From 50 years of our overstocked archives
Sam Smith - In the 1970s, art in Washington was more than just something you used to decorate the walls of big law firms. It was central to the city's culture and politics. Among its practitioners was Gaston Neal, dubbed "the most important unpublished poet in America," by Amiri Baraka. Neal was an activist as well as a poet. Once he gathered a score of his friends and stormed the fusty citadel of the Corcoran Art Gallery while it was giving a large, formal fundraising dinner. "Who will feed the people?" they loudly demanded to the distress of the museum's staff and guests. Walter Hopps, the director and no mean cultural influence himself, figured he could answer at least part of the question by at least feeding Gaston and his friends, so he asked for donations and sent the protesters off with $450 to celebrate what was perhaps the only profitable demonstration in history.
Then there was Topper Carew, later a nationally known filmmaker, who ran an operation known as the New Thing Art & Architecture Center. Annoyed by a Washington Post critic that had compared his work unfavorably to that of "wild Indians," Carew marched into the city room of the Washington Post -- the city was still permitted there in those days -- marched to the offending critic's desk, cleaned it off, placed the trash can on top, mounted the desk, lit the contents of the trash can, and performed a mock tribal dance around the container.
1 comment:
Baraka himself was held by like the police chief of Newark for immanent execution when Ginsberg got some Nobel winner to call Newark and have him released. On the other hand, students at my college held the dean hostage and it resulted in significant improvements including a Black Studies Department, now among the best in the world. Baraka was fired as poet laureate of New Jersey for mentioning in one of his masterpieces, foreign involvement in 9/11. This was not merely incidental to his role as poet laureate, rather essential to his art. Like when the Doors went ahead and sang the forbidden lyric, "we couldn't get much higher" on Ed Sullivan and were never invited back. Light my Fire without its rhyme would have made as much sense as Hamlet saying "to be or to die." Sorry can't say "not to be" might encourage suicide.
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