I was working at The Studio Museum as Director of Education, and artists would come and get in conversations and stay all day, and it was wonderful.
But inevitably, at the end of every day, the conversation shifted to, "They won't let us.
They won't let us."
And the "they" was the art market, and they wouldn't let artists that were African American or other artists of color be exhibited.
So, my response to that was, you know, "[bleep] it.
Let's just do it ourselves."
♪upbeat funky music♪ And I heard about this gallery, and so I went down to the opening, and it was like Heaven.
[Linda VO] I mean, people were in the lobby of the elevators, they're down the stairwells, they're outside on the street trying to get into the gallery.
[Janet VO] It was just vibrant!
It was vibrant, it was alive, there were ideas, there were things I'd never seen before, there were things I had seen or could imagine making.
In the sense of ownership, in terms of doing this, even if you weren't showing there, you were creating a space that you could go to and see artwork of friends, of colleagues, and so it was a place of belonging.