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New York Monthly Herald. June 2006 Issue P. 59        CONTINUES ON P60                                      

ART IN BROOKLYN  

SYMPHONIC POEM: THE ART OF ANIMAH BRENDA LYNN ROBINSON, on view at The Brooklyn Museum

Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson (American, b. 1940). To Be a Drum (Jazz) (detail), 1996–98. Pen and ink, paint, "hogmawg" (mud, pig grease, dyes, glue, and lime), rag, and found objects. Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio: Gift of the artist. © Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson/Licensed by VAGA, New York

Symphonic Poem: The Art of Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson presents a diverse body of work that ranges from drawings and woodcuts to complex sculptures made from natural and synthetic materials, such as twigs, carved leather, music boxes, and "hogmawg," her own material composed of mud, grease, dyes, and glue. Pictured above, To Be a Drum, is a rag drawing that incorporates painting, hogmawg, and found objects, which Robinson conceptualized as an illustration for a children's book by Evelyn Coleman. She was deeply affected by the story, describing it as "a reflection of bridges to cross—Africa, the Middle Passage, slavery, civil rights, the artists, the teachers, the heroes, and always the children looking to the future." In her ongoing series Pages in History, Robinson also depicts influential people and events, both celebrated and obscure, from African American history. One of Robinson's primary concerns is with the preservation of shared history and its bearing on individual experience. Her intricate mixed media cloth paintings called "RagGonNons" are memorials to each of her parents that also recount ancestral struggles and the relationships that created their communities. "RagGonNons" continue to evolve in response to viewers' experiences of them. They participate in the West African concept of Sankofa—one must learn from the past to be able to move forward.

Born in 1940, Robinson was raised in Columbus, Ohio, within the close-knit community of Poindexter Village, one of the country first federally funded metropolitan housing developments. Her artistic ability emerged at a very young age with her family's encouragement; from her father she learned the processes of book-making, from her mother, button and needlework. Robinson received her formal art training at the Columbus Art School (now the Columbus College of Art and Design). She continues to live and work in Columbus. Her memories of Poindexter Village are an enduring source of inspiration, as are her research expeditions to Africa, the Middle East, and South America to study regional traditions and art forms. Through her vibrant, expressive compositions, Robinson chronicles the culture of both enduring communities and those no longer in existence. Robinson was a recent recipient of a prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellows grant. Her work has been presented at a number of museums and galleries, including the Akron Art Museum, Ohio; the Oakland Museum; the Baltimore Museum of Art; and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Symphonic Poem: The Art of Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson was organized by the Columbus Museum of Art in partnership with Arts Midwest and the Ohio Arts Council. The Brooklyn Museum exhibition is being coordinated by Charlotta Kotik, Curator and Chair, Department of Contemporary Art. The Brooklyn presentation is made possible by the Brooklyn Museum,  Barbara and Richard Debs Exhibition Fund. New York Amsterdam News is media sponsor.

Francis Guy and Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Museum

Francis Guy (American, 1760–1820). Winter Scene in Brooklyn, circa 1819–20. Oil on canvas. Private Collection.

Trained as a tailor and silk dyer, Francis Guy immigrated to America from England in 1795. He spent most of the next twenty years in Baltimore, where in 1800, he added landscape painting to his repertoire of skills. Between settling in Brooklyn in 1817 or 1818 and his death in 1820, Guy painted at least five views of his neighborhood from the second-story window of his home. An artist with an entrepreneurial spirit, Guy probably sought to capitalize on both local pride (this area of Brooklyn had been incorporated as a village in 1816) and national interest in American landscape imagery. Guy's two largest and most complex versions are on view here. They depict a section of Front Street between Main and Fulton streets (now under the Brooklyn Bridge). At the time, this was the most developed part of Brooklyn owing to its proximity to the Fulton Ferry dock, Long Island's primary port to Manhattan. Guy's pictures capture the location's vitality: Brooklynites, both human and animal, go about their daily business alongside snow-capped buildings in a variety of architectural styles.