Brooklyn Museum
The art of social change. We explore American history through its art and social movements, and how we may shape the future.
How do we get to know art, and from whose telling? Universal museums have many responsibilities and challenges: preservation, curation, archiving, and presentation, to name a few. Interpretation, however, may be the most significant, contentious, and we here at SOUND MADE PUBLIC think the most opportune. The Brooklyn Museum thinks so too.
In collaboration with the museum team, we sat down with over a dozen Brooklynites, museum staff, and renowned creative figures to discuss and record their personal reactions and thoughts on pieces in the American Art collection.
The series of self-guided audio tours explores art from across the Brooklyn Museum’s collection that considers the collective histories that have defined American culture. Through the lenses of LGBTQ+ liberation, civil rights, the women’s movement, immigrant experiences, climate justice, and Indigenous perspectives, these tours feature personal insights from artists, curators, educators, writers, and more.
Client
Brooklyn Museum
Project
Drawing America
Services
Concept Development - Production - Interviews - Sound Design - Post Production
Voices
Catherine Morris, Laval Bryant-Quigley, Stephanie Sparling Williams, Lauren Zelaya, Lillian Young, Stacey Kahn, Shamilia McBean Tocruray, Pauline Vermare, Anne Pasternak, Digdem Serter, Keonna Hendrick, Margo Cohen, Donald Moffett, Jeffrey Gibson, Hank Willis Thomas, Mona Chalabi, Lamar Bryant, Modesto Jimenez
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Our Process
Personal reactions to art offering permission to all.
Opportunity
To explore the American collection through the lens of social movements during the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States and at a time of deep social and political consternation, Brooklyn is more than happy to be Brooklyn and speak its mind.
Insight
Our relationships digitized and distanced, our thoughts and culture tonally flattened and opinions algorithmically corralled, Brooklyn was happy to bare all and prove that people make art and art makes people. The vibrancy and depth of human response to art is alive and well in Brooklyn and at the Brooklyn Museum.
Outcome
Six self-guided tours featuring forty pieces of art with over a dozen voices, a permanent guide to a collection of American art that anyone can listen to, anywhere.
