Storm, whirlwind, and earthquake

As Black Lives Matter Plaza was whitewashed in DC, I went to see "Free as they want to be: Artists Committed to Memory" at Harvard's Cooper Gallery

Omar Victor Diop, Frederick Douglass, Diaspora Series. 2015. Pigment inkjet print on Harman by Hahnemhüle paper. c) Omar Victor Diop, Courtesy Galerie Magnin-A, Paris.

American stories are being erased. Just this past week, the Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C. was destroyed.

It’s disconcerting to view art about memory, archive, and identity at a time like this. Free as they want to be: Artists Committed to Memory at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center is such a show. It poignantly unfurls stories white nationalists are trying to blot out.

The White House, it seems, wants to rid our culture of the stories of anyone who is not a Strong White American Man.