The list of projects that President Kibaki is bringing on his development mission to China this week has the characteristics of my Christmas wish list as a child. It’s big and unrealistic.
Whether it’s China, the United States or the Saudi oil sheiks, the cost of a long Christmas gift list is worth pondering when the leader of a developing country goes courting one of the world’s most powerful nations. There’s an image of America, China and other places that’s not real in many African minds.
Very simply, the streets in America and China are not paved with gold, and life is much harder than television paints it. The Kenyans that I know in the United States must be well educated to compete. That’s why so many new immigrants are attending colleges. If they do not, they will find themselves in some of the most undesirable jobs.
Sure, you can make more money in America. But ask any Kenyan how much things cost — even at the Wal-marts and other cheaper retailers. For example, a cable television and internet hook-up can cost you $50 a month. A cellphone contract, with unlimited texting and downloading, is much the same.
And despite what you see on television, their morals are not that much different than in East Africa. America is a religious country, and values tend to lean toward the conservative side. I have travelled to China and have the utmost respect for the government and its people. They are on an unparalleled expansion, and that’s reflected in their importance on the world stage.
If you visited China in the 1980s, the takeaway image would be peasants riding bicycles and street sweeping crews with brooms of straw. Today, you’ll find modern airports, massive highway systems and great restaurants. The old parts, like the Forbidden City in Beijing, are nestled near new hotels and residences.
Certainly, the development does not yet stretch to the countryside. There is much left to do to keep the economy humming. One of the most stark differences between the US and China, which are roughly the same size, is that China has four times as many people.
China has almost as many people as Europe, Latin America, the United States and Japan combined. While America’s arable land mass is at about 40 per cent, China’s is 11 per cent. China is trying to feed 25 per cent of the world’s population on seven per cent of the world’s arable land, according to a Columbia University study.
And there are no easy solutions to the over population problem. China’s one-child policy is being rethought because of economics. It’s difficult for one child to support two parents who are older and can’t work. And like America, China must have strategic partners to provide the energy for its growing economy.
So when I see the long list that President Kibaki is bringing to China, the question is not whether he has been naughty or nice. No, Santa Claus does not live in China. The question will be what can Kenya do for China? Kibaki’s list is a long one:
Roads and railways that link northern Kenya to Ethiopia and Southern Sudan; new shipping berths on the Lamu port; and a new railway between Mombasa and Malaba. In 2005, Kibaki asked for help with roads around Nairobi, and a major hospital in the Eastlands. These projects are underway and new medical equipment, worth billions of shillings, is being shipped into the hospital.
Clearly, the Kenyan dream is to achieve a significant economic advance by 2030, and become the portal for the economic rebirth of East Africa. After all, I’ve heard Kenyans say, look what the Koreans and China have done in the last 50 years. It’s Africa’s turn. That may be true. But so is this: Christmas presents do not come from Santa Claus. Be careful about the bill that will come due. It may be a whopper.
Exhibition:The Deutsche Bank Series at the Guggenheim Julie Mehretu: Grey Area
Location: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum 1071 Fifth Avenue, New York Venue: Annex Tower 2
Dates: May 14–October 6, 2010
Preview: Thursday, May 13, 2010, 10 am–12 pm
(NEW YORK, NY – April 26, 2010) – Julie Mehretu: Grey Area, an exhibition of six new large–scale paintings by American artist Julie Mehretu, is presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as part of the Deutsche Bank Series at the Guggenheim, May 14 to October 6, 2010. Commissioned in 2007 by Deutsche Bank and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the suite of semiabstract works is inspired by a multitude of sources, including historical photographs, urban planning grids, modern art, and graffiti, and explores the intersections of power, history, dystopia, and the built environment, along with their impact on the formation of personal and communal identities.
Julie Mehretu: Grey Area is organized by Joan Young, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art and Manager of Curatorial Affairs, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Julie Mehretu: Grey Area is made possible by Deutsche Bank.
The Leadership Committee for Julie Mehretu: Grey Area is gratefully acknowledged.
Berlin plays a significant role in the investigation of memory and the urban experience in the Grey Area suite, first conceived during a residency by Mehretu at the American Academy in Berlin in 2007. During this residency, the artist was struck by the continuously shifting profile of Berlin, a historically charged city where vestiges of war coexist with new architectural development. For Mehretu, the visible evidence of destruction and recovery on the facades and streetscapes of Berlin also conjures the physical aftermath of war around the world, as in the paintings Believer’s Palace (2008–09), which references the partially destroyed palace that sat atop Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad bunker, and Atlantic Wall (2008–09), which renders the interiors of bunkers built by Germany along the Western European coastline during World War II.
According to Joan Young, “Julie Mehretu adapts enigmatic circumstances as a tool to engage the viewer in her complex compositions of meticulously drawn mechanical renderings, spontaneous gestural markings, and colorful interjections. Whether capturing specific settings or the general tenor of the urban experience, such as in Berliner Plätze (2008–09) and Fragment (2008– 09), respectively, Mehretu’s paintings evoke the psychogeography of the city and the effects of the built environment on individuals while at the same time contemplating the past and the surviving traces of lived history.”
Approximately 10 x 14 feet in size, Mehretu’s paintings are characterized by a remarkable sense of pictorial space. Using ink and acrylic paint, she layers detailed schematic depictions of buildings and cityscapes with abstracted forms and lines, playing with the depth of the composition. Through this layering, combined with the use of erasure and the smudging of gestural marks, structures seem to dissolve on the surface of the canvas. Yet as author and critic Brian Dillon writes in his catalogue essay, “An Archaeology of the Air,” “The moments of articulate erasure in the paintings amount to a kind of restoration: of openness, contingency, and potential at the level both of the painted mark or character and the underlying architectural motif. If there is an archaeology of the recent past in Mehretu’s work, it is the archaeology of an atmosphere charged with the dust of demolition and rebuilding.”
Julie Mehretu
Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1970, Mehretu was raised in Michigan. She studied at Kalamazoo College in Michigan (BA, 1992) and at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar in Dakar, Senegal (1990–91). She received an MFA in painting and printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1997. Mehretu has participated in numerous international exhibitions and biennials and has received international recognition for her work, including, in 2005, the American Art Award from the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the prestigious MacArthur Fellow award. She has had residencies at the Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (1998–99), the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2001), the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2003), and the American Academy in Berlin (2007). Mehretu currently lives and works in New York and Berlin.
The Deutsche Bank Series at the Guggenheim and the Deutsche Guggenheim Commission Program
Julie Mehretu: Grey Area is the second exhibition in the Deutsche Bank Series at the Guggenheim, which is dedicated to exhibiting in New York works of art commissioned jointly by Deutsche Bank and the Guggenheim Foundation as well as other thematic exhibitions after their initial presentation at the Deutsche Guggenheim.
In 1997 the Guggenheim Foundation and Deutsche Bank opened the Deutsche Guggenheim and launched a unique and ambitious program of contemporaryart commissions. This collaboration has enabled the Guggenheim Foundation to act as a catalyst for artistic production. The Deutsche Guggenheim was conceived as a partnership and consists of three main objectives: the presentation of thematic exhibitions that recognize artists who have contributed significantly to the development of art; the presentation of works from the Deutsche Bank Collection; and the commissioning of site-specific works by both emerging and established artists. Artists who have created new works as part of this program since its inception include John Baldessari, Hanne Darboven, Anish Kapoor, William Kentridge, Jeff Koons, Julie Mehretu, Gerhard Richter, James Rosenquist, Andreas Slominski, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Bill Viola, Jeff Wall, Phoebe Washburn, Lawrence Weiner, and Rachel Whiteread.
Exhibition Catalogue
An illustrated 96-page catalogue titled Julie Mehretu: Grey Area accompanies the exhibition and includes essays by Joan Young and Brian Dillon. Designed by Tracey Shiffman, with Alex Kohnke and Summer Shiffman of Tracey Shiffman Design, Los Angeles, and in collaboration with Julie Mehretu, the catalogue features source materials selected by the artist, as well as a selection of photographs by Mark Hanauer tracing the development of the series in the artist’s Berlin studio. Priced at $45 and offered in a hardcover edition, the catalogue may be purchased at the Guggenheim Store or at the Online Store at guggenheimstore.org beginning May 14.
Curator’s Eye Guided Tours
Free with museum admission
Guggenheim curator Joan Young leads tours of Julie Mehretu: Grey Area.
Fridays, June 4 and August 13, 2 pm
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
Founded in 1937, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is dedicated to promoting the understanding and appreciation of art, primarily of the modern and contemporary periods, through exhibitions, education programs, research initiatives, and publications. Currently the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation owns and operates the Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue in New York and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection on the Grand Canal in Venice, and also provides programming and management for two other museums in Europe that bear its name: the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin. The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, a museum of modern and contemporary art designed by architect Frank Gehry, is scheduled to open in 2013.
VISITOR INFORMATION
Admission: Adults $18, students/seniors (65+) $15, members and children under 12 free. Admission includes an audio tour.
Museum Hours: Sun–Wed, 10 am–5:45 pm; Fri, 10 am–5:45 pm; Sat, 10 am– 7:45 pm; closed Thurs. On Saturdays, beginning at 5:45 pm, the museum hosts Pay What You Wish. For general information, call 212 423 3500 or visit guggenheim.org.
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April 26, 2010
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION CONTACT
Claire Laporte, Publicist
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
212 423 3840
pressoffice@guggenheim.org
South African Photographs: David Goldblatt Opens at The Jewish Museum on May 2nd Largest NYC Exhibition of Works by the Highly Regarded South African Photographer Since 2001
New York, NY – The Jewish Museum will present South African Photographs:David Goldblatt, an exhibition of 150 black-and-white silver gelatin prints taken between 1948 and 2009, from May 2 through September 19, 2010. The photographs on view focus on South Africa’s human landscape in the apartheid and post-apartheid eras. South African Photographs: David Goldblatt is the largest New York City exhibition of Goldblatt’s work since 2001.
For more than half a century, David Goldblatt has been photographing his native South Africa, documenting the social, cultural and economic divides that characterize the country. Recipient of the 2009 Henri Cartier-Bresson Award and the prestigious 2006 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, David Goldblatt is his country’s most distinguished photographer.
Goldblatt’s photographs expose the complex and evolving nature of apartheid through the diversity and subtlety of his approach. He has not documented major political events or horrifying incidents of violence. Instead, he focuses on the details of daily life and the world of ordinary people, a world where the apartheid system penetrates every aspect of society. He is constantly searching for the substance beneath the surface of human situations. As Nadine Gordimer comments in the exhibition audio guide, Goldblatt captures “…these moments when everything that has happened to an individual is somehow in that image at that time. All the person has felt and known is contained, indeed, in the way he comports himself, the way he’s sitting, the way he looks, and the kind of setting in which he is.” Goldblatt frequently addresses a complex question in his work: how is it possible to be reasonable, decent, and law-abiding, and at the same time, complicit in and even actively supportive of a system that is fundamentally immoral and evil? Each photograph in this exhibition is an intimate portrayal of a culture living with racism and injustice.
David Goldblatt has used his camera to explore South Africa’s mines; the descendants of seventeenth-century Dutch settlers called Afrikaners who were the architects of apartheid; life in Boksburg, a small middle-class white community; the Bantustans or “puppet states” in which blacks were forced to live; structures built for purposes ranging from shelter to commemoration; and Johannesburg, the city in which Goldblatt lives.
The photographer once wrote, “I am neither an activist nor a missionary. Yet I had begun to realize an involvement with this place and the people among whom I lived that would not be stilled and that I needed to grasp and probe. I wanted to explore the specifics of our lives, not in theories but in the grit and taste and touch of things, and to bring those specifics into that particular coherence that the camera both enables and demands.”
David Goldblatt has been photographing the changing political landscape of his country for more than five decades. He is descended from Lithuanian Jews who fled Europe in the 1890s to escape religious persecution. His father passed on to him, the artist said, “a strong sense of outrage at anything that smacked of racism.” Growing up in segregated South Africa, he witnessed the deep humiliation and discrimination suffered by blacks and experienced anti-Semitism personally. These experiences have informed his work.
Goldblatt’s written commentary is an essential part of his work and is presented throughout the exhibition in the texts and labels that accompany the photographs. A context room in the exhibition features a timeline juxtaposing events in South African history and David Goldblatt’s life; books published by the photographer; photography magazines that inspired him; a large map of South Africa; and a 22-minute excerpt of David Goldblatt: In Black and White, a 1985 film originally aired on Channel 4 Television in Great Britain.
The exhibition has been organized by The Jewish Museum’s Senior Curator, Susan Tumarkin Goodman. All the works in the exhibition are silver gelatin prints on fiber-pressed paper.
Produced by The Jewish Museum in association with Acoustiguide, Inc., a random access audio guide using MP3 technology has been created for the South AfricanPhotographs: David Goldblatt exhibition. Available to visitors for $5.00, it features an introduction by The Jewish Museum’s Director Joan Rosenbaum. Visitors taking the audio guide will hear from David Goldblatt, who continues to lecture and talk about his body of work even as he produces compelling new images, as well as Nadine Gordimer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, who has been writing about the racial and political complexities of South Africa for more than 50 years and is a close friend of David Goldblatt. Commentary by Sean Jacobs, a Professor of International Affairs at the New School who was born in South Africa in 1969, is also included.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg has published a related 200-page book with 150 black and white plates,Kith, Kin & Khaya: South African Photographs: David Goldblatt, which is available at The Jewish Museum’s Cooper Shop for $40.00. In its introduction, writer and critic Ingrid Sischy writes, “A highly sophisticated, even strict, sense of aesthetics, combined with a rigorous moral stance about what it means to take somebody’s photograph, is what sets Goldblatt’s work apart.” She also observes that “the glue that holds this broad body of work together is a mix of Goldblatt’s highly attuned eye and his razor-sharp mind. His photographs are objects of thought, as much as they’re objects to behold.”
South African Photographs: David Goldblatt is made possible through the generosity of an anonymous donor in memory of Curtis Hereld; the Joseph Alexander Foundation; Goldie and David Blanksteen; Nisa and Bradley Amoils; The Long Island Community Foundation - Stanley & Marion Bergman Family Charitable Fund; the Robert I. Goldman Foundation; the estate of Rhoda Cutler; and other donors.
About David Goldblatt
David Goldblatt was born in 1930, the youngest of the three sons of Eli and Olga Goldblatt. His grandparents arrived in South Africa from Lithuania around 1893, having fled the persecution of Jews in the Baltic countries. David’s paternal grandfather owned a general store in Randfontein, a gold-mining town near Johannesburg. Eli Goldblatt built the business into a respected men’s clothing store and for some years David assisted with the running of the shop when his father’s poor health necessitated it. But he was only biding his time. He had become interested in photography in high school, and after his father’s death in 1962, he sold the business to devote all of his time to being a photographer.
David Goldblatt’s works are held in many collections, including the Johannesburg Art Gallery; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the French National Art Collection; and the Bibliothèque National de France. He has published several books, including On the Mines, with Nadine Gordimer (1973); Some Afrikaners Photographed (1975); InBoksburg(1982); Lifetimes: Under Apartheid, with Nadine Gordimer (1986); The Transported of KwaNdebele with Brenda Goldblatt and Phillip van Niekerk (1989); South Africa: The Structure of Things Then (1998); Particulars (2003); Intersections (2005); Some Afrikaners Revisited(2007); and Intersections Intersected (2008).
Related Public Programs
On Tuesday, May 4th at 6:30 pm, photographer David Goldblatt will be joined by Joseph Lelyveld, former New York Times executive editor and correspondent in South Africa, for a conversation about the exhibition, South African Photographs: David Goldblatt. On Thursday, May 13th at 6:30 pm, Gideon Shimoni, Professor (Emeritus) at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and author of Community and Conscience: TheJews in South Africa, will present a lecture entitled The Jewish Experience in Apartheid South Africa. Tickets to each program are $15 general public; $12 students and those over 65; and $10 for Jewish Museum members. For further information regarding programs at The Jewish Museum, the public may call 212.423.3337. Program tickets may be purchased online at the Museum’s website, www.thejewishmuseum.org.
Related Exhibition
South African Projections: Films by William Kentridge will be on view at The Jewish Museum from May 2 through September 19, 2010. The exhibition features four films from South African artist William Kentridge’s Drawings for Projection. They portray fictional Jewish characters who embody the political and moral legacy of apartheid.
About The Jewish Museum
Widely admired for its exhibitions and educational programs that inspire people of all backgrounds, The Jewish Museum is the preeminent United States institution exploring the intersection of 4,000 years of art and Jewish culture. The Jewish Museum was established in 1904, when Judge Mayer Sulzberger donated 26 ceremonial art objects to The Jewish Theological Seminary of America as the core of a museum collection. Today, the Museum maintains an important collection of 26,000 objects—paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, archaeological artifacts, ceremonial objects, and broadcast media.
General Information
Museum hours are Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, 11am to 5:45pm; Thursday, 11am to 8pm; and Friday, 11am to 4pm. Museum admission is $12.00 for adults, $10.00 for senior citizens, $7.50 for students, free for children under 12 and Jewish Museum members. Admission is free on Saturdays. For general information on The Jewish Museum, the public may visit the Museum’s website athttp://www.thejewishmuseum.org or call 212.423.3200. The Jewish Museum is located at 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, Manhattan.
On April 29th, the Chinese Embassy in Ghana donated around 600 books to the University of Ghana. These books cover various aspects of ancient and modern China, ranging from philosophy, history, politics and economy to culture& arts, religion, sports, medicine as well as geography and tourism etc. Dr. C.K.N Badasu of the Department of Modern Languages of the University of Ghana received the books on behalf of the University.
On the handover ceremony, Dr. Badasu expressed his gratitude to the Embassy for its support for establishment and development of the B.A. Chinese Course in the University of Ghana. He also introduced the current status and expansion plan of the Chinese Course, emphasizing that the Course would enroll 200 students starting from the next academic year. He believes that these books would be an important part of the University Library and are sure to play an important role in teaching and learning of Chinese on the Campus.
Mr. JI Haojun, Chief of the Political Section of the Chinese Embassy, presented the books to Dr. Badasu. Mr. JI said that cultural exchange has a very important role to play in developing bilateral relations between China and Ghana. The increasing number of young Ghanaians learning Chinese would not only help promote mutual understanding between the two Peoples, but also make important contribution to bilateral exchange and cooperation in a wide range of fields. He pledged continuous support of the Embassy for the B.A. Chinese Course in the University of Ghana.
Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure left Bamako on Wednesday for China to participate in the official inauguration of the Shanghai World Expo.
The government said up to 60 Malian exhibitors will be present at the world famed exhibition, which will be officially opened on May 1. The visit by the Malian president is expected to bring the level of cooperation between China and Mali to a new height.
According to the presidential office, the volume of trade between Mali and China has tripled in the past few years. In Mali, Chinese enterprises are well known for their infrastructural work such as the construction of roads, stadiums, dams and hydro- agricultural projects.
Source: Xinhua
Bamako, Mali - The Malian government intends to increase, by 2012, its cereal production to 10 million tonnes from the current peak of a little over 6 million tonnes, PANA learnt at the opening ceremony of the Chinese-African conference on agriculture, food security and rural development in Bamako, the capital.
The meeting was organized at the initiative of the Development Assistance Committee (CAD) and the International Centre for Poverty Reduction in China.
The Malian Prime Minister, Modibo Sidibe, who presided over the opening ceremony, said to achieve this ambition, emphasis should be put on the water control and irrigation, as well as the development of land, which will reach 810,500 hectares out of the 2.2 million hectares available.
The rice initiative, which was launched in 2008, has been extended during the 2009-2010 crop year to corn, wheat and cotton.
The campaign has resulted in a cereal production of 6.3 million tonnes, all grains combined.
African and Chinese agriculture experts, as well as representatives of donors and diplomats are attending the conference, which ends Wednesday.
(1990–91). She received an MFA in painting and printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1997. Mehretu has participated in numerous international exhibitions and biennials and has received international recognition for her work, including, in 2005, the American Art Award from the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the prestigious MacArthur Fellow award. She has had residencies at the Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (1998–99), the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2001), the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2003), and the American Academy in Berlin (2007). Mehretu currently lives and works in New York and Berlin.
official inauguration of the Shanghai World Expo.
