Artful Narratives: Great Migration's Influence | Curator Jessica Bell Brown Interview

00;00;10;11 - 00;00;32;01
Rob Lee
Welcome to the truth in this art. I am your host, Rob Lee. And today I'm in conversation with the curator and department head for contemporary art at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Her recent exhibition projects include How Do We Know the World? Thaddeus Mosely Forest. Stephanie Sy, JUCO, Vanishing Point, overly and most recently a movement in every direction.

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Rob Lee
Legacies of the Great Migration, which was co-organized with the Mississippi Museum of Art. Please welcome Jessica Bell Brown. Welcome to the podcast.

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Jessica Bell Brown
Thank you so much, Rob.

00;00;43;28 - 00;01;09;15
Rob Lee
Thank you for coming on. I mean, we got the glasses going. This is like it is simpatico. I love it. So, again, thank you for being on this podcast and taking the time. And before we get too deep and embedded into the real conversation, I want to open it up with, you know, something that either people find to be very challenging talking about themselves or very like, I love talking about myself.

00;01;09;15 - 00;01;18;06
Rob Lee
I tell you everything. So if you could open it up a little bit and tell us about your story as it comes to art curation, art history, can you share a little bit with this?

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Jessica Bell Brown
Sure. I am from Macon, Georgia. That's where I grew up and I have always lived with an appreciation for art. I think my my parents had I think they sort of valued representation and seeing growing up with images that look like us. So they were always some sort of like print or drawing or usually kind of in the realm of like black romantic art, but nonetheless like, I think it really set the stage for an appreciation of the power of visual representation.

00;02;06;02 - 00;02;42;17
Jessica Bell Brown
There was there's always been an affinity for and reverence for images, I think not even just art, but just images, family photos where always kind of on full display in my parents homes. In my grandparents homes, it was just, you know, a part of everyday life. Every holiday, we would go through photo albums and look not only back at my childhood with my two sisters growing up, but my parents, their school photos, their family photos, my grandparents.

00;02;42;17 - 00;03;04;25
Jessica Bell Brown
So I think in that sense, I've always kind of been attracted to finding beauty in the world and finding beauty and in our kind of stories. So when I got to college, I stumbled my way into an art history class and never really left.

00;03;06;10 - 00;03;25;13
Rob Lee
Thank you. Thank you for for walking us through that. And I think it's always interesting to kind of learn some of those those early experiences. Usually it's like, what is your first experience with art? And I think that that kind of pops back up. Things that you were exposed to kind of pops back up and maybe which you pursue or maybe what you even like.

00;03;25;14 - 00;03;40;14
Rob Lee
So I like to really peel that onion back. Sometimes I get a sense of like, So why do you like this? Well, like I did a painting of it looks like the low end theory from A Tribe Called Quest, and it's in the studio. And I was like, Why do I like this? I was like, Oh, right. Those are the colors, right?

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Rob Lee
You know, because I saw this when I was a kid and my parents always had this type of stuff. And, you know, in the house.

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Jessica Bell Brown
Black nationalist, Pan-Africanist kind of color, all the things.

00;03;52;08 - 00;04;15;06
Rob Lee
So let's so pursuing that career in in art so let's let's talk about that a little bit and talk about curation like I, I know very little what hey, a lot of people call themselves curators and but you're actually a curator, so so if you will, like what does being a curator entail? What is like your day to day sort of look like?

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Rob Lee
And I would imagine it varies, but what is your day to day sort of look like?

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Jessica Bell Brown
Yeah, I think the most in the most sort of basic sense a curator is a caretaker of objects traditionally in a museum context, although that has of course expanded. I think I take the word care like not lightly, take it very seriously. And so that extends to, you know, as a contemporary curator, I'm not only caring for objects that enter the collection, I'm caring for the artists who made them and the communities that I think are also kind of represented by, by and within those objects, being in the orbit of the museum in terms of our galleries, our exhibitions and, you know, the various sort of programs and sort of outward facing communication and connection

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Jessica Bell Brown
that happens as a result of that art making. The second part of your question, remind me.

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Rob Lee
Oh, yes, sorry. So the day to day piece.

00;05;22;07 - 00;06;03;07
Jessica Bell Brown
So it look like every day. Oh, if only you had asked me that question a week ago. It varies. It varies quite a bit. Let's see. At any given point in time, I might be in a in a different stage or phase of a project at the BMA. There are few sort of buckets that drive our work as curators because we're at encyclopedic institution or in general a collecting institution.

00;06;03;07 - 00;06;37;14
Jessica Bell Brown
So we acquire artworks made by by folks in the world, past and present. It means that we are actively every sort of season, engaging in a process of research and exploration refinement and sort of looking at beings, going to galleries, going to other museum shows, going to artists studios and finding objects of great significance that we feel could speak to our audiences and unpack new histories.

00;06;39;00 - 00;07;16;15
Jessica Bell Brown
So there's there's that aspect of the process, which is very exciting. And then there's the administrative part of that process, which is really all logistics and documentation and emailing back and forth and coordinating shipping and getting letters out, blah, blah, blah. So that's one part of it. There's also, as a curator, we are charged with making exhibitions. Sometimes those exhibitions are monographic and sometimes they're thematic.

00;07;16;25 - 00;07;42;02
Jessica Bell Brown
What I mean by monographic and usually we kind of focus on one subject or one person, one artists. If it's a thematic exhibition, it means that you're bringing many voices, or at least more than one sort of voice into the mix or into the fold. And that process is it's not unlike the access accessions process where you're going through a period of fact finding.

00;07;42;02 - 00;08;24;02
Jessica Bell Brown
You're talking to different artists, you're going to the library, you're going to the archives, probably you are going to different collectors homes looking at works by those artists that you're interested in that they have. You're hopping in and out of studios, but then there reaches a point where you have your idea. You put pen to paper, you make a proposal, and it goes through an internal process where you get all the stakeholders who have that, who have a vested interest in the outcome and a vested interest in the outcome of of your project.

00;08;25;09 - 00;09;04;20
Jessica Bell Brown
You learn together as a collectivity of of museum workers how to bring this project into the world. And so most of I feel like a lot of curating is mostly project management. It's mostly the day to day details, the administration, the hand-holding, the you know, and all of that. And then some there's a small fraction of it is actually the glamorous ideation traveling kind of stage, but it's so worth it when you look up and two years down the line and you're looking up at a project like the movement in every direction, legacies of the Great Migration.

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Jessica Bell Brown
And you see not only the tremendous efforts of the brilliant artists that you brought into the fold, but also the efforts of all of your colleagues and all of the communities that uphold those efforts and coalesce them into something tangible for audiences to see.

00;09;26;03 - 00;09;46;29
Rob Lee
Well, thank you. And I think I think that's a good point for us to not bury the lead any further. So could you tell us about the the exhibition? Can you tell us about a movement in every direction? Legacies of the Great Migration? Can you share some of the thoughts that went into that, your vision, you know, Ryan's vision or inspiration for this exhibit.

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Jessica Bell Brown
Of course. See what I did there?

00;09;48;27 - 00;09;53;05
Rob Lee
I think you've done an interview before.

00;09;53;05 - 00;10;34;05
Jessica Bell Brown
Yeah. So. So you refer to Ryan, my my wonderful, wonderful co-curator and partner in imagination, Ryan Dennis, who is the chief curator and artistic director of the Center for Art and Public Exchange at the Mississippi Museum of Art. Ryan and I co-curated this wonderful show about the continuum of impact of the Great Migration, which is for those of you who might not be as familiar, it is a period of about six decades.

00;10;34;05 - 00;11;36;10
Jessica Bell Brown
From 1915 to 1970 were 6 million African Americans left the South and fled for the Northeast, the Midwest, the West Coast, the Southwest, and even within the southeastern region. Hence why we called our show a movement in every direction. So Ryan and I both started at our institutions. We would be amazed her the enemy within about 4 to 6 months of each other and I knew right away that we both were kind of conjured to imagine how we might approach this subject of migration from a contemporary lens and how we might do so in a way that acknowledges the ways in which Baltimore and Jackson, Mississippi, are entangled in the same historical arc, but just

00;11;36;10 - 00;12;07;09
Jessica Bell Brown
a different kind of with different nuances, right? This Baltimore being rescues me, Jackson being one of the earliest places of departure for migrants in Baltimore being one of the earliest places of arrival for new migrants. So our cities, we our museums are situated in cities that have been fundamentally transformed by this migration. And so that's the kind of setting of the stage.

00;12;08;14 - 00;12;29;13
Jessica Bell Brown
And then through the process of about maybe 4 to 6 months, Ryan and I started to talk about, okay, well, how, how do we inhabit this prompt to do a show about the legacy of the Great Migration, what's important to us, and what kinds of artists that we want in the mix we knew that we wanted the exhibition to be intergenerational.

00;12;31;00 - 00;13;08;12
Jessica Bell Brown
We felt like having a variety of voices in the mix who would would only sort of benefit the project in that it would allow a kind of hetero glacier to unfold a kind of polyphonic rise married, multi textured exhibition. That's what we were after. We wanted folks who have different ways of working. This exhibition is all about storytelling and history, but it's also contemporary.

00;13;08;12 - 00;13;52;25
Jessica Bell Brown
So that meant that the exhibition, we didn't need to sort of rehash what had been done prior with exhibitions around the subject matter. And we wanted artists who were thinking about questions around agency self-determination, land, community collectivity. In that sense, our project, you know, the kind of parameters for our project really became quite clear, like those of those, you know, and maybe not limitation, but rather like, wow, like how amazing would it be to bring these minds into this into this space and to say, go crazy, go wild?

00;13;52;25 - 00;14;31;03
Jessica Bell Brown
Like, do what you've always wanted to do but maybe not have had have maybe it's maybe maybe that thing is something that you might not have had the resources to do or the time or or maybe even the kind of curatorial support and encouragement and acknowledgment. So in that, that process, even though I mean, 4 to 6 months sounds like a long time, but is actually not when you think about, you know, all of this was happening in the with the backdrop of COVID, there was a backdrop of of grief, of uncertainty.

00;14;32;14 - 00;15;00;17
Jessica Bell Brown
There was the great resonance happening. At the same time, too, there were a lot of things that were that this country was facing that also kind of felt maybe not like maybe not like a mirror to this period of the sort of early 20th century where folks were really kind of facing another global pandemic. And in that case, the Spanish flu, the the continued rise of Jim Crow.

00;15;02;09 - 00;15;53;04
Jessica Bell Brown
I mean, there were these sort of echoes, echoes between the period, like between the contemporary moment and the past. But in short, I think we were we were trying to move it as as curators and as two black women from the South whose families decided to remain rooted in the South. You know, we were interested in in in saying more and moving moving in a way that allowed us to acknowledge the complexities of these histories and to be respectful of the artists who I think exercised great trust in courageousness and bravery by sharing things that are quite personal in their family stories.

00;15;53;27 - 00;16;06;07
Rob Lee
So as you're talking about family, I think I'd be remiss not to ask this question. So family family lineage seems to be a unifying theme here, obviously. Do you have any family connections to the Great Migration?

00;16;06;07 - 00;16;32;07
Jessica Bell Brown
I do in that, you know, so when I go, I went to Northwestern for college and it wasn't until maybe the time that I became like a junior or senior that I learned that I had cousins in the 1930s who had who were who were based in Ohio, who had actually gone to Northwestern, too. And in that and that turned to my dad told me then I'm like, that doesn't make sense.

00;16;32;07 - 00;16;57;13
Jessica Bell Brown
All of our family is in Georgia right. And it is, you know, and that is relatively true in that both my mom's side of the family, my dad's side of the family, 90 I about 90% of my family's is still is based in the South and has has deep ties to Georgia. But there are a few family members that made their way northward or family members that got dispersed into the world.

00;16;57;13 - 00;17;18;16
Jessica Bell Brown
These would be their military service and then made their way back back to the south. My dad being like his his stepfather and my grandmother moved the family to North Carolina and then to Montana like these, the kind of places that you just went and think that there was a kind of North Carolina. Yes, but Montana.

00;17;19;02 - 00;17;20;12
Rob Lee
Not as much, you know.

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Jessica Bell Brown
Yeah, but so as the project unfolds, it and as I think we were experiencing this moment of like deep reflection and quietude collectively, as you know, it allowed for me to really think about the ways in which my own story intersects with this larger history that Ryan and I were kind of narrating in the creation of the public, the publications for the book, for the exhibition, and also in sort of interweaving through lines within and across the 12 artists in the show whose names I just want to give a complete out now because they're really it's none of this would be possible.

00;18;03;15 - 00;18;16;13
Jessica Bell Brown
Mark Bradford. Zoe Charlton. Larry Cook. Kwasi Dyson. Theaster Gates Junior. Allison Janney. Hamilton. Leslie Hewitt. Stephanie Jamison. Robert Pruitt. Jamie Richmond. Edwards in Carry Me Wings.

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Rob Lee
Thank you.

00;18;17;25 - 00;18;18;04
Jessica Bell Brown
Yeah.

00;18;18;22 - 00;18;41;13
Rob Lee
Were there any surprises when you saw some of the work? Because, you know, 12, 12 artists, different perspective, different different skills, different approaches and all of that that goes into it. And is, you know, just sounds like and I would imagine all of the work that goes into this is huge. So what sort of surprises, if any, did you encounter when you saw the work in person?

00;18;41;24 - 00;19;20;15
Jessica Bell Brown
Mm hmm. I think one of the biggest surprises that I that Ryan and I had was probably I would I would say maybe Larry Cooke's work. There is a moment we love Larry. Shout out to Larry, the incredible conceptual photographer, Howard University professor in the Department of the Fine Arts Department, and comes from a background of thinking about vernacular photography, carceral esthetics, D.C. Go go kind of club culture and photography practices.

00;19;21;09 - 00;19;44;24
Jessica Bell Brown
But for his proposal, for great, for our show, a movement in every direction, he was interested in going to all the places where the Cooke men and the family had traveled down south. He had ties to Georgia and South Carolina across four generations, if not more. And there was a moment in the project where he kind of just got really quiet.

00;19;45;01 - 00;20;34;01
Jessica Bell Brown
We were like reaching out to him, like, Larry, what's going on? What are we doing? And he was going through the kind of transformation of his project. And it turned out in the best of ways because he started to look more inward, even in in terms of like what he was. We had decided to photograph. So he he traveled down to Georgia and South Carolina was learning more about his father's side of the family, interviewing family members, doing oral histories, and then would stop along the side of the road at various places cotton fields, forests, bodies of water, and take these large format landscape photographs.

00;20;34;19 - 00;21;25;24
Jessica Bell Brown
But really these landscape photographs kind of come together to be this portrait of the arc of his family history. There was a history of estrangement between fathers and sons in this family that through this project he was able to unpack and ultimately come to a place of healing. And so this project let my testimony sit next to yours is all about taking these elements that might seem distant or historical or or even somewhat removed from signification and creating a a new map of knowledge for breaking cycles in his family history.

00;21;26;26 - 00;21;34;27
Jessica Bell Brown
And when you see it, I won't give it all away. But when you when you go see the exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, you have until January 29th. Is now.

00;21;35;01 - 00;21;35;12
Rob Lee
Like these.

00;21;35;12 - 00;21;54;05
Jessica Bell Brown
Closed. I think you will be taken aback and blown away by the power of stepping into one sort of family history and telling your story, which is what I think, Larry and all all of the other artists have done so beautifully.

00;21;54;29 - 00;22;11;29
Rob Lee
Thank you. Mm hmm. So I got two more real questions and one I want to ask. I'm going to ask if you had to choose three adjectives to describe a movement in every direction legacies, seeds of the Great Migration. Which would you choose? What are the three adjectives you choose?

00;22;13;00 - 00;22;56;03
Jessica Bell Brown
I would say the first adjective would be resplendent. I just think it is a show that demonstrates the the ways in which black folks in this country have had to always kind of reach for the light, even in the darkest of times and circumstances. And so that resiliency, that sense of being kind of held and carried in like that, that sense of like bounty, I think is connected to the use of the word resplendent there because there's just so much to unpack and so much to, to to sit with, but also to celebrate.

00;22;56;17 - 00;23;37;01
Jessica Bell Brown
Two other words I would say it's resounding in that it's the show is stunning, but it's also just like the density of sound and it carries through the whole exhibition. I mean, there is there is elements of of folk songs and gospel and jazz improvization and contemporary, sort of like melodic, you know, black melodic forms. It's just it's it's a sensorium in so many ways.

00;23;38;04 - 00;23;45;19
Jessica Bell Brown
And that sound really does carry through and carry you through the exhibition, you know.

00;23;45;25 - 00;23;49;12
Rob Lee
Do you have another word that begins with an orange you got to know. I know. Radio.

00;23;49;23 - 00;23;53;14
Jessica Bell Brown
You know, I know we're not doing that today.

00;23;53;14 - 00;24;13;26
Rob Lee
Robert also, I would say the way you describe that, that last adjective made me think of immersive. You know that. And that's what I was kind of hearing there. It's like you have this sort of soundscape and it really sets that stage with the visuals, with the sound and just hitting all of the potentially hitting multiple senses. I don't know if you have a taste element there, but most of your senses.

00;24;13;27 - 00;24;41;22
Jessica Bell Brown
Are actually in fact, we do. The Gates. Gates's installation, The Double Wide, is a celebration of the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the South. And there are dozens of pickled and pickled vegetables and hog Mars and big ears and jams and jellies that you'll encounter when you see see the exhibition in his installation in particular, which is magnetic.

00;24;43;03 - 00;25;31;16
Jessica Bell Brown
But I feel like the last adjective that I would use would be maybe tender. And I say that because there will be, you know, as you walk through the show, my hope is that you'll see things that feel familiar to you, whether it be the kind of sepia toned lushness of family photos, textiles, that sort of sense of the hand, things that are like handcrafted that you might find in, you know, your your, you know, the elders in your families, you know, the kind of sense of heirloom objects, some of which are actually, you know, have been passed on to the artist.

00;25;31;16 - 00;26;03;25
Jessica Bell Brown
I'm thinking in the case of Leslie Hewitt, in particular, her grandmother's glass vessels, crystal vessels, which are the only things that she one of very few things that she has remaining from her grandmother, memory of her grandmother, those are actually installed, you know, on the floor of the of the of the exhibition. So you'll see those I want people to kind of walk away with this sense of a deep tenderness and like a feeling of kinship.

00;26;03;25 - 00;26;06;05
Jessica Bell Brown
And as they move through the exhibition.

00;26;07;06 - 00;26;27;26
Rob Lee
I like how you answered that last part, which you actually knocked out of my knock out my last question and my last real question. So and as we as we wrap up these final moments here, I got to ask you some rapid fire questions. Can you get away from those? And then we'll do some shameless plugs regarding the, you know, the show and all of that great stuff because people need to pull up.

00;26;28;20 - 00;26;41;01
Rob Lee
So these these are ridiculous. They're funny, but they're ridiculous. So they were 25. There's 25 hours now in a day. How do you spend the extra hour o rest?

00;26;41;01 - 00;26;47;23
Jessica Bell Brown
Bill, stop. I'm on my pillow because I do not sleep. It's a problem. It's a it's a big problem.

00;26;49;03 - 00;26;57;08
Rob Lee
As it as it relates to what I think all of mix what you value more is it booksmart so street smarts.

00;26;58;04 - 00;27;10;18
Jessica Bell Brown
Book smarts because I feel like Streep's marks you can learn how to be street smart because you will make mistakes and learn from them. But yeah, so I value books, okay.

00;27;10;18 - 00;27;34;01
Rob Lee
You're, you're the first asset in this. I've asked this question a lot. You're the first. I said it. Okay, finally, we now have, you know, book smarts on the board. Let's let's do it. This is the last, last one for you and is obviously well read. I mean, I'm looking at words over here. I'm like resplendent. Was that so what is a quote that resonates with you?

00;27;34;01 - 00;27;46;23
Rob Lee
Just something that's top of mind that that resonates with you. Maybe you apply it to how you how you curate. Maybe you apply it to like how you go through to life as a as a person here in the city. What's a quote that resonates with you?

00;27;47;15 - 00;28;04;29
Jessica Bell Brown
I think right now, all things in time. All things in time. I think we can we move so quickly and through life. And sometimes we just need to take a step back and be patient and be in the moment. So that's where I'm at right now.

00;28;05;19 - 00;28;29;08
Rob Lee
Thank you. Thank you. That's that's great. It wasn't that how are you? Got it right there. So with that, I want to thank you for coming on to this podcast and sharing a bit with me about your work, the exhibition and for the listeners, if you will, can you I want to invite and encourage you to tell the listeners the details on the exhibition, where to check out information, where to get tickets, all that good stuff.

00;28;29;15 - 00;28;30;25
Rob Lee
The floor is yours.

00;28;31;03 - 00;28;51;17
Jessica Bell Brown
Absolutely. Thank you, Rob. It's been a pleasure. I hope this won't be the last time that I get to come on to your podcast, because it's been a delight. You can see a movement in every direction. Legacies of the Great Migration at the Baltimore Museum of Art. It opened to the public October 30th. It will be up on view until January 29th.

00;28;52;00 - 00;29;29;26
Jessica Bell Brown
There will be incredible programs happening throughout the run of the exhibition. I encourage you to go to art to be amazed that or to get all of the details and to reserve tickets to see our show. You can also publish the to one of you can publish both not one not but two catalogs dedicated to the exhibition. Volume one is a movement in every direction of Great Migration Critical Reader, which brings together all the historical and archival research that Ryan and I put together in the sort of making and grounding of this exhibition in Volume two.

00;29;29;26 - 00;29;44;13
Jessica Bell Brown
And we're going in every direction. Legacies of the Great Migration is our exhibition catalog. Both books are published by Yale University Press and are available at the BMA store online and at retailers worldwide.

00;29;44;26 - 00;30;02;29
Rob Lee
Thank you. And there you have it, folks. I want to again thank Jessica Belle Brown from the Baltimore Museum of Art, the BMA, for coming on and chopping it up with me and sharing some of the work that went into a movement in every direction. The Legacies of the Great Migration and Port. Jessica Bell Brown I'm Rob Lee.

00;30;02;29 - 00;30;14;25
Rob Lee
Saying that there's art culture in and around your neck of the woods. You've just got to look for it.