Kellie Jones Speaks on #SayHerName, Black Women in the Art World, and More

Columbia art historian and renowned curator, Kellie Jones (@DrKellieJones), recently spoke with the Huffington Post about the need for more intergenerational dialogue among artists, the importance of the #SayHerName movement as a critique of sexism within Black Lives Matter, and how diplomacy and art curation have a lot in common.

On finding her passion for art history while a student at Amherst College she says,

“When I was at Amherst there were only two types of artists — artists were either white or they were dead. Yet I knew this to be just plain wrong because I grew up with the likes of Norman Lewis and Camille Billops. This started me thinking that there might be a place for someone who is a writer and curator for artists of color. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that art and diplomacy shared a lot in common, for at that time I was still thinking about being a diplomat. Soon I realized that with art I could travel, speak to people in different countries, and while for me art is not necessarily or only a mediator, it is certainly a way to talk across different countries and cultures.”

Later she connects the emergence of #SayHerName with how society ignores the rampant violence against black women:

“Institutional structures do not come down easily, however, and this is the case with even the movements and institutions that we admire. Why is there a need for the ‘Say Her Name’ movement, which lists the name of black women killed by police in the United States? Because there is an element of sexism in the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. Of course the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement did not set out to be sexist, and if you speak to activists they will tell you that more than anything else, they set out to draw attention to the more visible cases of police brutality, which are the cases against black males. So the question then becomes: Why aren’t the deaths of black women by police officers equally visible?

“And that is what I mean that old structures remain in place, and that is why I am so emphatic about the need for a cross-generational dialogue because we can tell each other about what we have seen and what we know. And that, too, is part of the reason why I love teaching so much. I get to take the students into my world and the students get to take me into theirs.”

Read the full interview at the Huffington Post.