It’s 71 days until the 2020 US Presidential Election. Are you ready? Yeah, me either. Today, Hank Wil
| It’s 71 days until the 2020 US Presidential Election. Are you ready? Yeah, me either.Today, Hank Willis Thomas on Black Survival Guide, the UPenn archive of contralto and Civil Rights activist Marian Anderson, and Susan B. Anthony’s diss of Trump.— Hrag Vartanian, Editor-in-chief | |
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| | Hank Willis Thomas, “First stages” (2018), from Black Survival Guide, or How to Live Through a Police Riot, screen print on retroreflective vinyl with aluminum backing, photograph of Wilmington riots and National Guard occupation by Frank Fahey, 1968 (courtesy of the News Journal), text from Northeast Conservation Association, Black Survival Guide, or How to Live Through a Police Riot, c. 1960s (courtesy of the Delaware Historical Society), 62 x 48 inches; commissioned by the Delaware Art Museum (© Hank Willis Thomas; all images courtesy the artist and Delaware Art Museum) |
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| In our latest interview with artist Hank Willis Thomas, he reminds us that in 1968, Wilmington, Delaware was the site of the longest occupation of federal troops in a US city since the Civil War. He explains:We wound up in all these boxes and I pulled out this thing that said “Black Survival Guide” and I was like, what? What is that? It was literally a handbook on how to survive a police riot.That was such a revelation that not only was the movement organized, but it was prepared for the worst at all times. That gave new context to all the photographs I saw of police and National Guardsmen occupying this neighborhood in Delaware. I wanted to highlight them both, and so I printed in black-on-white the text of the Survival Guide and then I printed white-on-white the photographs that I collected. I printed on a material called retroreflective vinyl, which allows the viewer to see both images when you take a flash photograph. So to the naked eye it’ll look like black text on white, whereas if you take a flash photograph a latent image is exposed. |
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| In Philadelphia, UPenn’s Libraries digitized the archives of Marian Anderson. Letters, diaries, journals, interviews, recital programs, and private recordings by the world-famous recitalist and civil rights activist are now online. Who was she? Someone who was always breaking barriers:After being refused permission by the Daughters of the American Revolution to perform for an integrated audience in Constitution Hall, Anderson performed an open-air concert for 75,000 people on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. She shattered further barriers in 1955, as the first Black singer to perform in a lead role on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. |
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| An update from Native Land Bot |
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| Our story last week on Code for Anchorage’s useful Native Land SMS bot was popular, but many of you had questions about where the numbers go and if they are archived. We asked for clarification from the group and they offered this response:We aren’t going to share the phone numbers with anyone else and will start removing them or giving the records unique identifiers and deleting the phone number (something we did with the bus service, each phone number gets a randomly assigned three-word phrase like ‘dog-blue-boat.’ We have looked at aggregate data just to get an idea, on average, how many requests come in from a phone number, which was about 2.9 requests last time we checked.We also noticed a slow down in responses after our post went up and reached out to ask if it the service was still running. They let us know that by that evening at 6pm, they were receiving 7,568 requests per hour, the most they’d ever seen. I see you were all busy texting. |
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| And now for something a little different. A Lindt 🍫chocolate factory in 🇨🇭Switzerland had an accident and chocolate rained down from the sky. ☁️ Dreams do come true.Stay safe. |
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| | "The Great Wave" Patch We’re swept away by this magnificent patch featuring “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” by Edo-period Japanese artist Hokusai! Sure to transform any jacket or backpack into a thrilling sight, it pairs well with any of the other colorful patches we carry in our store.Shop more art-inspired patches |
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