ARTSCONNECT HAS COMMISSIONED NEW WORKS BY VANESSA GERMAN THAT WILL TAKE THE FORM OF A MOBILE MUSEUM AND SPOKEN WORD OPERETTA, WHICH ARE BEING CO-CREATED WITH THE TOPEKA COMMUNITY TO EXAMINE THE NARRATIVE OF BROWN V. BOARD IN ITS 70TH YEAR.

This body of work will include 20-25 works of multi-media sculpture as well as the creation of a spoken word operetta which will be performed by a community choir. The sculptural works will premiere in Topeka, Kansas on May 16th, 2024 in the Rita Blitt Gallery of the Mulvane Art Museum on the campus of Washburn University. The operetta will premiere on May 24th, 2024, at White Concert Hall, which is adjacent to the Blitt Gallery.

The works will then remain on display in the city of Topeka through the end of 2024. It is our great hope that the works will then tour to other locations across the country, returning to Topeka for the 75th anniversary of Brown. Touring plans for these works of art and performance are still in process of being arranged.

WHO?

Citizen artist vanessa german, works across media to examine the realms of social trauma, social healing and, ‘social spirit’, through sculpture, performance, communal ritual and immersive installation.

WHAT ARE WE DOING?

We are examining Brown from the inside out. We are listening to the stories of Topeka residents, citizens and students contemporary to Brown to discover the lived realities of the case, the dreams that were born forth from that time, and the world that Brown made. These intimate dramas of social transformation foreground the civil rights movement and offer an opportunity to weave a profoundly human narrative that is, to this day, as instructive as it is inspirational.

THE ARTWORKS REPRESENTED IN THE MUSEUM OF RECKONING will contend with the complexities, traumas and triumphs of Brown through communal conversation, co-creation workshops, and inspired generative responses to a series of artfully structured prompts, thought experiments and communal object offerings. THE ARTWORKS will be made in any media necessary and THE MUSEUM, ITS PROCESS AND ARTWORKS WILL BE BOTH AN INVITATION TO RECKONING AND THE RECKONING ITSELF. We will offer this museum of reckoning objects and interactions to tour regionally and nationally.

A SPOKEN WORD OPERETTA AND A MUSUEM?

TO BE WHO WE SAY WE ARE: A 13-18 minute spoken word operetta performed by a mass intergenerational, multiracial community choir. The operetta will be professionally recorded, licensed, and one of the movements of the operetta will be visioned and filmed as a music/new media video and submitted for Grammy consideration in the Spoken Word category.

There is a simple bigness to bringing this work forward in the form of an intergenerational community choir performing a spoken word operetta, and a museum of justice, love and reckoning. Together, these works will delve fearlessly through the doorway of Brown v Board and into dimensions of human citizenship that are the truest heart of the phrase, “American Spirit.”

WHY A MUSEUM AND OPERETTA AS COMMEMORATION?

We are the living commemoration. The truest commemoration is a process not an event. These two main activations of this 70th commemoration are process heavy and community rich. We offer this commemoration as a creative expression of King’s BELOVED COMMUNITY. We Listen, We Create— this is mending as transformation, commemoration as realization, community as love.