'The Harlem Renaissance' and what is Black art for?

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2024

⏱️ 21 minutes

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Summary

It's Been a Minute host Brittany Luse and producer Liam McBain took a little field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York — and after having a Gossip Girl moment on the steps, they saw a brand-new exhibit: The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism. Brittany and Liam explored the exhibit's wide-ranging subject matter: paintings, photographs, explosive scenes of city life, and quiet portraits of deep knowing — but they also learned that the Harlem Renaissance started a lot of the cultural debates we're still having about Black art today. Like — what is Black art for? And how do Black artists want to represent themselves? After the show, Brittany sat down with the curator, Denise Murrell, to dig a little deeper into how the Harlem Renaissance laid the groundwork for Black modernity.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message come from SAP Concur, a leading brand for integrated travel expense and invoice management solutions.
0:09.0	With SAP Concur solutions, you'll be ready to take on whatever the market throws at you next. Learn more at concur.com.
0:17.0	Hello hello. I'm Brittany Loose and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR,
0:24.8	a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. A couple weeks ago my producer Liam and I took a little field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
0:44.0	Hi Liam, I'm Brittany.
0:46.0	We're here.
0:48.0	We're at the mat.
0:49.0	This is my first time here.
0:51.0	This is your first time.
0:52.0	Yes.
0:53.0	Oh my gosh, this is actually such a cool way to see it for the first time.
0:56.0	We're coming to see this incredible new exhibition.
0:59.0	This new exhibition is called the Harlem Renaissance
1:02.0	and Transatlantic modernism.
1:03.6	For those who need a refresher, the Harlem Renaissance was a black cultural revival
1:07.6	that spanned from the 1910s to the 1930s.
1:10.6	While it has been examined countless times as a literary movement, celebrating writers
1:15.6	like W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, and Zorinil Hurston, this exhibit focuses on the movement's
1:21.4	contributions to the visual arts, painting, photography, and sculpture.
1:26.0	And this new exhibit was gorgeous and so wide-ranging,
1:31.0	realism, abstraction, explosive scenes of city life.
1:34.3	Wow, look at that.
	...

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