On Friday evening, Jan. 19, the Brooklyn Museum held their sold-out “Brooklyn Talks” panel discussion, which consisted of artist Marilyn Minter, singer-songwriter Madonna, poet and playwright Elizabeth Alexander and art critic/curator, along with director of the Brooklyn Museum, Anne Pasternak. The discussion was based entirely on the evolution of art, the place that young contemporaries have in social movements, as well as the impact that youth, specifically LGBTQ and POC, have on resistance and support (with others in fear) in this current presidency era that made it’s beginning on January 20th, the day after the “Brooklyn Talks” discussion.
Brooklyn Museum Director Anne Pasternak introduced the three women by speaking on their exemplary achievements throughout their careers as artists. “Singer-songwriter, actress, businesswoman, activist – we all know Madonna. She is the best-selling female recording artist of all time. Selling over 300 million albums and she’s had the most number-one songs of all time. Period. Yes, it deserves a great applause,” Pasternak said about Madonna before they walked on stage. She compared the confrontation of taboos that both Minter and Madonna share, since both deal greatly with sexuality, merely through different stages.
Minter’s erotic work has created highly controversial work, making others, she says, “completely hate her” because of its graphic portrayal of female sexuality. During her beginning years, everyone loathed her work, it was deemed boring and ugly because it was different, but now she says, “They love me as an old lady!”
About poet and playwright Elizabeth Alexander, she described her as “on a mission to bring light and understanding and generosity to the world.” “She’s an African-American historian and scholar, a poet, a New York Times best-selling author, a journalist and the director of creativity and free expression for the Ford Foundation,” Pasternak had said previously.
The discussion, which I viewed through Facebook for one hour and forty-three minutes, began with a 1963 Community Church speech given in New York by acclaimed novelist and playwright James Baldwin that was centered on the struggle for integrity within artists. After digressing from Baldwin’s speech, we watch the Madonna and Steven Klein directed 2013 short film “Secret Project Revolution,” which focuses solely on human rights and artistic freedom. The film was conceived after a Madonna’s MDNA World Tour, in which she struggled with censorship from political leaders throughout the world.
After being introduced by Anne Pasternak, the women all walk in, with Madonna immediately being the center of attention with her black t-shirt that had been pressed with the word ‘feminist.’ “Feminism means to me that we all deserve to be treated the same,” said Madonna when asked about feminism and her t-shirt.
Elizabeth Alexander, who initiated the discussion and referenced, along with Madonna, some of their favorite poets and writers, which included W. H. Auden, Muriel Rukeyser and James Baldwin, connected courage and creativity of the books with Madonna and Minter.
Both Madonna and Minter were involved with the New York scene that is all so lauded for today, they both look back saying things like “I’m very inspired by the street” or “you’re earning your connection to humanity,” which was in connection with the phone less days of 80’s New York, where you had to go looking for your friends and “knocking their door down.” That of course is much different today, where entitlement seems to rise in many different aspects.
While discussing the election, Alexander connecting Madonna’s 2013 film with the bitter gut feeling of rising bigotry, which, she said “feel’s like a crisis moment now, and what feels unprecedented now – which it is in some ways – is ancient.”
“This is the first time everything is so upside down,” said Minter after feeling disappointed for Hillary Clinton’s loss since Clinton, according to Ms. Minter, was overqualified, while Trump was completely under qualified. With Madonna, you get this feeling that as this point, she’s processed the shocking turn out of the election. “Trump was elected for a reason,” she said, “to show us how lazy and unified and lackadaisical and taken for granted we’ve become of our freedom and the rights that we have as Americans.”
“We need to figure out what we’re going to do to make it work [about Trump’s presidency],” said Madonna, later explaining that we’ve already reached rock bottom, we can only go up.
The progress that has been made under the Obama administration has left many minorities of race, sexuality and gender, especially youth, queerly scared for their future and when discussing it, director Anne Pasternak said, “The Brooklyn Museum is the first and probably the only museum that has a feminist center. We have very strong relationships with LGBTQ youth. We have inclusion and openness and welcome. It’s more than words for us, its part of our DNA and I see young people all the time coming into the museum and organizing. We had a thousand young LGBTQ of color organizing and doing peace performances for one another and doing pledges for the future.”
“Young people are tired of our bullshit from our generation. They’re tired of white women not supporting each other and white women not supporting women of color,” she said summarizing her feelings. However, Pasternak didn’t end on a negative note saying, “Young artists, make your own scene. Don’t wake for an invitation. Remarkable art is going to come out in this moment.”
Of course, one tends to enter this panel discussion questioning what these women can say to somehow heal what many have been feeling for the last few months, specifically since November 8th. Surprisingly, it was motivational, and quite important for artists, especially young artists evolving in the era deemed to have no culture. You sense that these women want the talks led by young people, who they’ll be merely supporting. This is important for movements lead by youths who aren’t taken seriously.
Continue doing what you’re doing; throughout the discussion, you get this realization that people are noticing, that people care and that people are listening. White nationalists, supremacists and people who spend their days yelling at “liberal snowflakes” have no depth; they’re shallow, which makes it so much richer to see them angry.
