Memory Opus I

Memory Opus I Presented by the Museum of the City of New York in New York Responds: The First Six Months December 18, 2020 - April 11, 2021

Table of Content

• Museum Press Release • Project Overview • Soundwork Team • Installation Team • Participants • Statements • Photos • Fact Sheets • Acknowledgments

NEW YORK RESPONDS: THE FIRST SIX MONTHS OPENS DECEMBER 18, 2020 Museum of the City of New York Documents the Changes and Challenges of New York City During 2020 -- Includes Community Jury Selections and Animated Timeline -- Complementary Digital Exhibition Offers Deeper Dive New York, NY, Dec. 01, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Museum of the City of New York announced its upcoming exhibition, New York Responds: The First Six Months, which builds upon the outdoor photography installation that opened this summer. Pulling from the more than 20,000 objects, photographs, artworks, and stories submitted to the Museum’s open call, the exhibition features selections made by a community jury, reflecting the changes and challenges of life in New York City from March through August 2020. Opening December 18, New York Responds paints a poignant and powerful portrait of the city, and it will be accessible both at the museum and online in a digital exhibition.

"History shows us that New York City always prevails despite challenges,” says Whitney Donhauser, Ronay Menschel Director and President of Museum of the City of New York. “Now, as we close out this unprecedented year, this exhibition highlights many of the powerful personal and public stories that unfolded. We thank the thousands of people who contributed to our open call, and the NYC community as a whole for their support during this tumultuous time.”

New York Responds: The First Six Months includes photographs, objects, videos, and works of art that document the impacts of Covid-19 and activism in 2020. Objects and images include:

Creative handmade masks and social distance markers; Photographs of mutual aid efforts, including food donation, community fridges, and volunteers; • A pan used in the 7 o’clock clapping for health care workers; • Photographs of activism for Black Lives Matter, including healthcare workers taking a knee; • An innovative ventilator devised by medical personnel at The Mount Sinai Health System; • Photographs of essential workers, including food delivery and public transportation.

Interactive elements also allow visitors to contribute their own experiences online, through an oral history recording project in partnership with Story Corps and the ongoing open call. Rounding out the exhibition are original works testifying to the creative responses of artists to the events of the year, including three major works on plywood that were created on storefronts in SoHo during the summer of 2020.

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After more than 20,000 nominations were submitted to the Museum’s open call, via hashtags #CovidStoriesNYC and #ActivistNY and by nonprofit collecting partners across the city, a community jury comprised of members from all walks of life made selections for the exhibition. To represent the vast quantity of contributions, the exhibition will also include a word cloud visualizing words from the thousands of nominated image captions.

“It’s not typical for us to document history while still living through it, but our open call provided an opportunity for the Museum to include a varied and diverse set of perspectives from across the five boroughs,” says Sarah Henry, Robert A. and Elizabeth Rohn Jeffe Chief Curator and Deputy Director at Museum of the City of New York. “It has been an honor to work with the talented members of our community jury to provide their perspective and expertise to our exhibition as our city transforms and adapts, and to reflect the work of so many institutions working t4o document this moment in our history.”

The New York Responds: The First Six Months Community Jury represents a range of backgrounds and perspectives of the city. Members included: Rohit T. Aggarwala, co-head of Urban Systems at Sidewalk Labs, Alphabet's urban technology subsidiary; Kurt Boone, author and street photographer; Rick Chavolla, educational consultant and Board Chair for the American Indian Community House of New York; Cheryl Cohen Effron, real estate developer and a senior adviser to Tishman Speyer Properties; Elsie Encarnacion, Dean of Family and Community Partnerships at East Harlem’s Innovation Charter High School; Jonathan Giftos, physician activist; Amanda Johnson, South Bronx-based artist and photographer; Juanita Lanzo, visual artist and arts consultant; Sarah Thankam Mathews, writer and activist; Alicia Parker, retired New York City Police Lieutenant; Lucas Sin, restaurateur/ entrepreneur; Kei Francis Williams, queer trans-masculine identified organizer, artist, and historian.

New York Responds: The First Six Months was organized by a curatorial team led by Sarah Henry, Robert A. and Elizabeth Rohn Jeffe Chief Curator and Deputy Director; with Lilly Tuttle, Curator; Azra Dawood and Monxo López, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellows; Sarah Seidman, Puffin Foundation Curator of Social Activism; Sean Corcoran, Curator of Prints and Photographs; Hannah Diamond, Eduction Manager; and Tracy McFarlan, Manager of Curatorial Projects and designed by Marissa Martonyi, Design Director. Christopher Paul Harris was a special advisor to the project.

Support: New York Responds is made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.

Additional support provided by M&T Bank and the Honorable Diana Ayala - New York City Council District 8. Special thanks to Duggal Visual Solutions.

Partners: Story Corps; Allen Hillery and the Data Visualization Society at Columbia University, including Elena Dubova, Daniel Hui Content Partners: Apollo Theater; Barnard Zine Library; Brooklyn Public Library; CAMBA; City Lore; Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies; Greenwich House; Henry Street Settlement; Historic Richmond Town; Mount Sinai Health System; Queens Memory; SoHo Broadway Initiative; The Bronx COVID 19 Oral History Project; The Center for Brooklyn History; The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center; The College of Staten Island, The City University of New York; West Harlem Art Fund; Wing on Wo & Co. About the Museum of the City of New York The Museum of the City of New York fosters understanding of the distinctive nature of urban life in the world’s most influential metropolis. It engages visitors by celebrating, documenting, and interpreting the city’s past, present, and future. To connect with the Museum on social media, follow us on Instagram and Twitter at @MuseumofCityNY and visit our Facebook page at Facebook.com/MuseumofCityNY. For more information, please visit www.mcny.org.

Robin Carol Museum of the City of New York rcarol@mcny.org Meryl Cooper Museum of the City of New York mwcooper@mcny.org Source: Museum of the City of New York

OVERVIEW Memory Opus I There is nuance in retelling. Sighs, whispers, smiles‌What will be supplemented in memory? What will be taken away? In remembering, the speaker adds just as much as is lost. Memory Opus welds the frayed edges of trauma, empowerment, independence and creativity in a soundscape series derived from Covid-Diaries POC—an ongoing archival project designed by The West Harlem Art Fund. Capturing the voices of people of color in quarantine, Memory Opus offers a poignant immersive experience touching on current events surrounding the Coronavirus Pandemic, identity, human rights, and global calls for social justice. Interviewees share fragile memories that capture the narrative arcs of our lives. An outdoor gardens grounded the first exhibit as audio retellings embodied the past, present and future. In listening, we create space for wholeness, growth and momentum. The adjustments one must make to adapt and survive are akin to the transformations required to live and thrive. Abstractions of human life are captured in Memory Opus; however, aesthetic beauty is given by the audience who will shape and make meaning as they take in our collective stories.

Curated by Savona Bailey McClain Soundscape Design by Nadia DeLane Landscape Artistry by Austin Arrington Sculpture by Conrad Levenson Music by Caleigh Drane Interviews by Julius Michel The project team is very excited to share all three sound works originally presented on Governors Island at the Museum of the City of New York in New York Responds: The First Six Months.

SOUNDWORK TEAM Lead Curator Savona Bailey-McClain is Executive Director/Chief Curator of the West Harlem Art Fund, which has organized high-profile public arts exhibits throughout New York City for the past 20+ years, including Times Square, DUMBO, Soho, Governors Island and Harlem. Her public art installations encompass sculpture, drawings, performance, sound, and mixed media, and have been covered extensively by the New York Times, Art Daily, Artnet, Los Angeles Times and Huffington Post, among many others. She is host/ producer of “State of the Arts NYC,” a weekly radio program on iTunes, Radio Public, Youtube, Mixcloud and other audio platforms. She is a member of ArtTable, Governors Island Advisory Council and NYC Sacred Places Advisory Board.

Performance/Sound Artist Nadia DeLane is a multimedia designer and visual storyteller working in installation, film, digital and fine art. DeLane has produced creative content for organizations and institutions including the School of Visual Arts, Parsons School of Design, Stone Lantern Films, and Turnstone Productions. Currently, she serves as co-director of the storytelling residency, VISUAL MUZE with the West Harlem Art Fund.

Her work has been featured in online publications such as AI-AP’s Design Arts Daily (DART). DeLane’s film

HOME (2018) focused on the homegrown stories of first and secondgeneration Caribbean and Latin American immigrants has screened for nonprofit groups and institutions including The New School. Coif City Vol. 1, her artist book on women’s hair culture, is currently available at Printed Matter and Bluestockings in NYC, as well as Gosh! London. DeLane’s stopmotion films Spilt Milk and Utica were featured in film festivals and immersive art experiences including the Twisted Oyster International Film Festival in Chicago. DeLane was the 2017 Artist-in-Residence at the Arte Studio Ginstrelle in Assisi, Italy, where she created a series of poems and illustrations on motherhoods. DeLane is a proud Digital Media Mentor with the NYC-based organization Girls Write Now. Her work can be found on permanent display in Penn State University’s Africana Research Center and the Heart and Kidney Transplant Center at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Jersey. She holds an MFA in Visual Narrative from the School of Visual Arts, an MA in English Literature from Penn State, and a BA in English from Rutgers University.

Composer/Cellist Caleigh Drane has recorded on Sony Classical and has performed, recorded and collaborated with nearly 100 artists spanning all genres. As a chamber and orchestral musician, she has performed in some of the world’s most prestigious venues including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Disney Hall and Auditorio Nacional of Mexico. She maintains an active schedule as a soloist, chamber musician, recording artist and music educator.

She has performed with several notable artists of the classical music world including Mark O’Connor, Sarah Chang, Sir James Galway, Lynn Harrell, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, and has worked under the baton of Gerard Schwarz, Conductor Laureate

of the Seattle Symphony. Ms. Drane regularly performs in several New York City based orchestras in the city’s most notable venues.

Along with her classical training and career, Caleigh has built a successful career performing with some of today’s leading pop and rock stars.

Notable artists include Imogen Heap, John Cale, The Jonas Brothers, and Ra Ra Riot. Venues include Webster Hall, Radio City Music Hall, MTV studios in Times Square, and El Rey in Los Angeles. She has recorded on over a dozen pop, folk and rock albums.

Caleigh received her B.M. from Indiana University, where she studied with Emilio Colon. She has also studied with Eric Kim, Eleanor Schoenfeld, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, and Janos Starker.

Youth Intern/ Media Assistant Hi, my name is Julius Michel and I’m currently 17 years old. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, but my family is from Trinidad and Haiti. I’m in the 12th grade and I attend school at New Explorations into Science, Technology, and Math in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. My interests and aspirations are in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and in sports as I wish to be a mechanical engineer or a sports analyst in the near future.

INSTALLATION TEAM (GOVERNORS ISLAND) Landscape Designer Austin Arrington is a sustainability consultant based in NYC and the West Coast. As CoFounder of Plant Group, Austin has helped to design and build urban farms and green spaces across the Northeast. He holds a MS in Environmental Science from SUNY-ESF and a MA in Bioethics from NYU.

Sculptor/Public Artist Conrad Levenson salvages scrap materials and obsolete objects. He recomposes and repurposes them as as works. Levenson often combine previously unrelated elements, in new and unexpected ways, and incorporate geometric and anthropomorphic forms, often in balance and motion.

The sculptures evoke the former times, places, lives, unique character and embedded energy of their sources materials. I tell their stories, as I explore and mediate the essential relationship between their form and content.

His sculptures range in size from the intimate to large-scale installations.

They vary in height from several inches to fifteen feet and weigh a few ounces up to thousands of pounds. Displayed, indoors and out, often in spaces and settings of my own design, my sculptures connect people, visually and emotionally, to the natural and built environments.

Levenson’s sculptures and commissioned works are included in private collections, galleries and outdoor public art venues. I have exhibited, throughout the region. with the Sculptors Guild on Governors Island; the Sculpture Expos in Red Hook, New York; the Studio 80 Sculpture Grounds, Old Lyme, Connecticut; the Red Devon, Bangall, New York; the Ice House on the Hudson, Poughkeepsie, New York; the McDaris Gallery, Hudson, New York; the Highland Falls Sculpture Walk, Highland Falls, New York; and the Meredith Sculpture Walk, Meredith, New Hampshire.

PARTICIPANTS • Ahalia Persaud • Asha Alshabazz • C. Niambi Steele • Capital Ode • Caroline Wilson • Fatuma Dahir • Ijeoma Emodi • Julius Michel • Marcus McArthur • Dario Mohr • Ikim Powell • Natachi Mez • Veronica Jones • Maritta Dunn • Kraig Blue

STATEMENT FROM THE MANHATTAN BOROUGH HISTORIAN In New York City, the pandemic has driven so many of us indoors that it’s difficult to connect with other people. That’s why this art installation is so valuable.

Memory Opus I, which sits in a garden on Governor’s Island, combines this sculpture, music, and recorded voices to share the stories of people of color in quarantine. Organized by the West Harlem Art Fund, the project presents oral history interviews in a garden setting that encourages listening and reflection.

Savona Bailey McClain, curator of the installation, was inspired by a meeting of historians that discussed both the lack of memorials to the flu pandemic of 1918 and how the covid pandemic today produced disproportionate numbers of deaths among African American and Latinx New Yorkers.

Memory Opus I is in the final stages of production, but even as a work in progress it is healing and inspiring. I visited the site two weeks ago and was impressed by its setting—in the Nolan Park section of Governor’s Island, next to elegant officer’s housing built in the nineteenth century and beautiful flowers planted in our own time.

And this sculpture that is the center of the installation, Personal Goalpost

by Conrad Levenson, makes me think of the long and lonely struggles of so many people in the pandemic: essential workers who labored in the face of danger, people forced to live in isolation, people who recovered after long battles with the virus, and the people who died alone, far from friends and loved ones. Their stories, their memories, and our questions all have a place at Memory Opus I.

The building next to the site is being refurbished by Savona’s crew and will serve as a home for artists in residence from the summer through November 1. It’s already booked solid.

The nimble energy that produced Memory Opus I, and the popularity of the artists’ residency program, are testaments to New Yorkers’ extraordinary capacity for making art in difficult times.

Just as the deaths of September 11, 2001 were met by memorials everywhere from street corners to Union Square, so too on Governor’s Island are artists and gardeners writing the first draft of commemoration in the pandemic. All who visit this spot will benefit from looking and listening.

Memory Opus I is the work of curator Savona Bailey McClain, sculptor Conrad Levenson, soundscape designer Nadia Delane, and landscape artist Austin Arrington, with music by Caleigh Drane.

— Robert Snyder, Manhattan Borough Historian.

STATEMENT FROM EXALT YOUTH Even with the uncertainty of this pandemic – in fact even more so because of it – Exalt encourages young people to shape and take ownership of the world they live in. Exalt’s programs are designed through a racial justice equity lens, particularly with Black and Latino youth in mind, and we place a strong emphasis on the development and expression of strong young voices in NYC. It is inspiring to have Julius Michel play an instrumental role in the West Harlem Art Fund project.

—- Gisele Castro, Executive Director

Photos taken by Julius Michel

WEST HARLEM ART FUND EXHIBITION SPACE, GOVERNORS ISLAND

AUSTIN ARRINGTON AND LANDSCAPE TEAM

PUBLIC ART SCULPTURE GOAL POST BY CONRAD LEVENSON

COVID DIARIES POC PARTICIPANT

COVID DIARIES POC PARTICIPANTS

COVID DIARIES POC PARTICIPANTS

COVID DIARIES POC PARTICIPANT

COVID DIARIES POC PARTICIPANTS

FACT SHEET COVID-19 Hospitalization and Death by Race/Ethnicity Source Center for Disease Control August 18, 2020 For every white person (non-Hispanic person) diagnosed with Covid, diagnosis rates are: 2.8 higher for Native Americans and Alaska Natives.

2.8 higher for Hispanic and Latinos 2.6 higher for Blacks and African Americans 1.1 higher for Asians For every white person that dies from Covid, death rates are: 3.2 higher for Indigenous People 3.0 higher for Hispanics and Latinos 3.0 higher for Blacks and African Americans 2.3 higher for Pacific Islanders 1.1 higher for Asians

FACT SHEET Race and Medicine: 5 Dangerous Medical Myths That Hurt Black People Published in Healthline, 2020 Written by Alicia A. Wallace Fact checked by Jennifer Chase (Excerpts) Race is a social construct, not a medical condition At the start of the pandemic, misinformation and memes circulated that Black people were immune to COVID-19. This was quickly recognized as dangerous and rooted in a long history of systemic racism within the medical field.

In 1792, there was a yellow fever outbreak and it was thought that African Americans were immune.

It happened again with smallpox in the 1870s, which was thought to have no impact on Black people.

Racist ideology and othering of Black people made these myths easy for a white public to swallow, and made it easy for medical professionals to believe that Black people felt less pain than white people.

Five healthcare myths include: • Black patients present signs and symptoms in the same way as white patients • Race dictates health outcomes • Black patients cannot be trusted • Black patients exaggerate their pain and have higher tolerance for pain • Black patients are medication-seeking

These myths are all based in bias and where Black patients are often denied needed pain medication. In the April 2016 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences written by Kelly M. Hoffman, Sophie Trawalter, Jordan R. Axt and M. Norman Oliver, 50% of 418 medical students and residents still believe at least one myth about race.

FACT SHEET History of American Police Brutality Published by The National Trial Lawyers: Top 100 (Excerpts) Today’s stories of police harshness are not a modern phenomenon.

In the 1830s and 1840s, use-of-force in apprehension was as controversial as it is today. Because officers were mainly involved in implementing public order laws upon drunkenness and gambling, irritating labor organizers, and surveilling liberated slaves and immigrants, the public’s view supported limitations on use-of-force.

However, the advantage of an armed presence allowed to apply deadly force followed the interests of economic elites who fancied established police departments. The troops were believed crucial because the “organizations intervened between the propertied elites and propertyless masses who were regarded as politically dangerous as a class.” From the derivation, police in the United States have been confined to the economy’s desires and demands.

“This idea of police brutality was very much on people’s minds in 1963, following on the years, decades really, of police abuse of power and then centuries of oppression of African-Americans,” says William Pretzer, Smithsonian museum senior history curator.

Social media and live streams have progressed police brutality incidents beyond the black population and mainstream interpretations. “Modern technology allows, indeed insists, that the white community take notice of these kinds of situations and incidents,” Pretzer says.

As technology has evolved, so has the means of law enforcement.

Departments with substantial militant equipment are presented as

standard in U.S. neighborhoods. “What we see is a continuation of an unequal relationship that has been exacerbated, made worse if you will, by the militarization and the increase in fire power of police forces around the country,” Pretzer claims. According to the curator, the answers lie in correcting troubled police-community relations and crushing social inequalities.

How has police brutality shifted over the years 19th Century When killings were recorded, it was found that Chicago police killed 307 people, equivalent 1 in 18 per city. Officers were allowed to use deadly force in self defense to “prevent riots that endanger officers, or to deter suspects from fleeing.”

“A police officer murdered a child by shooting him in 1910 after mistaking his identity. The police chief unveiled that the boy “probably was large for his age.”

20th Century Racism ran rampant, with discrimination across all aspects of life: work, education, law enforcement. Police departments conducted unlawful arrests, using racial profile and refusing investigations on police cruelty. In 1991, the first footage of police cruelty, the unprovoked beating of Rodney King was “one of the first kind and enduring altered a discussion about race and profiling in the United States.”

21st century Unfortunately, the cases above parallel today’s racist police incidents almost exactly. But protests, looting and more suggest that perhaps a revolution against police brutality has begun.

FACT SHEET THE COLOR OF CORONAVIRUS: COVID-19 DEATHS BY RACE AND ETHNICITY IN THE U.S. APM Research Lab The coronavirus has claimed more than 240,000 American lives through Nov. 10, 2020—nearly 25,000 more than our last update four weeks ago.

We have documented the race and ethnicity for 96% of the cumulative deaths in the United States.

Our latest update reveals that Black and Indigenous Americans continue to suffer the greatest loss of life—with both groups now experiencing a COVID-19 death toll exceeding 1 in 1,000 nationally.

We also adjust these mortality rates for differences in the age distribution of populations, a common and important tool that health researchers use to compare diseases that affect age groups differently. At the national level, this results in even larger documented mortality disparities—Black, Indigenous and Latino Americans all have a COVID-19 death rate of triple or more White Americans, who experience the lowest ageadjusted rates.

The APM Research Lab has independently compiled these death statistics.

The result is the most robust and up-to-date portrait of COVID-19 mortality by race available anywhere, with a lens on inequitable deaths.

We are now presenting mortality data over time for all states—not just cumulatively—to help us monitor the virus’ changing impacts throughout fall and winter. We have been tracking these deaths for seven months now, revealing COVID-19’s growing toll on all Americans, but with the heaviest losses among Black, Indigenous and Latino Americans.

KEY FINDINGS (from data through Nov. 10): • Of the more than 240,000 U.S. deaths catalogued in this Color of Coronavirus update, this is the number of deaths documented by group through Nov. 10, 2020: Asian (8,687), Black (46,211), Indigenous (2,251), Latino (46,912), Pacific Islander (334) and White (123,429). Additionally, 5,373 deaths are recorded only as “other” race (and likely include more Indigenous people and Pacific Islanders), while another 8,510 had an unknown race.

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In the past four weeks, the death rate among Indigenous people has accelerated the fastest (shown by a steeper slope in the graph above).

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These are the documented, nationwide actual mortality impacts from COVID-19 data (aggregated from all U.S. states and the District of Columbia) for all race groups: ◦ 1 in 875 Black Americans has died (or 114.3 deaths per 100,000) ◦ 1 in 925 Indigenous Americans has died (or 108.3 deaths per 100,000) ◦ 1 in 1,275 Latino Americans has died (or 78.5 deaths per 100,000) ◦ 1 in 1,325 Pacific Islander Americans has died (or 75.5 deaths per 100,000) ◦ 1 in 1,625 White Americans has died (or 61.7 deaths per 100,000) ◦ 1 in 2,100 Asian Americans has died (or 47.6 deaths per 100,000)

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Black Americans continue to experience the highest actual COVID-19 mortality rates nationwide—about two or more times as high as the rate for Whites & Asians, who have the lowest actual rates. Indigenous Americans’ death rate is slightly lower than Blacks.

If they had died of COVID-19 at the same actual rate as White Americans, about 21,200 Black, 10,000 Latino, 1,000 Indigenous and 70 Pacific Islander Americans would still be alive.

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Adjusting the data for age differences in race groups widens the gap in the overall mortality rates between all other groups and Whites, who have the lowest rate. It also reveals that Indigenous people have suffered the greatest losses, accounting for age differences, followed closely by Blacks and Latinos. Compared to Whites, the latest U.S. age-adjusted COVID-19 mortality rate for: ◦ Indigenous people is 3.2 times as high ◦ Blacks is 3.0 times as high ◦ Latinos is 3.0 times as high ◦ Pacific Islanders is 2.3 times as high, and ◦ Asians is 1.1 times as high.

Acknowledgments Funding for COVID Diaries POC and Memory Opus I was provided by The Desai Sethi Foundation. Fiscal sponsors for COVID Diaries POC was Ankhlave Arts Alliance Inc.

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