The Bakersfield Museum of Art is hosting the exhibition Hobos to Street People from December 10, 2009 to February 21, 2010. It is an important and a rare thing for museums to address issues of poverty. Here we are in the worst recession since the Depression, and the majority of museums (at least in the San Francisco Bay Area) are doing fashion shows. If art is to have any connection to society, it must demonstrate that connection in exhibitions like this. For the issue of homelessness this is particularly true because the primary reaction to homelessness, is to pretend it doesn’t exist, or to make it disappear by criminalizing it. And here a museum is holding it up and saying, look this is a serious issue that needs to be understood and effectively addressed. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Social Justice Artwork’ Category
WRAP Launches “Hobos to Street People” Virtual Exhibit!
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
In collaboration with California Exhibition Resources Alliance and Design Action Collective, WRAP has launched “Hobos to Street People: Artists’ Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present.”
Like the powerful traveling show put together by WRAP lead artist Art Hazelwood, this virtual exhibit chronicles and contrasts two epochs of mass homelessness through social justice artwork. The Timeline shows federal policies on housing and homelessness from 1929 to 2008.
The images and commentary couldn’t be more relevant in this historic moment. One visitor noted, “The best thing about this show is it makes people think. I live it. It’s so real. All this is so true.” (more…)
Art for Hard Times: No New Deal but a reawakened solidarity
Thursday, August 6th, 2009
Growing unemployment, tent cities and foreclosures … One starts to wonder if it is 1929, not 2009. Is it enough to make you hum a few bars of “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” Some politically engaged artists believe it’s time to do a whole lot more.
California-based artist and printmaker Art Hazelwood thinks that the conditions demand a resurgence of relevant, political art. Hazelwood is the curator of an exhibit called “Hobos to Street People: Artists’ Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present,” on display at the California Historical Society in San Francisco through August 15. This exhibit brings together the work of visual artists dealing with poverty and homelessness in the hopes of encouraging this type of work now and in the future. (more…)
Last Chance to see Hobos to Street People Exhibit in SF
Monday, August 3rd, 2009
Hobos to Street People: Artists’ Responses to Homelessness From the New Deal to the Present exhibition had a fantastic run at the California Historical Society.
The special public programs, the publicity received, and the newly developed website for the exhibition have all contributed to raising people’s awareness to issues of poverty and to the historical parallels and contrasts between the Great Depression and the last twenty-five years of contemporary homelessness. The California Historical Society presents a bridge between historical material and contemporary issues of poverty in an exhibition that couldn’t be more appropriate to the present moment. (more…)
Hobos to Street People Art Exhibit
Monday, May 11th, 2009
Terry “Tresa” Chandler stood in the vaulted art gallery. Her tiny 4 foot, 11 inch figure was dwarfed by the colorful painting of a Hispanic boy walking to school past a rotten tomato splashed against graffiti on a wall, ordering ‘Homeless Go Home.”
He is protected by four adults as he walks to a school for homeless children. Artist, Nili Yosha, crafted the work after Norman Rockwell ’s illustration of guards escorting a small black girl into a newly integrated Little Rock school.
Terry tilted her head, peering at me with a shy, sardonic smile. “When people say this,” she observed, “They are doing it to be mean.”
“It’s good that homeless people get to see [this show] too. Then we can tell you if it’s real or not.”
“The best thing about this show is it makes people think.” Her voice echoed slightly, “I live it. It’s so real. All this is so true.” (more…)