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Matinee: 'The Future of Art'
6 January 2024
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 534th in our series of Saturday matinees today: The Future of Art.
Carrie Mae Weems is 65 and, like everyone older than 30 wishes she was 20. But she has a specific reason. Because she feels a great shift in the possible. She doesn't want to party, she wants to get to work.
There's an upheaval going on "across the board," she says. "And the way we manage it is through the visual arts."
That was enough for us to sit back and listen to the MacArthur genius. But here's the liner notes:
As an artist who has broken barriers in a field that has historically excluded women and people of color, Weems both acknowledges her overlooked predecessors and recognizes her own capacity to empower the next generation. "I have to use my skin and my body to push for an even wider path, so that another group of young artists who are coming behind me can work and live and be and produce more easily than ever before," she says in this film. She also celebrates the increased effort among institutions to include marginalized voices and ultimately envisions a future of art that is enriched by the diversity of its participants.
The upheavel she's talking about is positive, not the destructive winds blowing across the world. It's going to be better for the next generation of artists and they'll make it better for the one behind them, she says.
We won't be here to see it but we'll start applauding now.