TAKE CARE WITH ART AFTER DARK: A CABRINI GREEN DANCE PARTY

by Octavio Cuesta De la Rosa

The University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art explores what it means to be a part of a caring community through its "Take Care" exhibit, adapting to the constraints imposed by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic through its Art After Dark monthly virtual events. On a frosty night in February, the Smart Museum of Art banded together with the National Public Housing Museum to tell the intimate story of the artistic communities of the Cabrini Green public housing development.

Kerry James Marshall's "Slow Dance"

(Smart Museum photo)

Katherine Davis, blues musician, lead educator at the Smart Museum and former Cabrini Green resident, emceed the event. Davis guided us to a period spanning 10 years from 1957-’67, using the sights and sounds of Cabrini to create a picture, not just of what it looked like, but of what it felt like to live in the Cabrini community. Davis began with Kerry James Marshall’s "Slow Dance," a painting depicting an African American couple slow-dancing in their living room. Marshall’s painting, on display at the Smart, gave us a glimpse into the thousands of lives that made up the fabric of Cabrini Green’s community.

Katherine Davis on vocals leads a blues band in a Rogers Park recording studio for Art After Dark with Joe B. on guitar, Caleb Marcello on drums and Tony Milano on piano. Not pictured: Abraham on bass

Each apartment unit was a microcosm of Cabrini Green, an individual experience of public housing life and culture. Nevertheless, Davis explained, the culture of Cabrini Green was not confined to the walls of an apartment. Each unit existed as part of a greater whole, contributing to the overall community of Cabrini Green and the culture that developed in the safety and support of the greater housing project. Davis painted a picture in which the rhythms of the community flowed onto the streets in those early days of the housing development with sights and sounds created by the talented residents of each unit. The confines of Cabrini Green created a melting pot for the budding musicians, seamstresses, orators and various other artists, allowing them not only the liberty to exchange and develop ideas, but also to display them in the streets for all the world to see.

Katherine Davis on vocals leads a blues band in a Rogers Park recording studio for Art After Dark with Joe B. on guitar, Caleb Marcello on drums and Tony Milano on piano. Not pictured: Abraham on bass

And see the world did. Davis recalls how the doo-wop that was sung on Larrabee Street and the twist that was danced on the waxed floors of the Red Buildings (eight high-rises constructed of red bricks between Chicago Avenue and Division Street, Sedgwick and Larrabee Streets in the mid-1950s) soon found their way onto Chicago’s studio sets, broadcast onto the television screens of Americans nationwide. The culture pioneered within the microcosm of the Cabrini Green public housing development had left its mark on American pop culture of the ’50s and ’60s.

Katherine Davis on vocals leads a blues band in a Rogers Park recording studio for Art After Dark with Joe B. on guitar, Caleb Marcello on drums and Tony Milano on piano. Not pictured: Abraham on bass

In a cruel irony, however, Cabrini Green would remain a microcosm, a community marginalized from the broader fabric of Chicago and the nation. Within the safety of the community, the creativity of its residents was allowed to flourish. Beyond its limits, the music and dance pioneered within the projects was lauded by all. The artists and the community behind it, however, were ostracized for their race and low-income status.

Kerry James Marshall, "Slow Dance," 1992–1993, alongside works by June Leaf, Laura Letinsky, and H. C. Westermann, in the exhibition Take Care at the Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago

(Michael Tropea photo)

Davis’s tales of Cabrini Green end in ’67, when her family was able to buy a house on Chicago’s South Side. Nevertheless, Davis strives to immortalize the community and culture that flourished in the developments by teaching Chicago’s youth about the artists who came before them and their communities.

Octavio Cuesta De la Rosa is a recent graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he majored in history and minored in French and urban planning. He volunteers with the U.S. Naval Sea Cadet Corps.