Visit to Cincinnati, The Under-appreciated River Gem

We Just Got back from a 5 day trip to Cincinnati. Several posts on the way.

I know I promised several posts after my trip to Atlanta, and I still might get them up- over a year late. Cincinnati, obviously seems closer and more relevant to this blog.

Local Comic Artist, Ed Piskor goes Neck Deep into Hip-Hop History

This is weird for me, cause my high school, in Queens, Hillcrest was a hotbed of early Rap & graffiti culture. Ed goes really deep into this with his new comic book, Hip-Hop Family Tree and is certain to tell you things you, don't know.

Time magazine did a post and great video

More thoughts about a possible Teenie Harris Museum

A few more thoughts about what a Teenie Harris museum might look like and what it's purpose and programing might be. I am hardly an expert on either African American; Pittsburgh or larger issues of urban history. I also don't know that much about photographic history, so one can take these ideas as food for thought.

The Teenie Harris archive seems to show how little most of the public knows about it's own past. It often raises more questions than answers.

Luckily, Pittsburgh already has one of the best possible models of a stand alone museum of a single artist, that both documents that artist's work and places it in a continuing living context of shows involving others.

First, an idea of the show's success.

Coverage or reviews appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Art Daily, The Daily Mail, Time Magazine, The Cleveland Plain Dealer and National Public Radio. An AP story on the show was published in 300 papers across the country.

From The Post Gazette

"Overall museum attendance was up last year over the previous year, said Jonathan Gaugler, Carnegie media relations manager, with "huge spikes over the holidays and after Teenie opened." It's also been "way ahead for the year" to date compared with last year at this time. African-American attendance has approximately doubled, he said. Counts for individual shows are difficult to tally because admission numbers include Natural History Museum visitors, but attendance on March evenings, free through a Jack Buncher Foundation grant, gives some idea, escalating from 1,082 early on to 1,665 last week.

.......

"Several hundred comments including identifications and stories have been left in the galleries, some of which are periodically posted on the Carnegie website (click on Information and scroll to What's New). "People write, 'This was my mother, my grandmother, I was the flower girl in this wedding.' They tell heartwarming and heartwrenching stories,"

This brings me to the first concrete reason a permanent space needs to exist, which is to capture the memories of the people who lived in and knew these communities while they are still here.

Museum programing

Of course the primary focus of the museum will be the exploration of Teenie's work, but like the Warhol, it will be very important to do more. Harris may be growing into a Pittsburgh legend, but he is still not very well known outside of town. The Westmoreland and recent Carnegie Museum shows garnered lots of national press, most of which faded very fast. Since he stayed in Pittsburgh and his full archive was left here, too few scholars have had a chance to put his work in perspective.

Part of the problem is that the vast rich world Harris shows us, now seems almost unbelievable. James Van Der Zee took staged pictures of a small slice, of Harlem's intellectual and social elite. Harris, shows the amazing social capital that existed from top to bottom --corner stores, bars, clubs, schools, sports- the famous, the struggling and the striving.

A major goal of the museum is to explore other urban photographers and journalists and try to get a fuller and more realistic picture of what was really going on in America's "working class" neighborhoods. The Teenie Harris Museum would explore urban. African American and photographic history.

The case for a Teenie Harris Museum: A forum for urban history

Well, the Teenie Harris show, I gave a tepid review for, (wishing for a larger selection of full scale prints) really grew in my heart and soul. I went back three times and now wish I had gone more often.

The good news is it will tour. It also, became a pretty huge hit in town and garnered a lot of national and international press.

A reduced version of the exhibition will travel to the Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago (February 4–June 4 2012); the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (August 7–October 28, 2012); and the Robert Woodruff Library at the Atlanta University Center (January 20–April 13, 2013).

The bad news is that the show will be edited down and isn't scheduled for high profile venues like The Smithsonian, ICP or any major museum.

The online archive continues to grow and be enriched with more personal stories and info.

More than one writer grasped the historic importance of this huge collection of pictures documenting a community.

The Big Legacy Of Charles 'Teenie' Harris, Photographer

The black and white images captured by Charles 'Teenie' Harris that re-tell the musical history of black America in the 20th Century

I think the Harris archive is almost without equal as an extensive, in depth portrait of American life. His 50,000 photos are not made up of many pictures of the same moments, but capture almost 50,000 separate, distinct people, places and events.

Harris didn't just record crime scenes or fashionably dressed people or jazz performances or sports or staged portraits or interesting buildings or pictures meant to advocate a political or social agenda. From his work we get a full idea of a lost time and place. As full an idea as one person could ever provide.

Of course, the time and place is one of endless interest. What happened to the thriving, beautiful, dynamic community he captured? Sadly, no similar record exists of The Grand Concourse, Newark's Central Ward or even of Harlem itself in it's glory days.

So many questions and so many possible points of discussion. In my opinion, Pittsburgh really needs a stand alone museum of Harris's work. My hope is it would become a center for not just African American, but all urban history.

When Did New York Become New York? The Street Grid

Many, if not most think New York's huge, deep, wide harbor and early founding ensured it's spot as a great city; but clearly things could have gone quite differently. The cosmopolitan and highly convenient character of at least, Manhattan is the product of a far sighted design-conceived just a little over 200 years ago.

From The New York Times,

"The grid certified by the city’s street commissioners on March 22, 1811, spurred development by establishing seven miles of regular, predictable street access. It also laid the groundwork for nearly 2,000 acres of landfill that would be added to the island over the next two centuries. The commissioners concluded that New York “is to be composed principally of the habitations of men, and that straight-sided and right-angled houses are the most cheap to build and the most convenient to live in.”

The grid, which incorporated some existing roads, would also prove surprisingly resilient. It accommodated motor vehicles (after sidewalks and stoops were pruned). It allowed planners to superimpose Central Park in the 19th century and superblocks like those of Stuyvesant Town and Lincoln Center in the 20th. In the 21st, the grid was extended west to include apartment houses on Riverside Boulevard."

Again--you might consider this a "duh moment"--the grid concept was very ancient, perhaps dating to the very first cities. "The urban grid goes back beyond Hippodamus of Miletus, the Greek urban planner, who, like the street commissioners, viewed the matrix as a manifestation of “the rationality of civilized life.” New York’s grid inspired planners elsewhere. But nowhere, wrote Edward K. Spann, an urban historian, “was the triumph of the grid as decisive as in America’s greatest city.”" Manhattan's long shape and reasonably flat landscape also suggested this layout.

One is struck, walking around Manhattan at just how few times the simple structure of the grid is violated--usually for a very good reason- a large public building like The Central Library; Grand Central Station; the old Penn Station or parks. Even in these cases, almost all these buildings or parks are easily traversed by footpaths.

The grid places the resident's ability to navigate and interact above the needs of the occasional visitor--who can always use public transit. This has limited Manhattan as a location for certain very large research facilities and has restrained the fantasies of architects, but it has provided widest degree of social interaction and the highest degree of convenience to New Yorkers.