Closing Bell: Creative Time Remembers "Black Radical Brooklyn" in Crown Heights, Bed Stuy

Creative Time — the arts organization that produced Kara Walker’s Domino installation — and Weeksville Heritage Center have partnered to create four month-long exhibits exploring black history, politics and jazz at sites throughout Crown Heights and Bed Stuy. “Funk, God, Jazz, and Medicine: Black Radical Brooklyn” launches September 20 at Weeksville Heritage Center in Weeksville, pictured above, one of America’s oldest free black communities and now part of Crown Heights.

For “funk,” artist Xenobia Bailey worked with students at Boys & Girls High School in Bed Stuy to design upcycled furniture “created in the African American aesthetic of funk,” which will be on display at Weeksville’s Hunterfly Road Homes. Then cinematographer Bradford Young is exploring the concept of “god” with a video installation paying tribute to the “pioneering Black women, men, and children who embarked on countless journeys in search of refuge” at the former site of the Bethel Tabernacle African Methodist Episcopal Church in Crown Heights.

Also, an exhibit at Stuyvesant Mansion will examine the history of black female nurses and doctors, including the United Order of Tents, New York’s first black woman OB-GYN, and the Black Panthers’ community healthcare efforts. Finally, artist collective Otabenga Jones and Associates will broadcast live jazz from a temporary radio station in the back of a 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Ville at Fulton and Malcolm X. For more info on the exhibits and the opening party, head over to Creative Time.

Photo via Creative Time