Please join us for a day of Art, Youth, & Justice: Celebrating Youth Justice Month at the BMA!
Greenmount West Community Center Foundation and Advocates for Children and Youth (ACY) are collaborating to produce a day of programming at the Baltimore Museum of Art to show how the arts and youth justice intersect. The event is part of the observation of Youth Justice Month in October. The event will use art, discussions, and music to elevate the issues facing youth and activate participants to become part of the fight for youth justice reform.
This day will feature activities for all ages from 12pm-5pm including free admission to Generations: A History of Black Abstract Art. Generations: A History of Black Abstract Art offers a sweeping new perspective on the contributions black artists have made to the evolution of visual art from the 1940s to the present moment. Artists featured include pioneers of postwar abstraction once overlooked by history, such as Norman Lewis, Alma W. Thomas, and Jack Whitten, as well as artists from a younger generation such as Kevin Beasley, Mark Bradford, Martin Puryear, Lorna Simpson, and many others.
A central theme of the exhibition is the power of abstract art as a political choice as well as a personal statement for generations of black artists. The freedoms of postwar abstraction took on specific urgency as these artists resisted both the imagery of racist mainstream culture and pressures to create prescribed, positive representations of black Americans. The exhibition draws on the Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida Collection’s unparalleled holdings alongside highlights from the BMA’s growing collection of contemporary art and select loans.
Beginning at 12pm, there will be an exclusive screening of “PUSHOUT: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools”, a documentary film by Monique W. Morris, Ed.D. and Women in the Room Productions. This documentary encourages a robust conversation about how to reduce the criminalization of Black girls in our nation's learning environments. There will be a panel discussion following this screening brought to you in partnership with the University of Maryland School of Social Work Positive School Center.
At 2:30pm “Rethink Baltimore,” an initiative by ACY that was launched in January of 2018 as a youth justice awareness campaign aimed at changing the narrative of Baltimore City’s system-involved youth by examining the complex reality of their lives will be shown as a short film. Ultimately, the project highlighted issues beyond justice reforms to analyze, and build public support for, the inter-connected policy threads that shape the lives of youth from under-resourced areas: education, child welfare, economic sufficiency, and health. An action-oriented conversation in partnership with Stand Up Baltimore will immediately follow and conclude the free portion of the day. Please RSVP HERE!
The event will culminate with a benefit concert by Maimouna Youssef also known as Mumu Fresh, a Baltimore native who is a Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, MC, activist and acclaimed hip hop artist. Mumu Fresh has been called a “quadruple threat” by The Roots’ Black Thought and “groundbreaking” by Oscar-winning artist, Common. There will be a reception and silent auction immediately before the concert.