Call and Response 2024
According to artist Daniel Minter, “by sharing space, you make it larger.” At Lynden, we share space—and make it larger--by creating the conditions for thoughtful production, fruitful collaboration, and innovative presentation for artists of color. Since 2015, Call & Response--a cumulative, cross-disciplinary, community-focused, artist-driven initiative--has brought together artists, scholars, educators, and community members to construct a space for artists of color to celebrate the radical Black imagination as a means to re-examine the past and imagine a better future. We build the Call & Response community through residencies, exhibitions, performances, educational and public programs, and collaborations and site visits with new artists.
This summer we are hosting three Call & Response artists for residencies. Asmaa Walton, founder of the Black Art Library, will be in residence the week of June 24-28, 2024, to work on developing curriculum with the K-12 teachers in our Innovative Educators Institute. A Detroit native and developer of the Black cultural archive, Walton noticed a conspicuous gap in the mainstream narration of art history around Black art and artists when she was training as an art educator and then working in museums. In 2020 she launched the Library, a collection of publications, exhibition catalogues, theoretical texts, and research materials about Black art and visual culture. Walton aligns her project with other libraries that are vital community spaces and places herself in the lineage of librarians as agents of change. Although her ultimate goal is to house her interactive, participatory archive in a permanent space in Detroit, in the interim it travels to pop-ups and residencies across the United States and abroad. The Black Art Library will be in residence in Lynden’s gallery from November 2024 through February 2025, and Asmaa will be returning for periodic residencies to work with the classrooms of the IEI teachers and the public.
In July we launch the Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group ChoreoLab at Lynden Sculpture Garden. Reggie Wilson, accompanied by Fist & Heel performer Annie Wang, will spend two weeks working with three emerging choreographers. The ChoreoLab builds on Reggie’s long investigation of site sensitivity, relationship with community, and outdoor performance at Lynden. The goal is to bring each participant--their aesthetic and process--into relationship with Lynden: its grounds, sculpture collection, and resources. There will be a final, informal showing on August 2.
Reggie will stay on for an additional week for his annual research residency, during which he hosts artists and scholars engaged with his practice.
Arianne King Comer will be at Lynden for a two-week residency in August, resuming her open-air batik studio and participating in our HOME Celebration of Community, Culture & Citizenship on August 17.
Call & Response leaves many traces on the grounds here at Lynden. Be sure to visit Folayemi Wilson’s ELIZA’S PECULIAR CABINET OF CURIOSITIES; the nearby LIZZIE’S GARDEN, part of Portia Cobb’s project here; and Daniel Minter’s MUTI, installed at the end of his two-year-long project, In the Healing Language of Trees. There’s also his beautiful birdhouse, a gift to the imaginary Eliza, a few paces from the Cabinet.
For information on past Call & Response programming: 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
Additional Call & Response programming will be announced as it is scheduled.
Lynden’s Call & Response programming is supported by the Brico Fund, the Chipstone Foundation, the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, the Herzfeld Foundation, the Ruth Foundation for the Arts, the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts, and several individual donors.
