Dear Friends and Family,
On the brink of the new year on December 31, 2019 we stood at the foot of Kehinde Wiley's brand new monumental equestrian sculpture in downtown Richmond at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. There were a bunch of families gathered around taking pictures together. Emblematic of this entire year and entitled “Rumors of War,” the monument depicts an unarmed Black man in heroic pose atop a horse. The man’s sneakers are in the stirrups, looking back over their shoulder like Napoleon as they ride forward up a ridge. It was a strange harbinger of the year that was, and how it’s going. Kamala Harris will be named our vice president in a few weeks. In between, the apocalyptic has been commonplace; I mean, what a year.
Emil started high school this fall. Graduation this past spring from Mark Day School was likely the year’s highlight. Karen is still at Mark Day. This fall they've been doing hybrid learning. It’s the first time Karen and Emil have not been going to school together since Emil was in kindergarten. Karen has been eBiking to work, weather permitting. Emil goes to Albany High School from his bedroom. Ryan’s pretty much worked throughout all this as an essential worker at a local wine warehouse, and he’s been doing college online. We are all lucky to have weathered the pandemic, so far.
Feeling like museums are not where my fundraising energies can be best spent right now, I am now Director of Institutional Advancement for Congregation Rodef Sholom in Marin, working on a new building campaign. It has been nourishing to be connected to a purposeful and progressive synagogue during these crazy times.
I worked on a bunch of projects this year. The essential power of Black photography was definitely a key theme. We heard Dawoud Bey speak right before things really shut down, as well as Kwame Brathwaite, Jr., Tyler Mitchell and Dr. Deborah Willis. The exhibition of Bey’s work An American Project at SFMOMA was breathtaking, exhilarating and efficerating. I helped to conceive and organize San Francisco Cameraworks Annual Benefit Auction See How Beautiful I Am. Radical inclusion was the main theme and it was one of the most successful benefit auctions in Cameraworks’ recent history. With the largest direct payout to artists by far, the auction included works by Dawoud Bey and a tribute to Dr. Deborah Willis by Binh Danh. I was jazzed to see Isaac Julian’s installation Lessons of the Hour, maybe one of the finest art experiences of my life. Legacy Russell's Black Meme was the best online 2020 talk to which I listened “live.” She reined in anthropology, hauntology, dancing babies, deep-seated racism, fear, hope, humor and the ineffable.
Right now it’s feeling like smaller is better and local art matters most. The Oakland murals in response to the George Floyd execution were extraordinary, echoed in town squares across the country. I joined the program committee of the Berkeley Arts Center. For a brief window of time, the Art Center was open by appointment and We Have Teeth Too, was such an incredible installation. And I have filled so many journal pages over this year, it just might force me to come up with a strategy for the decades of accumulated drawings and writings.
In terms of books, I wanted to find wisdom in words and I did. The strongest likely was Octavia Butler’s Earthseed mantra: “Change is God.” I have been feeling radicalized by reading The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, to which was recently added The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex. The new Romare Bearden biography An American Odyssey (2019) by Mary Schmidt Campbell was really, really good.
Curious to see how great writers dealt with themes of plague or totalitarianism, I decided to try and convene a book group, based on important books or authors I’d yet to read. We read Christopher Ishherwood’s The Berlin Stories, (1946); George Orwell, Coming up for Air (1939); Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Talents (1998); Albert Camus The Plague (1947); and Ursula Le Guin The Dispossessed (1974). I found solace and inspiration in how shared this moment is with history. Thanks, everyone, for playing along; especially Andrea Daniel and Kathrin Randall, from Berlin.
There were all kinds of amazing things that happened that would have been more remarkable any given year. Right before lock down Karen and I went to go see Wyclef Jean in a club in downtown Berkeley. I am not sure how it was that he was playing in such a small joint. His performance was out of this world. It felt like we were kids again, together now for thirty-one years, and solidly in midlife.
In mid August the California wildfires led to lightning ripping and dancing through the evening sky like the end of days. The next day Emil picked up paperwork from Albany high. I’ve heard it debated whether “May you live in interesting times” is an “Irish toast” or a “Chinese curse.” I’m pretty sure it’s the latter, but I’m going to keep thinking of it as the former.
May this email find you doing well. I’m a little sad to report that the days of young Emil designing our year-end message are likely past us.We tried to make a card for this year and never got around to sending it. Perhaps we have finally become middle-aged yearly update letter people? We would love to hear from you.
Peace & Love,
James
P.S. Here is a small selection of pictures: https://photos.app.goo.gl/UEJNf7Fixtm3j527A Please feel free to comment and add yours pix, too, for us and others to share.
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