COURTESY OF RUN THE JEWELS/MOMENTARY
BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE
‘THE DIRTY SOUTH: CONTEMPORARY ART, MATERIAL CULTURE, AND THE SONIC IMPULSE’ THROUGH MONDAY 7/25. CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART. $12 (EXHIBIT), $98-$200 (CONCERT).
In conjunction with “The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse” — a visual exhibit displaying “100 years of visual art, material objects, sound and music to explore how Black culture, across time and geography, has shaped and influenced the South and U.S. contemporary culture at large” — Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is bringing hip-hop royalty to the stage on the Momentary Green, with a July 16 show from Big Boi (OutKast) and Run the Jewels (Atlanta god and Bernie Sanders’ Most Valuable Endorser Killer Mike, plus producer EI-P, née El-Producto, née Jaime Meline), whose delivery makes 2020s-era activism seem simultaneously merry and chilling: “And every day on evening news they feed you fear for free/And you so numb you watch the cops choke out a man like me/And ’til my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, ‘I can’t breathe’/And you sit there in the house on couch and watch it on TV/The most you give’s a Twitter rant and call it a tragedy/But truly the travesty, you’ve been robbed of your empathy.” Get tickets for the exhibit at crystalbridges.org and tickets for the concert at themomentary.org. ARKTIMES.COM
JUNE 2022 13
