Critical Perspectives

Overview of the Three Projects and Writers

The Dentalium Project
Through The Dentalium Project’s dialogues, production of a new play called Wild Card, and video documentary, the Dell’Arte theater company explored the economic impact, as well as the cultural and political conflict, surrounding the construction of a Native American casino in the small rural community of Blue Lake, CA.  (“Dentalium” refers to beads and other objects of wealth traditionally gambled in Native American culture.) The essays explore the play, Wild Card, as “theater of place,” offer perspectives from within the Blue Lake community and Native American culture about casino gambling, as well as examine the influence that an arts organization may have on the future of a community via a project such as this one.  Writers are David Rooks, an Oglala Lakota tribal member and journalist from South Dakota; Ferdinand Lewis, playwright and arts writer from Los Angeles currently studying community cultural planning; and Jim O’Quinn, arts writer, critic, and editor of American Theatre magazine from New York City. Michael Fields, managing artistic director of Dell’Arte, responds to the essays as Dentalium’s artistic director.

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The Slave Galleries Project
The Slave Galleries Restoration and Preservation Project has brought together community leaders, scholars, and preservationists to begin the ongoing process of restoring and interpreting 1828 slave galleries in St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church. The galleries—cramped rooms where African American congregants were segregated during the 19th century—are being established as a setting and context for dialogues about marginalization and other issues on the Lower East Side. These writings document the process of uncovering the slave galleries story and its impact on those intimately involved; interpret oral tradition and personal history to humanize and give voice to the slave gallery space; and comment on the parallels between the histories of different cultural groups on the Lower East Side, as revealed by the process of interpreting history in collaboration with community. Writers are Rodger Taylor, a member of the St. Augustine’s Church Slave Galleries committee and a historian and freelance writer; Lorraine Johnson-Coleman, author and storyteller from North Carolina and National Public Radio commentator about African American experience; and John Kuo Wei Tchen, historian, activist, former director of the Museum of the Chinese in the Americas on the Lower East Side, and founding director of the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program and Institute at NYU. Lisa Chice from the Lower East Side Tenement Museum contributes an essay as one of the project organizers.

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Ties that Bind
MACLA’s (Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana) Ties that Bind was a photographic installation, oral history, and public dialogue project that reflected upon the history of intermarriage between Asians and Latinos in the Silicon Valley, illuminating civic issues of intra- and interethnic relations in California today. The writings examine the artwork and the exhibition as concept and experience; the representation of oral narratives in visual form; and the project in relation to relevant thinking from the fields of sociology and anthropology. Writers are: Lydia Matthews, art historian, critic, and faculty in the Visual Criticism program of California College of Arts and Crafts; Michael Rosenfeld, sociologist who studies intermarriage and former reporter for The Nation; and Renato Rosaldo, anthropologist, poet, and author of Culture and Truth. Maribel Alvarez, cultural anthropologist and former executive director of MACLA, offers a response to the essays.

Critical Perspectives also includes an essay, "Shaming the Devil,” by noted cultural essayist Lucy Lippard. Lippard responds to the writers’ essays, explicating issues about writing that have shaped her own choices: the dilemma of writing about art, while being accessible to a broad audience; issues of authority in writing, and who has it; multiplicity of viewpoint, and how to negotiate different opinions (including those of funding sources); place-specific vs. “merely regional” art; and the ironies of “reciprocal ethnography.” 

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To purchase a copy of Critical Perspectives: Writings on Art and Civic Dialogue, visit the Americans for the Arts Bookstore.