SINCE 1891
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2016
VOLUME CLI, ISSUE 83
WWW.BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM
Public art on campus gains prominence Public Art Committee brings diverse, unique art pieces to campus through donations, loans By ROLAND HIGH SENIOR STAFF WRITER
ELI WHITE / HERALD
Jelani Cobb, professor of journalism at the Columbia University School of Journalism and staff writer for the New Yorker, spoke yesterday on the concept of democratization of safe spaces within institutions.
Jelani Cobb speaks on unsafe democracy Cobb argues that generations have done without safe spaces in Reaffirming Values lecture By FIDELITY BALLMER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
During Tuesday’s lecture titled “A Note From the Margin: The Unsafe Spaces of Democracy,” Jelani Cobb, professor of journalism at the Columbia University School of Journalism and staff writer for the New Yorker, shared a quote from his father, who was a boxer: “The punch you’re most
vulnerable to is the one you’ll be hit with most often.” The lecture is the first event in the Reaffirming Values series. “If there are in fact individuals who do not wish to see you perform well in these institutions, it’s of little benefit to tell them exactly where your biggest vulnerabilities are,” Cobb said. “I don’t believe in safe spaces,” he added. In the discourse of safe spaces, people “want to be coddled, they want to be kind of treated with the utmost of delicacy.” Cobb acknowledged this may not be fair, but “generations of people prior,” including his own, have
confronted these same issues, he added. “My generation, we never would have protested (safe spaces),” Cobb said. “Few of us felt that the institutions belonged to us in the first place,” he said, adding, “We anticipated hostility, and we did not feel we were full shareholders in the institutions.” As an example of not needing safe spaces, Cobb shared the story of Hank Aaron, a black American Major League Baseball player, who broke Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1974 “under the most adverse circumstances available,” he said. Aaron » See COBB, page 3
With Ruth J. Simmons Quadrangle’s new blue statue, Urs Fischer’s “Untitled (Lamp/ Bear),” arriving at Brown this past summer, public art on campus has become more apparent than ever. Though it may seem as if the statue appeared on Simmons Quad over night, in reality, all statues that appear on campus are the product of intense debate and discussion, occurring primarily within Brown’s Committee on Public Art. Since it was founded three decades ago under then-Chancellor Artemis Joukowsky ’55 LLD’85 hon. P’87 GP’13 GP’14, the Committee on Public Art has worked “to bring public art to the campus in an organized way,” said Professor of Visual Art Richard Fishman, one of the original members of the committee. “People often want to make donations,” he said, noting that the committee plays an important role in reviewing the
ARTS & CULTURE
quality of the works and determining their location, if accepted. History before the committee There was no such process before the committee, said University Curator Robert Emlen, another original member. In fact, sculpture only became a feature of the campus relatively recently, he added. Brown’s endowment and other resources have grown rapidly in the last 40 or 50 years, Emlen said, adding that this has enabled the University to commit more resources to public art. “I don’t know that we had any sculpture on campus in the 19th century. It wasn’t a very big campus, and Brown was never in those years a very prosperous place,” he said, adding that for most of the University’s history, art was acquired only “by individual initiative.” “Somebody would show up, and they would say ‘I really like this sculpture, and it would be great at Brown, and I want to make a donation,’” Emlen said. “But there was no formal mechanism at Brown for deciding how to do this unless somebody rolled in.” As examples, Emlen cited several historic statues, works that are now integral to Brown’s campus. Some, like the Caesar Augustus statue in front of the Sharpe Refectory, have been weathered » See PUBLIC ART, page 2
Film spotlights children Tall Heights comes to the Creative Capital Three-person indie group of the incarcerated seeks larger venues folDocumentary screening part of interdisciplinary U. engagement with prison system, reform By CONNOR SULLIVAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Tuesday afternoon, the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage screened Denali Tiller’s film, “Sons and Daughters of the Incarcerated,” the most recent of the University’s strides in prison reform education. The Rhode Island School of Design graduate’s 22-minute documentary poignantly depicts an overlooked aspect of mass incarceration — namely, the lives of some of the approximately five million children whose parents have been incarcerated.
ARTS & CULTURE
INSIDE
The film explores the effects of the United States’s criminal justice system on children by peering into the lives of three children with incarcerated fathers. Tiller was quick to dismiss the societal lens that reduces the documentary’s subjects to “risks, statistics and hardships.” Tiller instead aimed to emphasize the children’s “tremendous potential, love and resilience.” “The cultural, societal and economic implications of mass incarceration are important,” Tiller said. “But what I really wanted to examine was the voice of these kids” by underscoring both the personal nature of the film and its commitment to humanizing its subjects’ trauma. Marisa Brown, assistant director of programs at the John Nicholas Brown Center, said that the film was screened because of the exceptionality of its portrayal of Rhode Island’s children and parents affected by incarceration. “The entire film was made at an adult correctional institute at Cranston,” Brown » See PRISON FILM, page 2
lowing Boston debut, Conan O’Brien set
By ELIZABETH TOLEDANO CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Boston band Tall Heights will perform today at 7 p.m. in Fête Music Hall in Providence. The t h re e - p e rs on group is known for its quasi-alternative, consciously lesser-known folk electronica — or in cellist Paul Wright’s words “ethereal-soulful-folkinspired-pop.” Comparable acts include Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens and a plethora of anonymous underground bands generating fewer than 1,000 monthly Spotify subscribers. Thus, for its genre, Tall Heights garners immense listenership, as exemplified by the band’s recent appearance on “Conan.” The band’s members are the celloist Wright, guitarist Tim Harrington and drummer Paul Dumas, who will tour
ARTS & CULTURE
COUTESY OF TALL HEIGHTS
Tall Heights incorporates the heavy implementation of various pedals, amps and electronic devices in their folk electronica songs. with the band through November. In their emerging branch of progressive
indie, beyond the raw instrumentals, » See TALL HEIGHTS, page 2
WEATHER
WEDNESDAY, OC TOBER 12, 2016
NEWS Swearer Center, Watson, CareerLAB offer new D.C. study program for spring 2017
NEWS Califia Farms’ vegan, organic cold-brew coffee offers healthy alternative at campus eateries
COMMENTARY Malik ’18: College bookstores should remain independent from large retailers
COMMENTARY Weinstein ’17: U. should focus on undergrads, not research, construction, endowment
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