Emmett Till Bullet-Proof Memorial with Surveillance Cameras Opens in Mississippi

The sordid, scarred American story of Emmett Till’s lynching in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi opened a new chapter on Saturday, with the installation of a bullet-proof memorial for the civil rights martyr. Members of Till’s family gathered at Graball Landing, the spot where the pummeled and brutalized, horrifically-disfigured body of the 14-year-old Chicago boy was pulled from the Tallahatchie River after his murder in 1955.

The staggeringly-brutal attack was the result of Till allegedly offending a white woman Carolyn Bryant in her family’s grocery store. Decades later, Bryant disclosed that she had fabricated part of the testimony regarding her interaction with Till, specifically the portion where she accused Till of grabbing her waist and uttering obscenities; "that part's not true.”

Till’s murderers led by Roy Bryant, husband to Carolyn Bryant, and J.W. Milam were absolved of all crimes by what can only be described as a kangaroo court, adding fuel to the historic event largely seen as the catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement.

From left to right, Ole Miss students Ben LeClere, John Howe, and Howell Logan posing with guns by the bullet-ridden plaque marking the place where the body of murdered civil rights icon Emmett Till was pulled from the Tallahatchie River. The photo was posted to LeClere’s Instagram account in March.

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These Abandoned Buildings Are the Last Remnants of Liberia’s Founding History

THE HOUSE OF WINSTON TUBMAN LIES IN RUIN IN LIBERIA. IMAGE GLENNA GORDON.

These Abandoned Buildings Are the Last Remnants of Liberia’s Founding History

In the front parlor of a dilapidated mansion with a god’s-eye view of the Atlantic a group of young men huddle around a light fixture that washed in from the sea and is covered in barnacles. They chip away at it with a hammer and a machete to open it and see if it can be made to work. They are not having much luck, a commodity that is in short supply around here. The building has no electricity or running water. Wind pushes through broken windows. There are holes in the roof. Rainwater has collected in puddles on the grand marble staircase and throughout the house, a faded yellow modernist structure on the edge of a cliff in the sleepy city of Harper in southeastern Liberia about 15 miles from the border of Ivory Coast.

The short iron fence that surrounds the regal mansion, known locally as “the palace,” bears a monogram—“WVST,” for William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman, Liberia’s longest-serving president, known for his 27 years of autocratic rule beginning in 1944. But the home of the man called “the father of modern Liberia” because he opened the nation to foreign investment and industry is now in ruins and occupied by squatters, a symbol of how decades of political turmoil have shaken up the old order established by freed American slaves.

Emmett Till Memorial to Be Replaced With Bulletproof Sign Due to Repeated Vandalism

Emmett Till Memorial to Be Replaced With Bulletproof Sign Due to Repeated Vandalism

In 2007, a sign was erected along the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi, marking the spot where the body of Emmett Till was pulled from the water in 1955. The murder of Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy who was brutally killed by two white men, became a galvanizing incident of the Civil Rights Movement. But over the years, the memorial commemorating his death has been repeatedly vandalized—first stolen, then shot at, then shot at again, according to Nicole Chavez, Martin Savidge and Devon M. Sayers of CNN. Now, the Emmett Till Memorial Commission is planning to replace the damaged memorial with a bulletproof sign.

This will be the fourth sign that the commission has placed at the site. The first was swiped in 2008, and no arrests were ever made in connection with the incident. The replacement marker was vandalized with bullets, more than 100 rounds over the course of several years. Just 35 days after it was erected in 2018, the third sign was shot at as well.

The third memorial made headlines recently when Jerry Mitchell of the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, in conjunction with ProPublica, revealed that three University of Mississippi students had been suspended from their fraternity house after posing in front of the sign with guns, in a photo that was posted to the private Instagram account of one of the students. The Justice Department is reportedly investigating the incident.

The sign has now been taken down, and a new one is “on its way,” Patrick Weems, executive director of the Emmett Till Memorial Commission, said last week, according to CBS News. Chavez, Savidge and Sayers of CNN report that the replacement memorial will weigh 600 pounds and be made of reinforced steel. It is expected to go up by the Tallahatchie River in October.

“Unlike the first three signs, this sign calls attention to the vandalism itself,” the commission noted. “We believe it is important to keep a sign at this historic site, but we don’t want to hide the legacy of racism by constantly replacing broken signs. The commission hopes this sign will endure, and that it will continue to spark conversations about Till, history, and racial justice.”

The Forgotten History of Segregated Swimming Pools and Amusement Parks

The Forgotten History of Segregated Swimming Pools and Amusement Parks

By Victoria W. Wolcott

Summers often bring a wave of childhood memories: lounging poolside, trips to the local amusement park, languid, steamy days at the beach.

These nostalgic recollections, however, aren’t held by all Americans.

Municipal swimming pools and urban amusement parks flourished in the 20th century. But too often, their success was based on the exclusion of African Americans.

As a social historian who has written a book on segregated recreation, I have found that the history of recreational segregation is a largely forgotten one. But it has had a lasting significance on modern race relations.

Swimming pools and beaches were among the most segregated and fought over public spaces in the North and the South.

‘Willful Recklessness’: Trump Pushes for Indefinite Family Detention As Sanitary Crisis Mounts

‘Willful Recklessness’: Trump Pushes for Indefinite Family Detention As Sanitary Crisis Mounts

The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) has been tracking about 40,000 expedited family cases “regardless of whether they reflect a priority designation” in order to ensure they are completed “without undue delay” at ten immigration courts in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York City, and San Francisco. Nearly 8,000 of those cases have already ended with removal orders. These are some of the migrants ICE agents could now target.

The administration has buttressed its push to detain more families by arguing that few of them show up for their immigration court hearings if they are released. At a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on June 11, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan said “family units” accounted for two-thirds of migrants processed at the Southwest border in May, and that 90 percent of families the EOIR was monitoring didn’t appear for court hearings. Several reports contradict this claim.

One case-by-case study of immigration court records showed “as of the end of May 2019 one or more removal hearings had already been held for nearly 47,000 newly arriving families seeking refuge in this country. Of these, almost six out of every seven families released from custody had shown up for their initial court hearing.”

The study further noted that “multiple hearings are [usually] required before a case is decided. For those who are represented, more than 99 percent had appeared at every hearing held.”

Duke Ellington’s Melodies Carried His Message of Social Justice

DUKE ELLINGTON MURAL ON U STREET NW IN WASHINGTON DC.

Duke Ellington’s Melodies Carried His Message of Social Justice

At a moment when there is a longstanding heated debate over how artists and pop culture figures should engage in social activism, the life and career of musical legend Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington offers a model of how to do it right.

Ellington was born on April 29, 1899 in Washington, D.C. His tight-knit black middle-class family nurtured his racial pride and shielded him from many of the difficulties of segregation in the nation’s capital. Washington was home to a sizable black middle class, despite prevalent racism. That included the racial riots of 1919’s Red Summer, three months of bloody violence directed at black communities in cities from San Francisco to Chicago and Washington D.C.

Ellington’s development from a D.C. piano prodigy to the world’s elegant and sophisticated “Duke” is well documented. Yet a fusion of art and social activism also marked his more than 56-year career.

Ellington’s battle for social justice was personal. Films like the award-winning “Green Book” only hint at the costs of segregation for black performing artists during the 1950s and 60s.

Duke’s experiences reveal the reality.

Why Blackface? A Scholar Weighs In On Why Blackface Is Part of American Culture's DNA

Covington Catholic High School Students carry on blackface tradition at 2012 basketball game.

Why Blackface? A Scholar Weighs In On Why Blackface Is Part of American Culture's DNA

By Michael Millner, Associate Professor of English and American Studies, University of Massachusetts Lowell . First published on The Convervsation

Blackface is part of American culture’s DNA.

But America has forgotten that.

For almost two weeks, conflict has raged over the use of blackface by two current Virginia politicians when they were younger. The revelations have threatened the men’s jobs and their standing in the community.

The use of blackface is now politically and culturally radioactive. Yet there was a time when it wasn’t.

I teach the history of blackface in the United States. Like much of America, my undergraduate students suffer from a kind of historical amnesia about its role in American culture. They know little about its long history, and they haven’t considered its prevalence and significance in everyday American life.

Most of all, they’ve never asked themselves, “Why blackface?”

Mitch Landrieu Launches E Pluribus Unum Fund For Racial Reconciliation With Backing By Emerson Collective

Mitch Landrieu Launches E Pluribus Unum Fund For Racial Reconciliation With Backing By Emerson Collective

The removal of the statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in New Orleans, was the second of four Confederate monuments scheduled by then New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu for relocation in advance of the city’s 300 anniversary. The larger-than-life image of Davis atop an ornate granite pedestal roughly 15-feet high was erected in 1911, nearly 50 years after the end of the war, and commissioned by the Jefferson Davis Memorial Association.

A month earlier workers dismantled an obelisk that was erected in 1891 to honor members of the Crescent City White League who in 1874 fought in the Reconstruction-era Battle of Liberty Place against the racially integrated New Orleans police and state militia.

Two other works were also removed in the summer of 2017: a bronze statue of Gen. Robert E Lee that has stood in a traffic circle, named Lee Circle, in the city’s central business district since 1884, and an equestrian statue of P.G.T. Beauregard, a Confederate general. 

Former Alabama Senator and Attorney General in the Trump Administration Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III bears the Confederate general’s name.

Protests on both sides of the Confederate statue debate were fierce, prompting Mayor Landrieu to make an eloquent, emotional and gifted speech on the subject of removing the Confederate monuments on Friday, May 19, 2017.

The full text of Landrieu’s speech was published by The New York Times. I consider it to be one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard — from its sweeping beginning to its soul-wrenching end.

Thank you for coming.

The soul of our beloved City is deeply rooted in a history that has evolved over thousands of years; rooted in a diverse people who have been here together every step of the way — for both good and for ill. It is a history that holds in its heart the stories of Native Americans — the Choctaw, Houma Nation, the Chitimacha. Of Hernando De Soto, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the Acadians, the Islenos, the enslaved people from Senegambia, Free People of Colorix, the Haitians, the Germans, both the empires of France and Spain. The Italians, the Irish, the Cubans, the south and central Americans, the Vietnamese and so many more. Read on.

Megyn Kelly's 'Blackface' Comments Leave Her NBC News Future Very Cloudy

Megyn Kelly's 'Blackface' Comments Leave Her NBC News Future Very Cloudy

I missed this Megyn Kelly 'blackface' stupidity from Tuesday. The NBC face been on thin ice anyway, as Kelly's ratings have not been great. Her audience is 35% or more people -- largely women -- of color.

She still hasn't recovered from her run-in with Jane Fonda, choosing to ask Fonda about plastic surgery rather than her activism, which was the scheduled topic. Fonda abruptly ended the interview.

So Megyn Kelly, who already has a track record over objecting to black Santas, wonders out loud -- in the midst of this Trump crisis -- why whites can't wear blackface on Halloween. If the woman wanted to get her contract cancelled, she just delivered her own knock-out punch.

Kelly’s off the air Thursday and everything is up in the air at NBC. Rumors are intense that her departure is in negotiations. Given the outrage among her own colleagues over her ‘blackface’ remarks, it’s difficult to understand how Megyn Kelly can survive.

What was she thinking!!! Just last night I wrote a terse pushback over Instagram and Twitter outrage that Kendall Jenner was wearing frizzy curls in a photoshoot. Generally I feel that our culture has become way too politically correct. However, blackface??? Are you out of your mind Megyn Kelly? Because I refuse to buy the dumb blonde moniker, being one myself.

Architect Sir David Adjaye Curates Artist Lina Iris Viktor For Wondereur.com

Sir David Adjaye curates artist Lina Iris Viktor

Spectacular paintings by artist Lina Iris Viktor are on view at the New Orleans Museum of Art until Jan. 6, 2019. Introduced to her work via Harper’s Bazaar Arabia, further investigation about Viktor brought me to Wondereur.com, an outstanding website curating artists by other credentialed creatives.

New York based Viktor is profiled by Sir David Adjaye, a leading figure in the architecture world, and lead designer of the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. In 2017, TIME magazine named Adjaye as the world’s most influential architect. He was also knighted by the British government in 2017, an opportunity for Adjaye to reiterate the responsibility and potential of architects “to effect positive social change.”

Thelma Golden, the director and chief curator of the Adjaye-designed Studio Museum in Harlem wrote in TIME: “His work – deeply rooted in both the present moment and the complex context of history – has envisioned new ways for culture to be represented and reflected in the built environment. Nowhere is this more evident than in his recent triumph on the National Mall.

"How can a design acknowledge, and embody, the weight of this monumental history and yet transcend it right before your eyes? How can a building be true to the earthbound burdens of centuries of oppression and struggle, while at the same time displaying the faith, joy and triumphs of African-­American life, so that the structure soars into the light?

“In his epoch-making design, David made us aware of those questions and brilliantly solved them, with a singular gesture.”

In his curator’s statement for Wondereur.com about Lina Iris Viktor, Sir David Adjaye describes her work:

“Lina’s work is as evocative as it is strikingly beautiful. Her explorations with gold possess incredible intelligence, drawing out at once powerful connections to global indigenous heritages, opulent futuristic visions of black beauty, and vast philosophical notions of cosmology, geometry, and atomic matter. Her work crosses confidently across a landscape of science, technology, culture and identity with a timeless elegance and a casual defiance that is definitively modern.”

At New Orleans Museum of Art, Lina Iris Viktor Explores Blackness As A Source Of Energy and Creation

ELEVENTH. 2018. LINA IRIS VIKTOR. PURE 24-KARAT GOLD, ACRYLIC, GOUACHE, PRINT ON CANVAS. 65 X 50 IN. COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST, COURTESY THE ARTIST AND MARIANE IBRAHIM GALLERY, SEATTLE

At New Orleans Museum of Art, Lina Iris Viktor Explores Blackness As A Source Of Energy and Creation

New York artist Lina Iris Viktor

At New Orleans Museum of Art, Lina Iris Viktor Explores Blackness As A Source Of Energy and Creation

“Usually I am more about trying to bridge divides of thought where people think things are in very defined spaces,” artist Lina Iris Viktor tells Harper’s Bazaar Arabia from her studio in New York. “I am all about making bridges.” The painter and conceptual artist is preparing new work for her first solo museum exhibition now open at the New Orleans Museum of Art entitled Lina Iris Viktor: A Haven. A Hell. A Dream Deferred.

Known for large-scale black and gold works on paper and canvas, the sculptural surfaces of Viktor’s pieces shimmer opulently with densely patterned iconography. There is something searingly original and contemporary about her almost cosmic composition of hieroglyphic elements that recall myriad forms, from Aboriginal Dreamtime paintings to West African textiles.

Born to Liberian parents, Lina Iris Viktor lives in London and Johannesburg, travelling and studying widely. The artist is not inspired by a specific location. Rather “It’s about experience and worldliness and understanding that there is no centre.”

Colin Kaepernick Narrates 2 Minute ''Dream Crazy' TV Commercial Booked On NFL Football

Colin Kaepernick Narrates 2 Minute ''Dream Crazy' TV Commercial Booked On NFL Football

Hunkering down in its support of former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick with derision from Trump and threats of a boycott, NIKE released a two-minute commercial narrated by him on Wednesday. NIKE also announced plans to run the ad on the NFL's first broadcast of the regular season.  

The ad, called “Dream Crazy,” features Mr. Kaepernick and other star athletes in the Nike stable, including Serena Williams and LeBron James. It implores viewers to dream big, using the inspiring stories of those stars and of everyday weekend warriors who overcame illness or disability to triumph athletically.  The emphasis on disabled and physically-impaired athletes is given huge exposure in the uplighting, American moxie, 'Just Do It' 30th anniversary commercial. 

Greg Hughes, a spokesman for NBC Sports, confirmed to the New York Times that Nike had purchased airtime on Thursday’s N.F.L. game. The commercial is a shorter, 90-second version of this ad released digitally Wednesday. The league did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nike is a major partner of the N.F.L.’s, providing the uniforms for all 32 teams and the clothing worn by everybody on an N.F.L. sideline.   Read on. 

Killer Mike Joins Atlanta's High Museum Board, Talks Arts Education & Inclusivity

Kerry James Marshall's 'Past Times' 1997 Image, private collection of rapper and Atlanta High Museum Board Member Michael Render

Killer Mike Joins Atlanta's High Museum Board, Talks Arts Education & Inclusivity

Atlanta’s High Museum of Art has been unusually successful in attracting young people and people of color to the museum in recent years. Now, Killer Mike, the 43-year-old rapper, who is a committed activist and father of four, is the newest member appointed to the board

Killer Mike, whose given name is Michael Render, is known for hard-hitting, hip hop rhymes about income inequality, police brutality, and systemic racism, topics that also infuse his political commentary and activism. The rapper garnered headlines with Democratic progressives in 2016 with his embrace of Bernie Sanders. Render has become a sought-after contributor on the news and political panels, and a guest lecturer at some of America’s top colleges and universities with his articulated views on the intersection of art and culture.

Beyond the headlines, Killer Mike has deep roots in the visual arts (he turned down several fine art scholarships to pursue a career in music), his appointment to the board of Atlanta's major American museum is uncharted territory for the Atlanta native. Killer Mike is up for the challenge.

In a conversation with artnet News, the rapper outlined his goals to increase African American and working-class attendance at the High. Render also touched on the importance of arts education, the role of public schools, and the convergence of the art world and hip hop in recent years.."

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL’S PAST TIMES (1997). IMAGE COURTESY OF SOTHEBY’S.

CEO Alison Ettel, AKA #PermitPatty, Throws Her White Woman Weight Around With 8 Yr. Old Black Girl Entrepreneur

CEO Alison Ettel, AKA #PermitPatty, Throws Her White Woman Weight Around With 8 Yr. Old Black Girl Entrepreneur

In Oakland #PermitPatty met a strong wall of resistance to her domineering, white ways with 8 yr. old Jordan, who was selling water on the street on a hot day.

This is public shaming of the best kind, and CEO Alison Ettel will surely wish that she had just stayed in bed that day. Better yet, she should have used one of her own products to chill out. This is a good read about social justice with a bad ending for #PermitPatty!!!

'Seven Seconds' Actor Clare-Hope Ashitey Is Lensed By Paul Morel For The Last Magazine April 2018

British actor Clare-Hope Ashitey is styled by Adele Cany in images by Paul Morel for The Last Magazine April 2018./ Hair by Brady Lea

In a movie industry where female actors often lack 'deep' roles, Ashitey has them fall into her lap. Last-Magazine's Gautam Balasundar writes: "Growing up, Ashitey was academically inclined and never really entertained the idea of acting as a career option. At eighteen, that changed when she landed a starring role in Alfonso Cuarón’s powerful dystopian film 'Children of Men', about a polluted world in which women are no longer able to have children.

The unusually-articulate Ashitey was interviewed by Rolling Stone in February 2018. Reflecting back on 2016, she describes her state of being:

"By the end of 2016, I felt outnumbered by shitheads. . . . Between Trump’s election and Brexit, there were all sorts of opinions coming out of the woodwork that I thought had died out a long time ago," she says. "I was like, what's the point? All we do is bad things. The history of humanity is the history of people exploiting each other."

Coincidentally -- or perhaps through an intervention by the goddesses -- Clare-Hope Ashitey brought her frustrated fatalism to the act of finding her 'Seven Seconds' character, assistant prosecutor KJ Harper.

Influenced by the epidemic of police brutality that led to the deaths of black teenagers like Tamir Rice and Michael Brown (among too many others), the Jersey City-set 'Seven Seconds' explores a crime in Harper's own city -- the often-called sixth borough of New York City. In a story told against the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, her back "tellingly" turned towards them, Rolling Stone writes: "The cast is formidable, particularly Regina King as the victim’s bereft mother and Looking's Raul Castillo as one of the compromised narcotics officers. "A white cop and a black kid? Don’t you watch the news? There are no fucking accidents anymore," Castillo's character shouts at the rookie cop (Beau Knapp) who mowed the boy down – a justification so oft-repeated that it practically becomes a mantra."

Accused Panthers Owner Jerry Richardson Will Sell Team, As Sean Combs Launches Bid To Be First NFL Black Owner

A Seatbelt Maneuver Blows Up

Accused Panthers Owner Jerry Richardson Will Sell Team, As Sean Combs Launches Bid To Be First NFL Black Owner

America's post-Weinstein sexual-harassment/sexual assault reckoning reached the NFL over the weekend, in a series of swift moves that culminated in Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardsonannouncing that he will sell his franchise at the end of the season.

“I believe that it is time to turn the franchise over to new ownership,” Richardson said. “Therefore, I will put the team up for sale at the conclusion of this NFL season. We will not begin the sale process, nor will we entertain any inquiries, until the very last game is played. I hope everyone in this organization, both on and off the field, will be firmly focused on just one mission: to play and win the Super Bowl.”

On Sunday rapper and music mogul Sean Combs, aka P Diddy, took to Twitter saying that he would like to buy the Panthers, promising to be "the best NFL owner that you can imagine". Diddy promised to consider hiring Colin Kaepernick, who launched the NFL's players feud with President Trump, and was at the center of NFL players taking a knee worldwide.

If Diddy were to own the Panthers by himself, he would become the league's first majority African-American owner. Our instincts say that the list of African American sports players who would join an ownership syndicate run by Diddy is huge. So he can raise the money.

Back that with a national social media campaign with Americans of every skin color supporting this bid, and Diddy's group would have the upper hand, leaving the NFL owners to fight sexual harassment allegations in the league, the Colin Kaepernick ongoing story and a Trumpian/post-Charlottesville mindset among progressives that would trash the NFL owners beyond belief if the league retained its white owners status. 

Charlottesville Car Killer James Alex Fields Jr. Charged With First Degree Murder

Charlottesville Car Killer James Alex Fields Jr. Charged With First Degree Murder

Self-professed neo-Nazi James Alex Fields Jr., 20, has been charged with first-degree murder Thursday, after being jailed on lesser charges since the Aug. 12 for the death of Charlottesville protester Heather D. Heyer. 

Fields had been charged with second-degree murder, punishable by five to 40 years in prison. WaPo writes:

Authorities had initially said that 19 people were injured, in addition to Heyer, when Fields allegedly rammed his 2010 Dodge Challenger into another vehicle on purpose on a crowded street. But testimony at the preliminary hearing revealed that there were many more victims. Besides first-degree murder, Fields, who lived in Ohio before his arrest, is charged with eight counts of “aggravated malicious wounding,” meaning that at least eight of the 35 people who were hurt suffered what Virginia law describes as “permanent and significant physical impairment," writes the New York Times. 

Stars Align In Alabama: Emmett Till; Four Birmingham, Alabama Church-Going Girls; Doug Jones; Dana Schutz & Racial Reconciliation

Stars Align In Alabama: Emmett Till; Four Birmingham, Alabama Church-Going Girls; Doug Jones; Dana Schutz & Racial Reconciliation

Nigerian-born, Huntsville-raised, U of Alabama grad Toyin Ojih Odutola first got the attention of Voguemagazine when the poet Claudia Rankine published as essay in Aperture magazine, "A New Grammar for Blackness'. 

A year later, Toyin Ojih Odutola has mounted a solo show 'To Wander Determined' at the Whitney Museum in New York. Upon entering the show, visitors see a letter written by Odutola in the persona of the 'Deputy Private Secretary' for two aristocratic families in Lagos. 

artNet writes: "For Ojih Odutola, their images form a corrective to a Eurocentric art history that thinks of both court portraiture and genre paintings as belonging to a primarily white world, with black characters as footnotes—cast as servants, slaves, or left out completely.."

The topic of black identity, colonialism, and cultural appropriation have lived front and center in our national -- and international -- dialogue in 2017. 

Rujeko Hockley & Jane Panetta Named Curators Of 2019 Whitney Bienniale

RUJEKO HOCKLEY (LEFT) AND JANE PANETTA. © 2017 SCOTT RUDD. COURTESY OF THE WHITNEY MUSEUM.

Rujeko Hockley & Jane Panetta Named Curators Of 2019 Whitney Bienniale

The Whitney Museum announced Wednesday that Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockley will co-curate the 2019 Whitney Biennial. As current curators of the Whitney’s staff. the two women are “two of the most compelling and engaged curatorial voices of the moment,” according to a statement from the Whitney’s chief curator, Scott Rothkopf.

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Panetta joined the Whitney in 2010 and has curated solo presentations by Willa Nasatir and MacArthur “Genius” Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Hockley, who was came to the museum in March 2017, co-curated the highly acclaimed Brooklyn Museum show “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85.” At the Whitney, she has so far co-curated “Toyin Ojih Odutola: To Wander Determined,” , on view at the Whitney until February 25, 2018, as well as the ongoing group show “An Incomplete History of Protest.”

The news comes at the end of a year marked by intense controversies around cultural appropriation in the art world. Among the most divisive arguments was the public maelstrom around Dana Schutz's painting of Emmett Till, Open Casket. The painting prompted open letters calling for the removal and even destruction of the painting, silent protests in front of the work, and demands that other works ALL of Dana Schutz's paintings be banned from a show in Boston as punishment for her offense of the Emmett Till painting.

Popular Media Vastly Overstates Criminality Among Immigrant Men Concludes Define American Study

Popular Media Vastly Overstates Criminality Among Immigrant Men Concludes Define American Study

Define American is an immigration nonprofit founded by Pulitzer-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas with the goal of examining how immigrants and immigration is portrayed in popular culture. The organization has released Immigrants and Immigration: A Guide for Entertainment Professionals as a 19-page brief that examines current key issues in immigration law including the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the U visa for victims of violent crimes.

“Immigration is the most controversial yet least understood issue in America today. That’s why it’s crucial for Define American to publish a resource for members of the entertainment industry to better understand immigration and more accurately portray immigrants,” says Elizabeth Grizzle Voorhees, who joined Define American as its inaugural entertainment media director last summer. “These tools are written specifically for creative professionals, and we hope they will lead to increased representation and more humanized storytelling in television and film.”

Define American has also released a scorecard on the state of immigration representation on television, taken from The Opportunity Agenda’s study of 40 popular broadcast, cable and streaming shows that aired between April 2014 and June 2016.