Opening the Doors: Libraries and Public Art as Inclusive Spaces in a Book-Banning Era

Episode Transcript

Vincent Boudreau 00:14

To From City to the World, I'm your host. Vince Boudreau, the President of The City College of New York. From City to the World is a show about how the work that we're doing here at City College matters to people across the city and throughout the world. So, we'll discuss the practical application of our research in solving real world issues like poverty, homelessness, mental health challenges, affordable housing disparities in a whole range of other issues. Now today we're going to discuss freedom of speech and expression with a particular effort on efforts to limit the kinds of books that are available, limits being placed on school curricula and related topics. Then we're going to look at the availability of other forms of artistic expression that we can experience to both educate ourselves and our children about those struggles and about broader issues of social justice.
So, a little bit of background before we go into the conversation. According to usnews.com attempts to restrict access to books and library materials reached a 20-year high in the United States in 2022, and that's per an article that cites recently released data from the American Library Association. So according to that data, in 2020, only 223 titles were challenged. But in 2022, that number increased tenfold to 2,571. In addition, there were nearly 700 attempts to restrict access to almost 2000 different books, library materials and services across the United States in the first eight months of 2023, according to the American Library Association. The ALA tracks attempts to ban book titles both successful and unsuccessful based on reports from library professionals and media coverage. But the organization expects that its data reflects only a snapshot of book censorship, meaning that the true story is probably bigger and more pernicious than even these alarming statistics suggest.
So, challenges are made at the local level via petitions by private citizens for books to be removed from public school and academic library shelves according to the organization so far this year, 11 states have documented attempts to challenge more than 100 titles in their communities. The ALA notes that of titles challenged in 2023 so far, the vast majority of challenges were to books written by or about persons of color or a member of the LGBTQIA+ community. All 13 of the most challenged books in 2022 were challenged for allegedly alleged sexually explicit content, and more than half included claims of LGBTQIA+ content. The most challenged books in 2022 were Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson, and The Bluest Eye by Nobel Prize winning novelist Toni Morrison. The 10 states with the most books challenged or banned at the local levels are Texas, Virginia, Florida, Tennessee, Idaho, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Missouri, North Carolina, and Connecticut. That last one kind of surprised me. Although the state of New York is not high on the list, there have been 33 attempts to restrict access to books with LGBTQIA+ content.
So, to discuss some of these challenges libraries are facing in this climate and ways around them is Mario Ramirez, the associate Dean and Chief librarian at City College's Libraries. He's our first guest and his task is to develop and lead the library's collection, which includes more than 1.44 million books, 50,000 periodicals, 1 million digital images, and 240 databases. As head of special collections and archives at the California State University, Los Angeles Ramirez's vision and leadership supported the equitable representation of immigrants, women, LGBTQIA+ communities and communities of color in special collections and archives. He also served as project archivist, I almost said activist, but that kind of those blend together sometimes.

Mario Ramirez 04:11

A little bit of both.

Vincent Boudreau 04:12

A little bit of both. He also served as project archivist for the Center for Puerto Rican studies at Hunter College for eight years. He's a graduate of UCLA where he completed his PhD in the Department of Information Studies. His research focused on the documentation of human rights violations in El Salvador as a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University Bloomington, where I was born, he developed a migration plan for the archival Meso Americano, a collection of videos documenting the history, social movements and culture and indigenous languages of Mexico, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Dr. Ramirez, welcome to From City to the World.

Mario Ramirez 04:49

Thank you so much for the introduction.

Vincent Boudreau 04:50

So, we're going to spend the first half of our show speaking with Dr. Ramirez. Then we're going to bring in Savona Bailey-McClain, and I'll talk about her a little bit more when we get to the second half of the show. So let me start off by acknowledging that your relatively recent addition to the City College community, we went years and years without having a permanent head librarian permanent, not in the sense that you can never leave the job, but you are not an interim appointment.

Mario Ramirez 05:21

I haven't been threatened yet.

Vincent Boudreau 05:22

You're the guy. So as the permanent head librarian of City College, can you start by talking a little bit about your vision for the library, whether it's CCNY specifically or as somebody who works in this field. What's the role of libraries in our society today?

Mario Ramirez 05:39

Well, I think first of all, thank you so much for having me in the show, and thank you so much for bringing me to CCNY. It's been such a pleasure to be here, and I really love my job. When I tell people about it, they keep wondering what's going on with me. They're a little bit worried about my moments because it was a lot to take on, but I really adore my job. I love City College and I really adore my colleagues; I think they're all really fantastic people. So, I just wonderful to say that. But I think let's stick specifically to the City College of Libraries, I think it's sort of a vision that's evolving in many respects and a vision that I think really needs to be developed collectively in many respects. But in terms of talking to my colleagues who work in the libraries, but also the students, the faculty, the administration, and really trying to determine what is it that we want from the libraries.
Obviously, there are certain national trends that are occurring with libraries in terms of making them much more a part of their campus communities in many ways and shifting the use of spaces in libraries and the focus of the work that librarians do in many ways, outside of more what's been traditionally perceived as being the purview of libraries. In other words, sort of like a space where only books reside and people are helped, but in a way the use of the space is secondary in many respects. Oftentimes they just focus on the books themselves. So certainly, there are a lot of trends happening, but I think, so in many ways I sort of adhere to that in the sense that I want our libraries to be a part of the broader community, I think rather than being closed off in any sense or people having a sense that they're not very welcome to those spaces. And that means not only transforming the spaces, but also transforming the kind services that we provide for the campus community and for the broader Harlem community in many ways. How do we bring people into the library as opposed to people feeling that they can't come into the library?
And that can take on many manifestations, and I think that really is a collective vision that we all need to develop. Obviously, I have certain ideas that are informed by my own past work in libraries and archives and why I came to libraries and archives in many ways. And those are very much inculcated with social justice principles. So, I'm very focused on collective work and collective decision-making and empowering individuals both with knowledge but also through leadership in sort of the many ways that can manifest itself. But I think moreover, it really is a matter of having a conversation with people on campus about what that looks like, vis-a-vis forums, vis-a-vis surveys and what have you, in order to really fulfill a better vision of what those libraries can mean for people and how can they be really an agent of change in their lives in many ways, how that can be a place of belonging in many ways on this campus since we are a community campus in many ways, and particularly also for the students that we serve on this population, which are people like myself, finding a home for them and feeling welcome and feeling accepted in many ways, even if they're only here for a day, I think is really tantamount for the kind of work that we need to do on this campus.

Vincent Boudreau 08:41

And you referenced your specific history as an archivist and the work you've done.

Mario Ramirez 08:48

Right.

Vincent Boudreau 08:49

One of the things that... I mean I'm asking because I know.

Mario Ramirez 08:51

Sure.

Vincent Boudreau 08:51

That we get approached all the time from artists, social actors, community organizations in Harlem that are deeply committed to preserving the history of their work at a time when things evaporate very, very quickly. And of course, we've got the Schomburg Center right down the street, but we have a role there too. And I wonder if you can think about your work in the library in relationship to the college's work and the community?

Mario Ramirez 09:24

Well, I think one of the reasons that my candidacy was potentially attractive to the Search Committee and some of the people that I spoke to that was on campus was the fact that my background is specifically in community archives. And that's how I came into archival work. I always tell people that I got into archival work through pure serendipity. It was purely accidental. I have no background in history. I was focused on post-structuralist theory and visual culture during my studies and psychoanalysis when I studied at the new school. And I have an MA in rhetoric, and so there's nothing to that, nothing that sort of linked me to archives. I was a denizen of libraries since I was a child and very much saw them as safe spaces in many ways and spent a lot of time reading and spending time in libraries. And that's where I felt safe and comfortable and sort of seen in many ways.
But oddly enough, I never worked in the library, although many of my friends did throughout college and what have you. But so, I stumbled upon archival work, but it was in a very specific context. A friend of mine, I was on the lab from grad school because I was doing a PhD in rhetoric at UC Berkeley, and I took a leave of absence because I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue. And so, I came back to New York and a friend of mine had just finished doing research at the Center for Puerto Rican studies at Hunter College, and she got tired of me sort of wandering around the house being depressed, and she's like, "Mario, why don't you just go volunteer at the Center and have some purpose in your life?" So, I went and initially I was just doing some database for them. I mean this is the late '90s technologically, we were not that forward, but it was a marvel to me.
And I think for me, a lot of the archival work, a lot of the questions that I was asking in my sort of more theoretical work about what is history, who's written into history, how are these things constructed, were certainly addressed through archival work and sort of the resuscitation and recapturing and preservation of the histories of communities of color, and specifically in this instance, the history of Puerto Rican communities, right? So, suffice to say that I come into this picture certainly as the Chief Librarian Associate Dean, but also as someone who is recently as a few months ago, was working at the preservation of the histories of communities of color and has always been my sole focus for most of my career for the past 20 years. So I think not only do I say that that was appealing to the Search Committee, but I think moreover given I think some of our conversations about the preservation of community history in Harlem, working collaboratively with the Schomburg and then trying to find a way that we established reciprocal relationships with Harlem based communities where, yes, we participate in their documentation preservation, but we also give something back to them in some way, shape or form because universities of histories of just sort of plundering people's holdings and then not really giving back to these communities.
And I think a lot of the history of this institution in terms of it being embedded in Harlem and not being of Harlem in many ways up until the 1970s, I think really speaks to the fact that that's also an ethos or sort of a train of an ethos that we need to sort of follow as well, right? And I think as we sort of start initially these steps into working collaboratively with community partners or individuals in Harlem to preserve their materials, I think we need to keep that in mind as we move forward, which thankfully we've already started doing. But I think also we need to think about that as we move forward as well. How do we practice that ethically in many ways? But then also I think if we're going to be doing that, then how are we then as an institution open to the Harlem community, right?
One of the challenges we had at the Center for Puerto Rican studies is that as an independent institute and research center and library archive, it was open to the general public, but then the security guards would always say like, "Hey, we don't know you." Or if they switched security guards, oftentimes there were barriers to the community coming in. So also, how do we not contribute to that barrier building? And sort of goes back to what I was saying earlier, if we're going to make the libraries blend more with the campus community, how do we blend it more with the Harlem community as well? And I think that also is intrinsically tied to our increasing role as a repository for the history of Harlem.

Vincent Boudreau 14:05

A couple of things you said, kind of in passing, those of you listening, we do write some of these questions ahead of time and...

Mario Ramirez 14:14

They're quite extensive.

Vincent Boudreau 14:16

They kind of point to something I wanted to ask you about specifically, which is library as protected space.

Mario Ramirez 14:22

Sure.

Vincent Boudreau 14:23

And there's really two kind of things that I wanted to say. I mean, the first is you read the life histories of social change agents. The one my father taught me when I was a student in his class was Frederick Douglass writing about his story, and it pivots on this moment when in Maryland he's taught to read. But you hear time and time again of people who are in uncertain unsafe places that the library or maybe more generally literacy and books provided the way forward. I wonder how you think about that as a librarian either as our librarian or as a member of the international brotherhood and sisterhood of people who guard our knowledge in these places. I mean, there's a kind of sacredness to the work that you do, right?

Mario Ramirez 15:19

There is in many respects. But I think also we have to think the distinction between, I think we need to sort of think the distinction between public libraries, which has really served the role in which you are articulating, right? And I think the way in which public libraries, which I worked at NYPL at the beginning of my career as well, and I think I mentioned earlier that for me libraries were safe harbors as well. Public libraries were all of those things happen. It's the first stop for many immigrants. I taught Spanish language like internet classes in the '90s to the Dominican community in Washington Heights. So, it's really a point where people go in many ways where people tell them to go to the library.
And in fact actually that public library, which was the Fort Washington branch on 179th Street I think was also a de facto teen center because they had nowhere else to go. And so around 3:00 PM we were like, "Oh my god, the teens are coming." And they'd be yelling, they be trying to get a date with the person next to them and so on and so forth. And as much as it drove us crazy, it was also the only place they could go and they felt safe after class in the neighborhood.
So, I think that's really something, an important thing we need to point out. Certainly university libraries have sort of been at the front of intellectual freedom in many ways, but I think in going back to what I was saying earlier, how does that public library ethos of being a part of the community but also welcoming people in various capacities, not just to look at a book, obviously that's great, but also in to get digital resources, but also, well, what other kind of services can one provide for one in the library particularly again on a campus that is particularly almost predominantly a computer campus, right? So how do we take that ethos and then transform the university library in that respect so that it's not an off-putting center of books or intellectual material where folks don't feel welcome to come in or that they belong to. And so, I think how do we transform that in many ways, and particularly here given the mission of this particular institution, the student body of this particular institution.

Vincent Boudreau 17:36

So now I want to turn a little bit more directly to the challenges to freedom of expression in books. I wonder if you can start by, can you put the current spate of book banning in some kind of historical perspective? We had the numbers at the beginning of the show and the ALA is talking about a tenfold increase of books that have been challenged. How do you think about that in relationship to the history? And we have a long history of people trying to shut down communities by shutting down what they can say or what they can learn or what they can read. How do you think about the current moment that we're in?

Mario Ramirez 18:14

Well, I mean first of I'll say I'm not a historian, so I don't know if I can give you the proper historical context-

Vincent Boudreau 18:18

But you are a librarian.

Mario Ramirez 18:19

That's happening. But I think it's certainly troubling in many respects. I think the current president, ALA Emily Drabinski has been attacked and doxxed in many ways online. And so, there's anyone who's challenging or pushing back on these various sort of mom groups or what have your individuals that are perpetuating this kind of censorship and trying to shut down the freedom of discourse in many ways I think are running into real life threats in many ways. But I think that's always been at hand in many ways. Like book burnings, other kind of book banning people, trying to keep people from knowledge banning, former slaves from reading. I think there's just a desire to shut down discourse and knowledge in a way to sort of corral and resist difference, be it racial difference, sexual orientation or what have you. I think over a difference of opinion, I think there's always a desire to really speak in the US context, to really return to some sort of very naive narrative of what the US was, which I think if you speak to anyone who lived in those times, it wasn't particularly sort of a wellspring of freedom for them in many ways.
And certainly, speak to anyone in the Latin American context, what the US was post the World War II was actually pretty horrible. There was regime changes, there were a dictatorships put in place in the Latin American context. And so I think there's this very sort of nostalgic desire to return to a US that never really existed or existed for very select individuals that was somehow "comfortable," safe, and all those sorts of things where they could sort of blissfully go along, not having to know about people like me or some of the folks in this room or having to know what they thought about the United States or how they fit into the United States or don't fit into the United States and could blissfully ignore that and go on with their lives. In the '90s it was like, "We hate multiculturalism."
And in the early aughts or late nineties, it was like political correctness. I mean, there's always a different label for this one to shut down the freedom of discourse and particularly shut silence the voices of women, queer people, and folks of color. It's just constant and ongoing and it sort of manifests itself in different ways and it's sometimes has a slightly different face. But I think for most of us, particularly those of us who are of a certain age who've been around for a while and seen this loop through various times, you're just like, "Okay, I know this, right? I know what these people are doing." And there's fear at the heart of it in many ways, right? Fear of difference. There's an ignorance at the heart of it in many ways because they don't want to know about us, but they also don't want to inform themselves about us so that they continue fearing us and also continue to be invested in an idea of the United States that does not exist and this no longer is not going to exist, and they're resisting it to let their dying breath ergo Trump.

Vincent Boudreau 21:49

And there's a kind of pernicious labeling of it that you think about what gives, I'll say it the way it appears on the page, these kind of mothers groups, not the opportunity, the right to challenge a book. And it's this kind of invocation of a community standard.

Mario Ramirez 22:13

Absolutely.

Vincent Boudreau 22:14

But most of the 20th century, the reason why federal legislation was necessary to desegregate schools to provide the Voting Rights Act is because you couldn't trust community standards. And all of a sudden through this kind of nostalgia for a mythological paradise that becomes the podium that you stand on to.

Mario Ramirez 22:39

Also reminds me about something you were saying in regards to some of the sort of challenges or discussions that I've happening free speech on this campus, right? It's like it makes me uncomfortable knowing about the struggles that people of color or women makes me uncomfortable knowing about the lives of people and how crappy they can be sometimes, but also joyful makes me uncomfortable. All of these things, this makes me uncomfortable. I want to shut it down. And in theory, freedom of expression, First Amendment means we can say certain things and we don't get shut down, but these people are actually trying to shut it down, right? And I think it's really a troubling trend that is in concert with a lot of the very authoritarian, and I would say fascistic sort of tendencies as some of our politicians, but also some of our fellow citizens and their desire to really excise many of us from the American narrative.

Vincent Boudreau 23:41

And you say, "These ideas make me uncomfortable." But that's actually not even what people say now. Now they say, "It makes me unsafe."

Mario Ramirez 23:51

Yeah, exactly.

Vincent Boudreau 23:52

Which is a different level.

Mario Ramirez 23:54

Right.

Vincent Boudreau 23:54

And we went through a whole period of time when the enemies of freedom of speech were the defenders of the status quo. And so, if you were a civil rights activist, if you were against the Vietnam War on the Berkeley campus, that very soon became a free speech movement. Now, the enemies of freedom of speech are often people that have settled into their ideas, both in progressive camps and in conservative camps. And so there is this kind of mistrust that an engagement with ideas that make you uncomfortable. Yes, you're going to be uncomfortable. That's how we grow and that's how we get to the truth. It doesn't make you unsafe.

Mario Ramirez 24:42

I think also what I want to say, and that this goes back to our discussion earlier about documenting communities of color and documenting the Harlem community in many ways. I think it's also like many of us in this room have had to deal with not sort of seeing ourselves in historical narratives or any kind narratives or in literature, and we've had to contend with that for our lifetimes. And all of a sudden when the tables are turned, even in a very small fashion where you're not the center of the narrative and the sort of the entitlement of that, right? The fact that the reaction and backlash comes to the fact that the realization that not only are you not part of the center of the narrative, nor will you no longer be the center of the narrative. Our future is a future where you are not the center of the narrative and you have to accept that. And people don't want to accept that because they've led them a certain entitlement, a certain right to certain things, a certain right to occupy space, a certain right to occupy history in a way that they have not allowed the rest of us to occupy. And I think that's what this is coming from.

Vincent Boudreau 25:54

I totally agree. I'm so grateful to have you on the show and in our library. Joining the conversation, I've been having with Dr. Ramirez now is Savona Bailey-McClain, and she's the Executive Director and Chief Curator of the West Harlem Arts Fund. I'm going to read a whole bunch of other things that she is as well. But what we are is lucky to have her in the studio with us today. The West Harlem Art Fund has installed public arts exhibits throughout New York City for the past 20 plus years in areas like Times Square, Dumbo, SoHo, Governor's Island, and right here in Harlem. These exhibits include sculptures, drawings, performance, sound, and mixed media. They've been covered by The New York Times, Art Daily, Artnet, Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, and others. Savona is also the producer and host of State of the Arts NYC, and Harlem Sculpture Gardens, which are video podcasts produced in partnership with Manhattan Neighborhood Network. She's a member of Art Table Governor's Island Advisory Council and NYC Sacred Places Advisory Board. And we're going to hear a whole lot more about what she thinks and what she does. But right now, I want to welcome Savona Bailey-McClain to From City of the World. Thank you.

Savona Bailey-McClain 27:05

Thank you so much for inviting me.

Vincent Boudreau 27:07

So, I first want to start by asking you to describe in more detail the work you do. There's a lot of it, it impacts us all, and concentrate maybe on the West Harlem Art Fund. But I'm going to give a quick plug. I know the Arts Walk is coming up. I also know that a couple of City College sculptures are going to be integrated into that. We have a couple on display. We have at least one that we're digging out of the brambles, but we're really excited to be part of the show. But can you tell us a little bit more about that and then the work more broadly?

Savona Bailey-McClain 27:40

Sure. So, I started the West Harlem Art Fund 25 years ago, and I had moved to Harlem. I have a long-term history with Harlem because of my grandmother. My grandmother came up from Charleston, South Carolina all by herself, and she was sort of like our Black Moses. So, she came, left her children behind, her husband behind, came to New York, worked at the Hotel Edison, which still stands to this day in Times Square.

Vincent Boudreau 28:10

And what year was that?

Savona Bailey-McClain 28:12

It was somewhere after the beginning of World War II. And so, she came in that second wave of that Black migration, and she would send money home and then she would bring relatives up, her children, others, one at a time to New York City. So, I'm first generation born in New York City, and she always went to church in Harlem. She went to the Bronx because around the time of World War II we're coming out of the Depression, things were still not very good in the country. So, a lot of Blacks went past Harlem, went into the Bronx, but she always came to church. And that's how most of us ended up in Harlem every Sunday. Me, my sisters, my mother, my aunts, my uncles, we all followed my grandmother to St. Luke AME Church, which also still stands on Amsterdam Avenue, 153rd Street.
So, I moved to Harlem and I was trying to convince friends to come with me to museums and galleries, and they felt very intimidated and I was quite shocked by that. I was like, "Why is everybody so intimidated? This doesn't make any sense." But I saw it was a real fear and it goes across race, gender. And so, I thought in my ignorance that maybe if I were to help bring art in open public spaces, people would see it every day and would feel that art was beautiful and they could connect to it and it would be a good thing. I thought volunteering. I Had no idea how complicated that was going to be and how that was going to change my life.
And so, I wish I was better prepared for that because it's a very complex thing to do in New York City. I hate to say this, but many of the groups that do present public art have lots of money, lots of financial support from collectors and other civic organizations. And I started off with none of that, and I just felt like, let me try to bring this about. And I did. It took me 10 years to present my first public art piece. But prior to that Columbia University, I have to give them thanks, recognized me when they asked me by chance to do a pop-up exhibition. And for 10 years I presented in Washington Heights on their medical campus in two buildings, and it was constant and it grew from there. So that's how I began it.

Vincent Boudreau 30:47

Just curious, are you an artist yourself or?

Savona Bailey-McClain 30:50

No, I am a true curator. I have a good eye and I'm a good storyteller. I tell people that. They'll tell you as well, I'm a very good storyteller. I was a book person when I was a kid. I was a ferocious reader, and I did work in the library in college.

Vincent Boudreau 31:08

Excellent.

Savona Bailey-McClain 31:11

I was a ferocious reader and so I read a lot. And so therefore I incorporate all of that in telling various narratives.

Vincent Boudreau 31:23

So, you started off by talking about how people you knew felt intimidated as consumers of art, as viewers of art. There's a lot of ways that we've can talk about censorship, but one of them, and Dr. Ramirez, you were talking about it earlier, is the kind of systematic way that some artistic expressions get overlooked. And so how much has the effort to rewrite that to redress that been a part of your curatorial mission?

Savona Bailey-McClain 31:55

Really, my mission is to help people discover their voice because it's not just about artists, it's also about the public. And unfortunately, in America, as I mentioned earlier, most Americans are very intimidated by art and they're afraid of saying the wrong thing. They're afraid of not looking like they're smart, and so they don't know how to respond to it. I tell people, "You want to develop your own eye, your own appreciation. There is no right, there is no wrong, but you can't get there if you're not engaged." And that goes for the artists as well. Many artists are not as engaged as you think they would. Art is expensive. And I deal with public art and with public art, that sculpture, that's installations, you need space to build. You need money to construct, you need to have the proper equipment, you have to have other types of materials that you would not ordinarily use. That is expensive. So many artists don't engage because they can't afford it.
And then if you add on that, artists of color have that as an obstacle, in addition to dealing with so many other things, trying to deal with the hurdles of getting permission and transportation and movement of art, you don't see that many participating in it. So, it's about developing the voice and trying to understand you can be heard. It's also dealing with another problem that has been increasing over the last 20 years, the monitoring, the micromanaging of people of color where they're not given the permission to do certain things, worrying that they may pose a danger if they engage in certain activities. That is a serious problem. So, it scares people from wanting to try, and that's my goal, getting people to the point where they want to try. And then from there, worry about how to develop and build that narrative.

Vincent Boudreau 34:17

This is kind of the heart of it, really, this idea of an expansion of monitoring, and it's the same kind of community standard stuff, right? It's not the FBI as much now as it maybe was back in the day, but it's the lady with the cell phone. So how does that influence the way that you pursue the work? And also, how much of that do you have to chip away at to get people into these spaces?

Savona Bailey-McClain 34:49

Lots. It's not so much censorship, but it is about the monitoring. So, for Harlem Sculpture Gardens, we renamed it to Harlem Sculpture Gardens all summer long I was planting with Brotherhood Sister Sol, Exalt Youth, my assistants, Street Corner Resources, the West Hundred 135th Street Tenants Association. We were cleaning tilling, adding compost, planting daffodil bulbs on St. Nicholas Avenue. Why? Because there are very few gardens in St. Nicholas Park and Jackie Robinson Park, predominantly Black Brown neighborhoods. But in Morningside Park, which is a much more mixed neighborhood where there's more wealth around it, there are 34 gardens. Do you see the disparities?

Vincent Boudreau 35:41

Sure.

Savona Bailey-McClain 35:41

34, 4 and 4. And there's a moratorium where you cannot plant any new gardens in city parks because they can't afford to maintain them. And so, it was my assistant who made the statement that actually gave me this idea. He said, "Oh, you need an army just to deal with the mess that's here." And then I said, "Street trees, I think there's a street tree program." And I found out that there was, so you can't create a new garden, but you can around the street tree. And so therefore, I started a Street Tree campaign.

Vincent Boudreau 36:22

Around the trees you plant?

Savona Bailey-McClain 36:22

On the avenue. So therefore, I didn't have to deal with that moratorium, but it still brought opposition from people who were angry at me for wanting to take care of street trees on St. Nicholas Avenue. You have these volunteer groups that basically just pick up trash and many of them are led by people who are not traditionally from the community, and so they feel that only people of color should do in their own neighborhood, in their own parks is pick up trash. How inspiring is that? That's not inspiring at all. So, I said, "We're going to deal with stewardship versus trash." Oh, that got me in a lot of trouble this summer because people got very angry with me. We had trainings. I have to thank Jason Stein at City Parks. He gave us trainings, he gave us tools, he gave us materials that we could use. Staten Island helped us with plant materials, the Daffodil project with 800 bulbs, and we were able to deal with adding daffodils.
So therefore, next year when we say Harlem sculpture gardens, there would be some along St. Nicholas Avenue. But that caused a lot of problem because people had this image of what we should be doing. "Oh, you should be just picking up the trash." No, we were taking care of the trees. I have been able to, with the help of another assistant, identify every single tree along St. Nicholas Avenue from 127 and 141st and from Bradhurst Avenue from 145th to 151st. We know every single tree, what type, how they grow, how to take care of them, what birds are in the park, which one populates all three? That's stewardship, not picking up trash. So yes, it's about taking care of the land so that you can place the art. And I've always had to deal with that, making sure that the environment was conducive so we could bring the art in it.

Vincent Boudreau 38:35

You remind me of this article that showed up in The New York Times like two days ago, and it asked the question, "Why are songbirds in rich neighborhoods but not in poor neighborhoods?" And it comes down to this legacy of differential permission to do things like planting flowers and planting trees and having gardens and all of that. And it cycles right through the ecosystem so that if you're in Marcus Garvey Park, you're probably not going to see warblers in Baltimore Orioles. You're going to see little brown birds that are eating popcorn on the sidewalk.

Savona Bailey-McClain 39:07

Right.

Vincent Boudreau 39:07

Yeah. You're a warrior, right? So, I don't believe I even have to ask you how you respond to that kind of pressure, but you're also mobilizing a community that you just described as being tentative and afraid. And so, as you come under that pressure, even with the daffodil bulb planting, and you've got this army of, I assume mainly younger people, but not necessarily...

Savona Bailey-McClain 39:34

It was younger, but also some seniors. And it's difficult because even with the young people, they wanted to know why this was important to do because they think, "Shouldn't somebody be paid to do this?" This generation of young people are very different. And I know we complain about them quite a bit, but I'm starting to understand because I'm really listening to them, they come from blended families, real blended families, and blended experiences. So, they didn't grow up where they went to church functions or they had school productions and plays and musicals. They didn't have that where they understood the importance of continuing certain traditions and legacies. They don't understand that at all. So, they want to know what's in it for them, what's the benefit for them, and you got to kind of deal with that challenge from them and convince them that it's for everybody, including them. I'm also learning that young people today prefer hands-on.

Vincent Boudreau 40:47

Tell me more about that.

Savona Bailey-McClain 40:47

Very much so. I teach every young person that works with me how to garden. I'm a big gardener. I've taught them all, and they have learned, truly learned. It's like learning about composting, what it does, what it means, how to do it, how to plant bulbs, coming back, seeing things grow. They have learned all of that from me. They have learned how to go to farms. I take them to farms where they get to meet the animals, chickens and goats and understand how this all plays into this sort of ecosystem that we all need. I talk to them about the food that they eat, processed versus fresh. How do you have a healthy body? How do you have a healthy soul? You need that versus the cheeseburgers and the pizzas that you eat all the time. It's about making it hands-on now to the point where if I make something and I make muffins and pies and they just want to know when am I going to do another round of that? Because it's a sense of home too for them.

Vincent Boudreau 41:56

But they want hands on the pies too.

Savona Bailey-McClain 41:58

Well, that too. But it's this having a sense of community because for many of them, they don't know what that's like. They really don't.

Vincent Boudreau 42:06

So, is that sense of community, is that the way into art or is art the way into that sense of community?

Savona Bailey-McClain 42:13

I think it's both because they do live blended lives. That's young people, but even those who are older who have lost that sense of community, who knows what it is, but they don't feel it today, that they need to feel community. And oftentimes that doesn't come about. It's about empowering. It's not about monitoring. It's not about putting people down. And this country has gotten too competitive. It's all about trying to take somebody down so that you can be on top, so you can pretend that you're better than everyone else. What you were talking about with the books and you talking about that, it really is about certain groups wanting to have an unfair advantage and keeping it that way and trying to tear everybody else down so that they don't get that. So, it's about restoring humanity, not about tearing it down.

Vincent Boudreau 43:09

I'd like to ask you to put on your curator's hat now a little bit more and talk a little bit about, because you're not doing this just to do it, you've clearly got a kind of public justice, social justice mission. So, as you're looking at the art that grabs you as a curator, how do you think about that? What grabs your attention? How do you sort through the possibilities?

Savona Bailey-McClain 43:35

Well, New York City demands that public art be site specific. It is a demand. And it's up to you to figure out how you wish to build that narrative, but they want you to connect to either the geography of the area, the cultural history of the area, the demographic of the area, or anything else that people could identify with. So, with that, that offers some latitude. I walk neighborhoods, I walk it all the time and I walk so that I can learn about a particular area, the people, the history. I do a lot of research. I get up all the time. I've turned into a history buff because there's so many layers when it comes to histories and these various narratives. So, I'll walk it and then I'll start to go talk to people in that neighborhood to ask them, "Tell me what's important for you when it comes to this neighborhood. Tell me who used to live here."
And when I think about the artist, it's about who would offer something to that area. It doesn't have to be a perfect fit. Everyone does not have to like it. It's going to be temporary. So that means up to 11 months. But I try to make sure that people can at least get something out of that experience that is important. That's what we're trying to do. And in the conversations that you have with various people, including artists, various perspectives will come up so you learn new things and you can add additional layers or you can strip away any misunderstandings that have been there too. So that's my process. A lot of walking and a lot of research. And then when it comes to the artwork itself, it has to be the quality of the artwork. I do not pick artists just because they're of color. I have represented all kinds of artists. Artists who are Latino, white, Asian. I just did my first Native American artists he just installed last weekend. I've been trying to do that for the longest time.

Vincent Boudreau 45:50

Who is that?

Savona Bailey-McClain 45:50

His name is Dennis RedMoon Darkeem, and he's blended African American and Native American. And I've been trying to work with a Native American artist for a very, very long time. So, I've represented all kinds of artists. I've also paired artists. I did a beautiful show this past spring with AHL Foundation. They asked me would I curate their spring show because I've worked with Asian artists before. It was a beautiful show, the root of color. And we blended two Afro-Caribbean artists with two Korean artists, and it was multidisciplinary. So, we had digital, we had prints, we had paintings, we had sculpture out of paper. And it was beautiful. It was this conversation that we were having, and I'm saying at the root of all human beings is color. We're a rainbow. And so that's what we did. And it was well received and it was displayed on Eighth Avenue. And we had people that would just walk by just looking in because they're seeing something interesting going on, and we're welcoming people in. So, I try to build these conversations, narratives, see the commonalities of it. And I have learned so much over the years. I've had people hunt me down just because they felt I was friendly enough that I could hear what they wanted to tell me. I had Asian artists hunt me down in the Lower East Side to teach me about celadon. And now I love celadon.

Vincent Boudreau 47:27

What is celadon?

Savona Bailey-McClain 47:28

That's a ceramic in Asian cultures where they fire it clay and the porcelain has a hue of a very, very light blue to a dark green. And you could tell which country some of the celadon came from, if it's Vietnam or if it's Japan or it's China, because the different traditions within that culture. And I've learned different other techniques from different artists. And then I may blend sound or dance to it so that we can enhance telling that story so that more people can feel a part of what is going on, because that's the whole thing. We're supposed to learn from each other. We're not supposed to fight each other all the time. We're supposed to get along and help each other and evolve as human beings.

Vincent Boudreau 48:20

So, I'm going to put you on the spot right now because you talked about... I'm fascinated by this idea of you walking a neighborhood and talking to people to figure out what belongs there artistically. And what was the best or the most exciting or the most insightful insight you got from one of those conversations? Somebody said something to you that changed the way you thought about a place or the relationship between art and a place.

Savona Bailey-McClain 48:53

Well, it's a combination. One of my favorite installations, and it was a small installation, but it was beautiful, was by Japanese artists. And he picked the neighborhood, Jackson Heights, Queens because it was a predominantly Asian community, but we still walked it quite a bit. And he wanted to deal with the theme of Nirvana. And so, his installation was called Sleeping Beauty with a Nirvana theme. It was stunning. It weighed 600 pounds and it was on a metal base that was flushed with the sculpture, which was ceramic, and it was sleeping beauty, but the head was of a sheep. And the hair, if you could have seen it looked like real hair, like he had braided it. It was absolutely beautiful.
And we made it interactive, the base with these wine bottles so that children could walk by and that they could touch it. But it was this whole thing about nirvana and combining it with a classic European story about sleeping beauty. And it was just this whole interpretation of it. Now, the sad part about it, it got damaged because people thought that it was two pieces that were not connected, but it was connected. And on Thanksgiving weekend, this is several years ago, a group of guys tried to steal it, and when they realized just how heavy it was, it went tipped over and hit the ground. The artist thought that people were vandalizing it. I said, "No, they were trying to steal it." They were trying to steal it. But the point was it was so beautiful. New York One picked us up within hours.

Vincent Boudreau 50:49

Oh, wow.

Savona Bailey-McClain 50:49

Hours, said a masterpiece was in Queens. And that's one of my favorite, that small piece. Another great piece was what we did in Times Square, and that was Counting Sheep. You could still find it online.

Vincent Boudreau 51:06

Yeah, I remember that.

Savona Bailey-McClain 51:07

And me and the artist, we fought a lot and he ended up right and picking the location 46th Street. And it was all about telling the story about how New York never sleeps. And it got picked up. We went viral globally, and we were being warned that, "Oh, for three days you're going to get a lot of press, and then it's going to be finished." We were getting press five days after the three. Mayor Bloomberg gave us a shout-out. It was stunning. My whole life changed that week. It was frightening. But the whole point was it really caught with people. This whole thing about sheep, rural, being in the city, it's white in the middle of Times Square with all that color that was there. And it just was amazing. The artist said, "Savona, I didn't think we were going to get all this attention." I said, "Me too. I didn't know this was going to happen." That was quite an experience for us.

Vincent Boudreau 52:14

So, I want to get back to the beginning of this because we've been listening to you. The more you talk, the more passionate you are about these individual installations and the power of them and the wisdom of the artists and the fit with the community. That's brilliant, and it's powerful and it's brave. But you started by talking about the fear that people had entering into that. And so, these two pieces of the conversation, I want to know how it's going.

Savona Bailey-McClain 52:39

It still is frightening for many people. Art is political. You're trying to challenge perhaps different narratives. You're trying to build people's confidence. And that's not easy because you have people vested in not making that happen. And then you have people who really just are ignorant and don't understand why it's important. So, we're a small, tiny group, and it's been that way over the years and it's hard to get the support that we need. But I'm grateful that City College decided to join us for this exhibition. We're about to do something that has never been done in Harlem before. And the inspiration of this exhibition, Harlem Sculpture Gardens, is Augusta Savage. Because Augusta Savage was prominent during her time, but died penniless and said that if she couldn't make it, she would help the next generation. Jacob Lawrence, Gwendolyn Knight, Charles Austin, she said, "I would help to push it forward." And so, part of my inspiration of this is her, because I'm trying to push things forward too. We need to all do that so that we can become better human beings.

So, we're thrilled to be part of that. And one of the things that I discovered coming into this job, and Mario, you know this as you start to look at archives, there's a lot of art on this campus that's not out. And one of the things that we would like to do is get our art out. We're running out of time. I want to give you one chance to plug something that you want to plug to get. Remember, folks, this is about leaving your fear at home and getting out there and understanding that art is for you and you are for art. But what should people be paying attention to?

Savona Bailey-McClain 54:35

Next year May, we're going to have Harlem Sculpture Gardens in Morningside St. Nicholas and Jackie Robinson Park, as well as the City College campus.

Vincent Boudreau 54:45

Yes. Thank you. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to From City to the World. A special thanks to our guests, Dr. Mario Ramirez, who is the Chief Librarian at The City College of New York. And boy, I'll be glad to have him and Savona Bailey-McClain. And if you haven't been listening to the show, then you miss knowing why we're all glad to have her working on art in the neighborhood. She's the Executive Director and the Chief Curator of the West Harlem Art Fund. This show is produced by yours truly, Vince Boudreau and Angela Harden. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening and we hope to see you again.