Where We At (WWA)
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"Where We At" Black Women Artists, Inc. (WWA) was a collective of Black women artists affiliated with the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. It included artists such as
Dindga McCannon Dindga McCannon (born: July 31, 1947) is an African-American artist, fiber artist, muralist, teacher author and illustrator. She co-founded the collective Where We At, Black Women Artists in 1971. Early life and education McCannon was born a ...
, Kay Brown, Faith Ringgold, Carol Blank, Jerri Crooks, Charlotte Kâ (Richardson), and Gylbert Coker. Where We At was formed in the spring of 1971, in the wake of an exhibition of the same name organized by 14 Black women artists at the Acts of Art Gallery in
Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
. Themes such as the unity of the Black family, Black female independence and embodiment, Black male-female relationships, contemporary social conditions, and African traditions were central to the work of the WWA artists. The group was intended to serve as a source of empowerment for African-American women, providing a means for them to control their self-representation and to explore issues of Black women's sensibility and aesthetics. Like AfriCobra, a Chicago-based Black Arts group, the WWA was active in fostering art within the African-American community and using it as a tool of awareness and liberation. The group organized workshops in schools, jails and prisons, hospitals, and cultural centers, as well as art classes for youth in their communities.Cornell's “Blackness in Color” Conference Website.
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Context

In the 1960s, in the wake of the
Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
and Black Arts Movement, the work of African-American artists had begun to gain more attention in the mainstream art world. However, many Black women artists felt neglected by both the male-dominated Black Arts Movement, the largely White
Feminist art movement The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to produce feminist art, art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and perception of co ...
, as well as the mainstream art world. While several individual female artists, including
Elizabeth Catlett Elizabeth Catlett, born as Alice Elizabeth Catlett, also known as Elizabeth Catlett Mora (April 15, 1915 – April 2, 2012) was an African American sculptor and graphic artist best known for her depictions of the Black-American experience in the ...
, Faith Ringgold, Inge Hardison,
Lois Mailou Jones Lois Mailou Jones (1905-1998) was an artist and educator. Her work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum o ...
, and Betye Saar, gained national attention, most practicing Black women artists in New York found it difficult to find venues for their work in White-run galleries and museums. The initial "Where We At: Black Women Artists" exhibition and the collective of the same name that later formed were created to addressed this neglect.


Where We At: Black Women Artists: 1971

IN 1971 "Where We At" the Black Women Artists' exhibit was perhaps the very first Black women's professional artists show in New York, only preceded nationally by an exhibition held the previous year entitled "Sapphire Show: You've Come a Long Way Baby" at the artist Suzanne Jackson's Gallery 32 in Los Angeles. WWA was held at the Acts of Art Gallery (1969–74) owned by Nigel Jackson located on Charles Street in the
West Village The West Village is a neighborhood in the western section of the larger Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. The traditional boundaries of the West Village are the Hudson River to the west, West 14th Street to th ...
. In one of the few detailed accounts available of the history of this group, WWA artist and founder Kay Brown describes the development of WWA and its connections with the Black Arts Movement. Kay Brown began working with the Black Arts-affiliated Weusi Artist Collective in 1968. The Weusi artists had recently founded the Nyuma Ya Sanaa Gallery ("house of art" in Swahili), which they later renamed the Weusi Academy of Art, in
Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Ha ...
. With the Weusi artists, Brown developed her painting techniques and learned the craft of relief printmaking and mixed-media collage. She also learned about the developing conception of a "Black aesthetic" that had become an important project for the Black Arts Movement. Influenced by this search for a "Black aesthetic," she began to develop a philosophy based in African traditions. The group was very conscious of the inherent overlap of Black and female identities. So, as the exhibit was the first focusing on the Black woman's perspective, there was pressure to construct a feminine aesthetic within the Black American art vernacular. Although Weusi had previously had a few Black women members, including textile artist Dindga McCannon, when Brown joined, she was the only female member in a what was frequently referred to as "a brotherhood" of 14 men. Although she states in her essay that she felt "honored" to be included in the group, she also felt the need for an "affirmation" of Black women artists. In 1971, Kay Brown, along with Dindga McCannon, Faith Ringgold and others, began to discuss the possibility of a major exhibition of Black women artists. As a response to what was commonly referred to in the group as the “Whitney fiasco” (the
Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...
's first major exhibition of Black artists, which became extremely controversial in the Black community, who saw it as sensationalizing and exploitative, rather than a sincere recognition of the artists' talent) artist Nigel Jackson had opened the Acts of Art Gallery in Greenwich Village as an exhibition space for the works of Black artists. When Brown and her fellow Black women artists presented Jackson with a proposal for a show of work of 14 Black women, he agreed to host it. The show, entitled "Where We At: Black Women Artists: 1971," is often cited as the first group show of Black women artists ever held, though it is preceded by an exhibition held the previous year at Gallery 32 in Los Angeles featuring organizer Suzanne Jackson, Gloria Bohanon, Betye Saar,
Senga Nengudi Senga Nengudi (née Sue Irons; born September 18, 1943) is an African Americans, African-American visual artist and curator. She is best known for her abstract sculptures that combine found objects and choreographed performance. She is part of a ...
(then Sue Irons), and Eileen Nelson (then Abudulrashid). It was funded by the Brooklyn Educational and Cultural Alliance, the
New York State Council on the Arts The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) is an arts council serving the U.S. state of New York. It was established in 1960 through a bill introduced in the New York State Legislature by New York State Senator MacNeil Mitchell (1905–1996 ...
, the Presbyterian Church Committee for the Self Development of People and America the Beautiful Foundation. According to Brown, the show's title emphasized the artists' ties to the “grassroots” community and referred to a general “earthiness” to the show, as demonstrated by the fact that at the exhibition's opening, the artists served cooked food to the visitors, departing from the traditional wine and cheese. The show was popular and met with critical acclaim. Ms. Brown identifies the perceived success of the exhibition as a motivating factor in the artists' decision to form a collective of the same name: the "Where We At" Black Women Artists, Inc. (WWA). Developing a set of by-laws and electing officers, the founding members established an official organization. Kay Brown served as president and executive director, and as a team the group took on the responsibility of targeting various sites for WWA art exhibitions.


Projects

WWA engaged in many projects, including a panel of women artists at the Brooklyn Museum in conjunction with David Driskell's landmark exhibition, '' Two Centuries of Black American Art'', and a seminar for Women's International Year at Medgar Evers College. In the fall of 1978, WWA held art workshops for inmates at the
Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women a women's prison in the town of Bedford, New York, is the largest women's prison in New York state. The prison previously opened under the name Westfield State Farm in 1901. It lies just outside ...
. According to artist Kay Brown, “the women inmates loved expressing themselves creatively in classes with professional Black women artists. It was as if a beautiful ray of sunshine had appeared in the darkness. Someone really cared about us!” WWA sometimes worked in conjunction with Women and Student Artists For Black Art Liberation, an organization that often worked out of Riker Island prison systems. The WWA also led workshops at the Arthur Kill Correctional Facility for men, as well as in hospitals and cultural centers. In addition, the WWA created an apprenticeship workshop for youth in Brooklyn taught graphic design, illustration and media skills, as well as painting, ceramics, crochet and macramé. WWA also published ''"Where We At" Black Women Artists: A Tapestry of Many Fine Threads'', a widely circulated brochure describing the history and mission of the organization, which consisted at one point of 30 women, with a foreword by Linda Cousins. Members of WWA contributed to publications including the Feminist Art Journal and Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics.


Shows with male artists

Though they were often excluded from important conversations around Black Liberation and were subjected to misogyny by many peers who were Black men, they still often felt a stronger allegiance to the Black arts movement over the existing and predominately White feminist art movement. In the 1970s and '80s, the WWA artists collaborated with male artists on several projects. During the winter of 1972 they held the ''Cookin' and Smokin'' exhibition at the Weusi-Nyumba Ya Sanaa Gallery (later the Weusi Academy of Art). A short time afterwards, the Black psychologist
Kenneth Clark Kenneth Mackenzie Clark, Baron Clark (13 July 1903 – 21 May 1983) was a British art historian, museum director, and broadcaster. After running two important art galleries in the 1930s and 1940s, he came to wider public notice on television ...
presented WWA at the M.A.R.C. gallery. In 1985, WWA teamed up with the "brothers" of Weusi to create the collaborative exhibit ''Close Connections'' at 1199 Gallery in midtown. In the show, Black men and women worked together on a single thematic project. The next major WWA show, ''Joining Forces: 1 + 1 = 3'', which opened June 1986 at the Muse Community Museum in
Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
, was a collaborative installation of the WWA and a group of invited male artists. It was curated by Charles Abramson and Senga Negudi-Fitz. The show consisted of three-dimensional works produced by male/ female artist “couples” who met over a three-month period and engaged in an “artistic and platonic mating ritual.” The two artists were expected to come to a consensus on how to visually compose the work, and the entire exhibition had to come together as a unified whole. "1 + 1 = 3" was an erotic symbol that suggested a process of male and female entities coming together to create something that "went beyond the normal vocabulary to make an entity of a third thing." The close spiritual connection of one couple, Charlotte Richardson and Lorenzo Pace, who previously been casual acquaintances, was captured by Coreen Simpson, a photographer and exhibiting artist, who recorded the couples as they interacted during the design. Her photographs, the “Spirits” series, were published in WWA's exhibition brochure.


The WWA and "Women's Liberation"

Although, according to Kay Brown, WWA members and other Black women artists agreed with feminist activists on many issues, such as the idea that women should pursue economic and artistic equity with men, Brown felt that WWA artists generally felt more aligned with the Black Arts Movement than with “
Women's Liberation The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism that emerged in the late 1960s and continued into the 1980s primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which effected great ...
”, which they felt was dominated by “liberal White women.” According to Brown, there were as many tensions between the Black and White women's community at that time as between Black and White men. Brown notes that, “Our lack women'sstruggle was primarily against racial discrimination -- not singularly against sexism. We were not prepared to alienate ourselves from our artist brothers.” However, many well established and influential Black artists of the period, such as
Howardena Pindell Howardena Pindell (born April 14, 1943) is an American artist, curator, and educator. She is known as a painter and mixed media artist, her work explores texture, color, structures, and the process of making art; it is often political, addressing ...
, a founding member of A.I.R. Gallery, did choose to align themselves with
Feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
, or to maintain connections with both mainstream feminist groups as well as groups oriented towards women of color. According to Brown, the tensions between the Black and White women's communities were evident in a series of joint exhibitions produced by the National Conference of Women in Visual Arts (NCWVA) and the WWA artists at selected showplaces in Greenwich Village, SoHo, the East Village and the midtown area. The exhibition series was intended to demonstrate a form of "unity" between all women artists independent of race, age or class. However, it soon became apparent to Brown and other African-American participants that the goals and ideology of the feminist-identified artists and the WWA artists were not the same. According to Kay Brown, “The feminist artists focused totally on
sexism Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers pri ...
, often in a flagrant, bizarre fashion. The Black women artists explored the unity of the Black family, the ideal of the Black male-female relation, and other themes relating to social conditions and African traditions.”


Early WWA members

Early WWA artists included:


Other members

Other members included: Stella McKeown

Exhibition sites

WWA exhibition sites included: * Medgar Evers College * Studio Museum in Harlem * Stonybrook University * Brooklyn Museum * New York Public Theater * Hofstra College *
Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
*Martin Luther King Gallery *Bed-Stuy Restoration Gallery *Benin Gallery *NY State Office Bldg in Harlem *NY Arts Consortium *Women's Interstate Center *BACA's Downtown Gallery WWA artists also participated in the National Conference of Artists meeting at
Jackson, MS Jackson, officially the City of Jackson, is the capital of and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Mississippi. The city is also one of two county seats of Hinds County, along with Raymond. The city had a population of 153,701 at th ...
,
Carifesta Caribbean Festival of Arts, commonly known as CARIFESTA, is an annual festival for promoting arts of the Caribbean with a different country hosting the event each year. It was started to provide a venue to "depict the life of the people of the Regio ...
in Guyana in 1972, and the pan-African
FESTAC The World Festival of Black Arts (French: Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres), also known as FESMAN, is a month-long culture and arts festival that takes place in Africa. The festival features poetry, sculpture, painting, music, cinema, theatre, f ...
in
Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
(1977). The WWA was also included in ''
WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution ''WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution'' was an exhibition of international women's art presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles from March 4–July 16, 2007. It later traveled to PS1 Contemporary Art Center, where it was on vie ...
'', the first comprehensive, historical exhibition to examine the international foundations and legacy of feminist art."WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution".
MoMA PS1.
The show appeared at the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's ...
, and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York.


References


Bibliography

* * Linda Theung, "'Where We At' Black Women Artists," in Butler, Cornelia H, and Lisa G. Mark. ''Wack!: Art and the Feminist Revolution''. Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007. Print. {{Feminist art movement in the United States American artist groups and collectives African-American arts organizations Arts organizations established in 1971 1971 establishments in New York City