“Now is the Time: Artists Go to Work — Toni Morrison’s Atelier and the Importance of Artistic Convening and Collaboration” is a special program being held Friday, March 27, at 4:30 p.m. in the Wallace Theater at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts.
The program features a panel discussion inspired by the timestamp of America’s 250th anniversary and Morrison’s belief that in challenging times artists must go to work. The panel will grapple with the challenge Morrison articulated so presciently years ago: that independence, proclaimed in 1776, can only survive through interdependence — the ongoing collaborative work of relation, care, and creation.
The program is part of an ongoing initiative cosponsored by the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Princeton Atelier, The Collaboratorium for Radical Aesthetics, The Toni Morrison Foundation, and the Park Avenue Armory. A limited amount of free tickets are available at tickets.princeton.edu.
Private discussions and public programming will continue the following day, hosted by the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Park Avenue Armory. The panel is part of a series of convenings organized by Avery Willis Hoffman, artistic advisor for The Toni Morrison Foundation and the Marilyn F. Vitale Artistic Director of Court Theatre at University of Chicago; Tavia Nyong’o, curator of public programming at the Park Avenue Armory; and Tina Campt, director of the Princeton Atelier and Princeton’s Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor in the Humanities in the Program in Visual Arts and the Department of Art and Archaeology.
The project takes inspiration from Toni Morrison’s oft-cited quote: “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair.” Morrison (1931-2019) was Princeton’s Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus. While on faculty in Princeton’s Creative Writing and African American Studies programs (1989-2006), Morrison created the Princeton Atelier in 1994, inspired by her own collaborations with artists in other disciplines. The Atelier remains committed to the mutually-generative forms of inspiration that emerge out of vibrant artistic and intellectual exchanges.
“Morrison taught that the measure of a nation is not in its monuments but in the stories it has the courage to face,” note the organizers. “To reckon with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is to reckon with freedom declared in words long before it was lived in practice, and to grapple with a history that has constantly faced erasure. In the face of all the forces daunting the spirit, a convening of artists, thinkers, and communities will collectively reflect on the unfinished work this anniversary makes so strikingly apparent.”
The program is moderated by Campt and former Program Director for Arts and Culture at The Mellon Foundation Emil Kang. Panelists include curator and choreographer Rashida Bumbray; drummer, composer, producer, and educator Terri Lyne Carrington; founder of Kindred on the Rock, spoken-word poet and activist Staceyann Chin; MacArthur Fellow and movement artist Okwui Okpokwasili and her co-founder of Sweat Variant;director, composer and designer Peter Born; and bassist, composer, and educator Esperanza Spalding.
Following the public panel on March 27 at Princeton, the convening will continue the next day at the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. On the evening of March 28, the public is invited to join the working group at the Armory for a conversation with Staceyann Chin and Esperanza Spalding, and a concert performance by Toshi Reagon, musician, composer, singer, curator, producer, and Princeton Atelier alum.