Dawoud Bey - Harlem, U.S.A By Dawoud Bey, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, and Matthew S. Witkovsky Art Institute of Chicago; First Edition edition (June 26, 2012) ISBN-10: 0300181264 ISBN-13: 978-0300181265
Harlem Crossroads: Black Writers and the Photograph in the Twentieth Century By Sara Blair Princeton University Press; 1st edition (September 16, 2007) ISBN-10: 0691130876 ISBN-13: 978-0691130873
The Roots of Urban Renaissance: Gentrification and the Struggle Over Harlem By Brian D. Goldstein Harvard University Press (February 1, 2017) ISBN-10: 0674971507 ISBN-13: 978-0674971509
Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America By Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts Back Bay Books; Reprint edition (January 22, 2013) ISBN-10: 0316017248 ISBN-13: 978-0316017244
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America By Richard Rothstein Liveright; 1 edition (May 2, 2017) ISBN-10: 1631492853 ISBN-13: 978-1631492853
For photographer Dawoud Bey, activism and art have long been linked. Bey, whose portraits of Harlem form the centerpiece of the exhibit “Harlem: Found Ways” now at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art, first connected with his chosen visual medium through a protest.
Through July 15, Harvard’s Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art analyzes the history and changes in a historic neighborhood in “Harlem: Found Ways.” Anchored by two photo series by Dawoud Bey, created 40 years apart, the exhibit highlights the gentrification that’s changing Harlem’s identity as a famed black culture capital.
With the exhibition Harlem: Found Ways, the Cooper Gallery presents artistic visions and engagements specific to Harlem, New York City, in the last decades. Each artwork employs a distinct set of inquiries and innovative strategies to explore the Harlem community’s visual heritage as it grapples with the challenges of gentrification.
Finally, there is the Ligon — a canvas that reminds one of nothing so much as a monolith tipped on its side, set grayly against a wall that barely abides it. That the 20-foot long painting is the terminus of Harlem: Found Ways, a recent presentation at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art at Harvard’s Hutchins Center, gives Glenn Ligon’s work a precarious claim to the guiding logic of the exhibition and, in more ways than one, the last word, as well.
