important for this conversation is that we are aware through osmosis, through history, through preferences, that -- let's say the musical arts.

In every generation, there are one or two musicians or songs that do what the artist's job is to do, which is to speak honestly about the time you're living in.

Don't speak about the past.

Don't speak about the future.

You can speak about an imagined time, but it should be the imagined time during your life.

For example, Marvin Gaye, "What's Going On?"

Come on, you know?

>> 1971.

>> Exactly.

When hip-hop came, Grandmaster Flash, "The Message."

You know, Grandmaster Flash came and said, "Let me tell you about what's going on in the Bronx, okay?

Broken glass everywhere."

Right?

Let's switch race for a moment and gender.

You have Laurie Anderson, one of our preeminent conceptual artists, and she had a song, "From the Air," where she said, "This is the time, and this is the record of the time."

But that was a postmodern way to talk about "Are we paying attention to that?"

And if you jump forward, finally, you get to Donald Glover with his magnificent video, you know, and song "This Is America."

So, we are accustomed to mortgaging out the truth-telling to the creatives because that's our primary function.

It's to say the truth, not the truth, but the truths we experience.

And then that all gets amalgamated.

And then, ultimately, when enough time passes, we winnow through that, and we get a good portrait of who we were at the time, the way that James Van Der Zee's photographs told us about Harlem, right?

Without those photographs, what was Harlem?

Without Dawoud Bey's capturing of David Hammons selling snowballs and documenting that, who is David Hammons, besides now one of our preeminent artists?

So, I think we are, as COVID put us in a place and that gave us the idea, you know, the sort of impulse that this is an opportunity not just to talk about or present a compendium of that time but to really introduce Americans to 72 artists, some of whom are massive, others whom they should know.

So, they have a resource.

But what I love about the book, and Klare and I have talked about this, is, I mean, we went through all the essays together.

We went through all the, you know, and I still love sitting in bed and just picking five artists and reading through it again.

>> What you just said is so important.

But how is that juxtaposed -- in some major cities, some major states, they're cutting art.

They're cutting music from school curriculum.

Some states are even banning art books.

>> Banning our own histories.

>> I wonder if your book is going to be acceptable to the state of Florida.

>> [ Sighs ] >> I think it would be a badge of honor if they do ban it, because I believe fundamentally we are going to have to -- we talked about this on the train.

We're going to have to go past selfish political needs, desires.

I mean, the man went to Harvard.

He knows better, right?

So, this is a calculated structure.

>> You're talking about the governor of Florida.

>> Yeah, I don't even want to call his name, but you know who I'm talking about.

It's one thing for us to stay fragmented because the nation fundamentally -- it's our greatest pride is how much we hate each other.

Our whole history is about a binary tension, right?

Forget that.

When you start taking away the opportunity for the individual, he or she -- >> Marvin Gaye would say, "Hate is not the answer.

Love is the answer."

>> True, that.

>> In that same song, "What's Going On?"

>> But how many people pledge allegiance for liberty but don't think about what liberty is?

You know what liberty is?

It's the freedom to have information and decide how you're going to use it.

That's liberty.

So, you know, instead of screaming at the man, we should really make the case that what he and others like him are rushing to do is to undermine one of the fundamental tenets of the American project, which is liberty.

>> Tell us what has been some of the response to "Shifting Time," your book, not, again, just from the artist community, but from the public at large?

It's been well-received?

>> It's been very well-received, I think.

You know, the book is -- people open it, and they're usually astounded, impressed.

And it's important -- it was important for us to do for a lot of reasons.

And it's important for a number of reasons.

It's an archive, and for some of the artists -- >> Time capsule.

>> A time capsule.

For some of the artists who are included, it's also a memory book because there were some who -- one in particular, who I had really detailed conversations with, and she spoke about feeling alone during COVID and thinking about other artists and what would Romare Bearden have done?

>> Right.

>> He would have kept working.

And it kind of propelled her, propelled her forward.

But also the idea that something that was in this book that, you know, was very intimate and raw -- there's a lot of rawness in this book -- would be picked up by other artists, not just the general public alone, but other artists.

And it would be impactful.

>> And as an art book, it really does not need a prerequisite or an arts education.

>> Right.

>> That's one of the things we're proudest of.

We did not want to make a book that someone would feel less than picking up.

We did not want a book that they could pick up and think, "Well, what am I going to think?"

We want a book, which we've created, you know, thankfully, with the support of the Petrucci Foundation and its director, Claudia, and Jim Petrucci, that you can pick up with your child, and you can look through it just in terms of images.

And I'm very proud of this -- outside of race and gender and political interests -- to just look at a book.

When you look at the timeline that we've included with images, I, we really want people to be, in some strange sense, proud that we got through that time.

It was insane.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> If you look at the timeline, you couldn't go more than three days without something locally or globally that at any other period without COVID, we would have been up in arms.

You talked about it being a global movement, Dr. Chavis, but, fundamentally, what also went global was Black Lives Matter.

>> Yes.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> And I think to that point, what I learned and things that I'm fond of sharing are prejudices.

I'm not talking about race prejudices on the streets, someone calling you a name, being a bigot.

Myself, I would know someone like the Detroit artist Mario Moore, one of our greatest right now, figurative artists, and unstoppable in his power, his prowess, his legacy.

You know, just great contemporary African-American art.

When I thought about what he might submit during this time for his art, in terms of the essay, what was happening to him spiritually, personally, I fully anticipated getting, you know, "Well, this happened, but, you know, I'm Mario Moore, and here's a fantastic painting that's going to go to the Princeton collection, is going to go to this museum" and whatever.

And I remember being shocked reading his essay to feel that someone that much more powerful than me in the game had the same heart as me in response to COVID.

And somebody else who I expected a long and profound statement, he or she maybe just wrote a very brief description of their work because maybe they hadn't had a chance, Dr. Chavis, to dig into that.

Maybe it was too painful.

We had artists who lost siblings, like Barbara Bullock, our dear friend, who got stuck.

So, she decided to create her own community by doing heads, beautiful black, brown, purple portraits that literally became her companions so that she, as an octogenarian activist, been to Africa a million times, could feel her blackness.

And, again, to look back, that's what the book taught us, taught me specifically, was the common bonds of trying to reshape, reidentify, reorient who we are.

Now, artists do that all the time.

Our superpower is, "Do what you want.

I'll make art out of it."

And the fact that they were making art, when in a real sense none of us were tethered to reality anymore, shows me that the only real way that we can get rid of the power of American culture and America not being the epicenter of the art movement is through willful ignorance.

That's the only way.

>> What would you recommend to young people?

Are there pathways to get involved in being an artist as a vocation, as a way of life, as a profession?

What would you recommend?

>> When we talk about being -- when I talk about being an artist, when artists talk about being an artist, when the viewers are watching us now, no matter how compelling they find this or whatever, there is still a psychological disconnect.

We still think we're talking about someone sitting in a space, eating a half a sandwich, struggling to get an idea, etcetera, etcetera.

That's still happening.

But let me just say to your audience, we live in America.

Andy Warhol has been dead for a while.

Marcel Duchamp has been dead for a while.

Image is king.

It's king.

So, the majority of people walking down the street dressed the way they are were convinced to look that way by people in the art game.

>> So, image is important.

>> Image is everything, right?

>> Extremely important.

>> More importantly, as a byproduct of this global shutdown, there was an egalitarian moment that happened that we didn't see coming, and it happened to coincide with the increase in technology, not just Zoom, but Instagram.

So, social media now allows this beautiful call and response between Africa and America that's always been there.

We talked about Jamaica and America.

You know, look at Nas and Damian Marley.

They say, "We're distant cousins."

Their beautiful album, right?

That's true.

It's literally true.

But for a long time -- you go back to the '70s; you know this, part of your scholarship -- there was a big movement to, you know, the Africanized.

We had the dashikis and the pendants and the, you know, the Afro picks and the whole thing because we were looking -- >> That's why we call ourselves African-Americans today.

>> Right.

We were looking -- >> Before then, it was something else.

>> Right.

And we were looking for a kind of hyphenated legitimacy.

And that's another discussion.

But we were looking for that, right?

And then things kind of went through the Reagan years, and things dissipated.

But you know what came out of that in the '90s?

A few artists with African names.

So, in England you had Chris Ofili winning the Turner Prize.

Kehinde Wiley, who started off doing early paintings that look like Nigerian barbershop signs, was going through Yale and getting a hard time because he was gay and black.

And he came out of that and refined that skill so much so now that he, you know, opened a place in Senegal, where he can do residencies.

So, now we have not the Harlem Renaissance, in my opinion, and Klare and I have talked a little bit about this.

But let me pitch this on your show.

I think the next level of identity politics isn't coming in.

It's going out.

I think what we are now, we're in the middle of something that supersedes the Harlem Renaissance.

We're in a global Harlem Renaissance, but it's really the global renaissance of Africans in the Americas, because technology has allowed the rate of influence and growth to be something it could never have been before.

So, it's beautiful.

I know it threatens some African-American artists.

That's okay.

But I love getting up and seeing a new African person who's not doing a Matisse or a Picasso but doing a fake Kehinde or doing a fake Mario Moore.

>> Well, it seems to me your book, "Shifting Time," is also optimistic.

>> Indeed.

>> Absolutely.

>> What is your final word in terms of the importance of art or bringing all of humanity together?

>> I think art is, you know -- we can all relate to art.

I mean, we talked about images, and it touches something in all of us.

The images in this book speak to everyone, I think.

You don't have to be a certain color or gender or anything to understand and to feel, you know, to respond.

>> Art, at its core, is about humans trying to express the inexpressible.

Right?

But we saw something extraordinary during COVID.

We were dying in disproportionate amounts.

Right?

And yet we were the first ones rushing in.

And at the same time, we were the ones writing the history about ourselves through art that said that despite the hashtag, despite the broad violence, despite losing George Floyd and way too many other people way too soon, despite just not being able to extricate ourselves from America's unwillingness to love us the way we love her, we still kept making images about our humanity.

And it wasn't against -- there's not one thing in this book that is, "against America."

The history of America is the history of all the people in America.

>> Absolutely.

>> And that is the thing I want everyone to understand.

I really don't care if you're not interested -- and I'm sure Klare feels the same -- if you're not "interested" in African-American art.

What we want you to do is to pick up the book and be reminded that you, too, like everybody else in this book, had to find a way through the morass.

These people made art, and that art can move your soul.

>> Berrisford Boothe, Klare Scarborough, thank you for joining "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> An honor.

>> It's been a wonderful pleasure to come with you.

Thank you for looking at the book.

We look forward to hearing more about what you like.

>> Thank you.

>> Thank you.

>> All right.

Cheers.

>> Honored.

>> For more information about "The Chavis Chronicles" and our guests, please visit our website at TheChavisChronicles.com.

Also, follow us on Facebook, X, formally known as Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

>> Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by the following.

At Wells Fargo, diverse representation and perspectives, equity, and inclusion is critical to meeting the needs of our colleagues, customers, and communities.

We are focused on our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, both inside our company and in the communities where we live and work.

Together, we want to make a tangible difference in people's lives and in our communities.

Wells Fargo -- the bank of doing.

American Petroleum Institute.

Through API's Energy Excellence Program, our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental, and sustainability progress throughout the natural-gas and oil industry around the world.

Learn more at api.org/apienergyexcellence.

Reynolds American, dedicated to building a better tomorrow for our employees and communities.

Reynolds stands against racism and discrimination in all forms and is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

At AARP, we are committed to ensuring your money, health, and happiness live as long as you do.

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