Kimberly Drew: Curating Art in a Digital World

Kimberly Drew, social media manager for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, engages millions of Met fans through social media platforms across the internet. Drew will talk about how a 146-year-old institution stays relevant in a digital world, with insights from her popular Tumblr blog Black Contemporary Art, a place for art about and for people of African descent. EBONY Editor-in-Chief and Senior Vice President and Head of Digital Editorial Kyra Kyles joins this conversation.

This program is presented in partnership with the Art Institute of Chicago.

This program was recorded on April 29, 2017, as part of Chicago Humaniteis Festival's Springfest/17: Stuff.

See upcoming CHF events: http://chicagohumanities.org

Help us subtitle and translate our videos: http://chf.to/SubtitleCHF

Subscribe for more thought-provoking videos: http://chf.to/SubscribeCHF

Support CHF with a donation: http://chf.to/Support-CHF

Follow CHF on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Chi_Humanities

Like CHF on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/chicagohumanities

Subscribe to the CHF podcast on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/chicago-humanities-festival/id303222991

(Applause.)
>> KYRA KYLES: That's the special seat for you.
All right. Well, good afternoon, everybody. Yes. We were back there partying. Sorry, you caught us partying, ya know. Now we have to come out here and talk.
(Laughter.)
So first of all, I'd like to thank everyone for coming. You know, I've had the pleasure of just talking to Kimberly in the back for a little while. She's got such amazing accomplishments but is also just a wonderful and amusing human being so I think we're going to have a very good time. And I'm going to ask her some questions, really make it a very open conversation, but I promised to save room so you can ask her some questions too, because it will be worth it. She's got some amazing insights. So just wanted to jump into it. Now you know I have to ask you the first and most obvious question that pops up for me, can you please tell me how you came upon the handle: museummammy, because that is really provocative and it would foolish for me not to ask.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Yeah, for sure! Um. Thank you guys so much for being here on such a dreary day. It's raining, but I'm so excited to be here. It's my second trip to Chicago and it's a city that I for a very long time was afraid to visit because I knew I wouldn't want to leave and I'm back again and risking it all.
(Laughter.)
But at any rate, so Museummammy was a handle that I started when I was an undergraduate at Smith College and I originally had been really fascinated with actually I think Gwendolyn Brooks is from Chicago but I was fascinated with Gwendolyn Brooks' novel, Mauda Martha which is a book very much about black female inferiority and trying to...
it's a book that has very little like dialogue, and it's very much about the things that she's thinking through in the world around her. So my original handle was actually Maudmammy and I'd always been fascinated with the mammy figure as one that was just a complicated figure through which we understood black femininity in a domestic space but then also the spaces in which women work. And so I kind of fuse those two things together, so this like interior work kind of attitude and understanding of the black female subjectivity and then I became obsessed with digital technologies in museums, started to follow this account called Museum Nerd, Museum Nerd ended up being my mentor and then museummammy kind of came to be. Ummm... And so for me I think about museummammy as a handle and more of an opportunity to be able to bring my own experiences into the museum space as a cultural practitioner. It's not necessarily to say that I'm the caretaker because goodness knows I'm just like trying to keep it together myself. But I do like it as a very subversive way to think about what a woman's work looks like.
>> KYRA KYLES: Interesting. Can you explain a little bit about your mission at the MET? I mean, obviously we know what you're role is and you're doing an incredible job at it, very high profile which I think is in a great way in kind of bring art, pop culture more closely together or fine arts and pop culture more closely together. What would you say is your mission when you're coming into the office, when you're out and about, what is it that you are trying to achieve through this role that you have?
>> KIMBERLY DREW: For me, and especially too because the MET Gala's
on Monday, for me in my role at the museum, what I'm most interested in doing and which is kind of an echo of our mission statement as it stands right now is bringing art to life. What I want to do is present the possibility of a museum experience for as wide of an audience as possible, so whether that be sharing particular works that I know are kind of fan favorites so I like know the Temple of Dendur is going to do really well and it's also celebrating its 50th Anniversary. I also know that people love impressionism, generally. So, I try to find those images that can perhaps have a dialogue with some particular instance in someone's life. I think about those encounters as opportunities to like run into an old friend or something like that. But then that's just the lure, so once people arrive there, I want to be able to provide content that people feel they're apart of. One of the great things about encyclopedic institutions like the Art Institute of Chicago as well is that there's so many different cultures represented within these institutions,so many histories held, so many different experts who are treating many different instances in history, and so it's my job really as more of an interpreter to be able to take super scholarly language and bring it into the world of kind of a civilian experience, one that doesn't in any way water down the scholarship, but makes it more approachable. Provides people with an opportunity to become more engaged.
>> KYRA KYLES: How do you I know with social media, we face ourselves in a media organization, people measure through retweets and shares and going viral, but how do you personally measure your success? Are there ways that you know you're making this impact that you're trying to make and if you could share maybe an example of something like that?
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Yeah. I would be curious to ask you that too.
>> KYRA KYLES: Okay. I'll take a turn, I'll take a turn!
>> KIMBERLY DREW: (Laughter) Because it's such an interesting conversation within this world of digital. And especially too in the time of like influencer culture, there's a lot of conversation about being able to run your entire followership through this like, algorithmic engine to figure out who's real and who's fake, right? And I think that's an important way to preface any dialogue about the metrics of social. For me, I've always ... and I think it's perhaps because I have more of a background in art history and African American studies, I'm much more interested in the humanities of all of it. So I think about the small battles that are fought on social media. So for example, hearing stories from particular individuals who watch a Facebook live video that I produced and they feel like in some way it helped them in their scholarship or the things that they were doing. One of my co workers, her eight year old daughter watched our Facebook live and then decided she wanted to be a fashion designer because she saw all of Olivier Rousteing from Balmain on the video with Alina Cho. Just like, those kind of things like 1. made me cry like a baby, and 2. made me feel like the work is really about it, because a tweet could get a thousand retweets or go viral in this way. But I think that there's so much more that could be said for particular impacts or when I was at Creative Time five years ago, we had a Tom Sachs exhibition and Kanye West came to it. Kanye tweeted about this show. This mother who was raising her son in Brooklyn saw the tweet, brought her son to the show, tweeted about the show too. So they were able to build this narrative, that is saying ok this celebrity saw the show, this celebrity has this particular reach. Within this reach this actual real person came to the show with her child and created this bit of media, advertising exhibition, trying to figure out ways that are not hierarchical storytelling through the kind of gauge or metrics is something I'm intrigued by. But I wonder too for you as you are working with a brand that's so legendary and so iconic, bringing it into the digital world, how you guys are able to one, maintain integrity and two, like what the kind of importance is as you guys thinking about your digital technologies?
>> KYRA KYLES: Yeah I mean I think that one thing that's important is that, you know, the message remains the same, the approach remains the same. The platforms may change, so for Ebony and also for Jet, the sister publication, the way that people used to know they had impact was the "pass along." People are passing along the magazine, you're seeing it in the barber shop, you're seeing it in the beauty salons. Now you have to measure in a different way. You might be measuring retweets or measuring the analytics and seeing how many times a post is shared but I also agree with you that there's also this personal impact. So we have a story on Ebony.com that does exceedingly well at all times. I think it's a commentary on our current times and it's black Wall Street and it talks about the destruction of black Wall Street. It's very historical but it's also very literary, like a beautifully told story. It really hammers home like the anguish, the pain, and it also shows you, you know, we deal with this kind of and I won't specify, but political rhetoric that asks why don't black people have more of this, and here the article answers that. Well, when we did have more of this, this is what you did. So you came in, you destroyed this city, you destroyed this place in history. And the way I measured my success was one day my mother who was 70 and is extremely intelligent, a former schoolteacher but does not really like the interwebs so much told me she read an intriguing story about black Wall Street, and I was like "mom, that's Ebony, that's where I work." So I gave up at that point on you know.
(Laughter.)
You know how your mom is. She does something, I don't know, magazines, but at any rate, the fact that it resonated so deeply that she even read it and she's barely online, that showed me the depth that you can reach and it also is important to me to see that that story, though it was written maybe five or six years ago, continues to be one of the top and it demonstrates that we're able to get that history out and information out and through a prism that is relevant today. So I agree with you that I think you don't want to get so stuck in these algorithms and it went viral. It's like what, who did it touch? Can someone tell you that something touched them, changed their life or something to that effect. So I definitely see your point there.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: I kind of describe it as a very jazz like strategy where it's like you could get really like precise and classical about these ways of doing it and people often times if I'm at a dinner party, and it gets really boring, people will turn to me and they're like, "So you work in social media? What's the best time to post?
>> KYRA KYLES: 8:00 o'clock in the morning, right? Like, what are you talking about?
>> KIMBERLY DREW: We reach people all over the world.
>> KYRA KYLES: And it depends on what it is.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Right. It's not just read that particular way, but if you can make something that people feel they're a part of, you never know. People in our constituency online surprise me every single day by the things that they like. Some random ottoman rug or something will blow someone's world away and they're like all exclamation points in the comments section. I'm just like...
>> KYRA KYLES: This is what gets you.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Yeah,so you you never know, but I love that story about your mom.
>> KYRA KYLES: Yeah. That was hysterical. It taught me a lot.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: That's so cute. My mom would do some stuff like that too.
>> KYRA KYLES: Do you think that and we face this too in terms of articles. There is so much information out there. There's a content overload. There's probably also an artistic overload. The good thing is there's so many talented people out there. The bad news is it seems like we're living in a timeline society where things get pushed, pushed, pushed, until they're gone. Do you feel that art is more lasting or less so because of the digital culture and the way that things just kind of phase in and out?
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Yeah. I think for me perhaps my biggest hope is that people, in this moment of images proliferating our lives in ways that in new ways, and more dynamic ways that people feel more a part of the creative process. I am really fortunate because I grew up in Orange, New Jersey which is super close to north New Jersey where the black arts movement was really housed. And then growing up so close to New York and having gone to the Metropolitan Museum as a child, I was always around art and creativity. I never felt like I couldn't be an artist and I realized that many of my peers don't have that privilege and so for me I want people to feel like yo, I could do that. You know, there's that joke about modern art, where people are like "a kid could do that." I don't think that's the worst thing in the world. I think that if you understand that images exist within time for particular reasons and there's an art historical relationship to every image that's created, bomb. But even a step further is that, you feel like your craft or the thing you want to bring into the world can have value, there's nothing like that. I think especially too when you're thinking about what it means to be black right now, I want particularly black people to feel empowered to tell their stories in whatever way makes most sense for the means they're trying to communicate through and so I hope that in this moment where people are seeing more art, that they see they can participate and that it doesn't have to be particularly like this particular choreography for participation.
>> KYRA KYLES: That's really good point because I think you see that with all these other venues. People see they can be a dancer, they see there's more accessibility to that, and you're right, you can see that that is as viable a career option for me as being an accountant or being anything else that I have immediate exposure to and you're right, in certain communities, unfortunately, that's not-- that is almost a luxury, if you think about it, and art is, you know, in this social space allows you to see the possibilities. But of course there's always a flip side, and something that I'd like to talk to you about and I just want it make sure. Does everyone in the audience familiar with the situation about the Michelle Obama mural? Can I see like a show of hands of people who are aware? I'm sure everybody here we got a smart smart audience. So I wanted to talk a little bit about what is the line between appreciating and appropriating? So we have this artist who or as he explained it, he was in this particular situation, he saw himself as an urban planner and a place maker, so someone who takes something and remixes it and uses it. He put the mural up, the young lady was an Ethiopian born artist who actually created it, was like what is this? You know, find out about it through social media, which is again, you know, the great equalizer, and they're going back and forth and it's kind of an ugly battle to see, because he is saying, "hey, I'm helping. I'm creating visibility. This is beautiful, I never said I created it per se, but I'm sharing it and now look at all the exposure you have." Meanwhile, she's saying "you didn't license this from me, you didn't ask my permission, I didn't know what this was for. This is wrong." So you being a curator and being so attuned to this world, how do you see this scenario from a general perspective? Obliviously, we don't know them, and we don't want to malign either of them. What do you think about this scenario and the fact that this can happen anytime and it does happen often.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Yeah, I mean it's such-- we're in such a wild time with the way that images are being shared. And there's... And I think it's something that happens both visually and then also just thinking about writing at well, right? Where someone's like, " Can you write 800 words for exposure. I'm like, no, I can write 800 stories for myself. But for me I think I mean it's just tragic. There's no real way to call it anything else. Because you I think anybody as a cultural practitioner where you're making an image, there's a marriage that you have to it so thinking about losing it is a difficult thing. A lot of times when I travel and talk to artists, they're very hesitant about putting their work online. And for me as a person who made a career out of putting other people's images on line, I'm always super sensitive to those kinds of conversations because there's... there's a way to do it. If ever someone asks me personally, like I saw my image on Black Contemporary Art, can you take it down? It's down. No argument. I don't know need to know why's or who's or hows, or whatever. I will do my due diligence to make sure it's removed because at the end of the day you have this particular ownership but I think for me, if there's something that can be deemed that's positive of that dialogue, I hope she gets the justice that she deserves and then that people know moving forward when those things happen there's a procedure for it because it doesn't have to be this, you know, battle of power in the ways that we might think. There can be some opportunities for her to be able to claim ownership over the images she created and I think that that is what makes social media so great. Is that for a long time, especially when you think about black narratives, there's been these moments in history where people are like that didn't happen. Or even when you think about this political climate when there are still people who are Holocaust deniers and you're just like, how?! Right!
>> KYRA KYLES: How could you possibly? There's so many museums.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Right, but people live their truth and I think this is an opportunity more now than ever for us to be able to say like this is, you know this is what I know to be true. And I'm going to fight for my images and for my rights, and I have these tools to do so, and best case scenario, I have this community that's backing me and I think that that was so great because even so off line Kyra and I were talking about this story and thinking about how to bring it up on the stage and there was a great article in Ebony.com about it.
>> KYRA KYLES: Thank you.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: And the young woman whose work it was, not only was she able to give her own statement, which was brilliant and thoughtful, but also she was mentioning how many people had DM'd her the image, how many people had commented on it, or even thinking about there was an incident, some brand posted someone's image and then Francesca Lee got into the comment section and battled with them. So thinking about people who can come in and fight with you is like everything. Because there's the difficulty of the incident but knowing you're not alone in the that fight is something I think is a definite positive of digital sharing of images. And if you as an artist are interested in sharing your work on line, there are risks to it and every selfie there's a particular risk but in the same way there's a particular risk in leaving your apartment and coming to this talk so you have to think about what the benefits are and I think for my desk absolutely community is one of those benefits.
>> KYRA KYLES: So you... I know you have this you're trying to embrace, and you're trying to provide exposure, but even you have some people, no, I didn't want that exposure. What is in your mind the proper way to do this? Because I think we all in some way when we're using social media or on line, we're curators of sorts. Even in a very practical or on a very low level. What is the best way to give someone credit, do you think, for something that they've done in this context of I want to share this beautiful painting I see on my Instagram, what would you say would be the best way to do that?
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Yeah. I mean I think it comes down to intentionality. For me as a person who like I said earlier made my career putting other images on line and I continue to do so, I think about it as an opportunity to educate others on what someone has done. To educate others on my taste, to be able to way find for folks who are interested in perhaps finding something I found. And so I think about it also as this hunger. So if I find an image perhaps online that maybe I don't know where it came from, I try to Google image search and think very critically about the spaces in which it may have come from before I publish anything. So... for me, I really make a point of not posting things that I can't properly credit or tribute.
>> KYRA KYLES: So sourcing is the key.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Sourcing is everything. Like. It's really not that deep.
>> KYRA KYLES: It's like your term paper. Like you take a term paper, write it up and you don't have your citations, you don't have where you got this originally, and I think we kind of get lost in that in our haste. I think haste is part of this too. You know it's the "I want to get this up before other people get it up, I want to be the person that found this," but you don't think of where it came from and the impact it might have.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Right. I think every post of something that is not of your own hand is an opportunity to celebrate what someone else has done and I think if you're going to throw a party, you want to make sure you have all the things in line before the guests arrive.
>> KYRA KYLES: I love that.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: So that's kind of it, where you want to be able to say, even if it's something and there's difficulty of course too and I come in contact with it all the time at the Metropolitan Museum where there's periods of collection in art history that we just don't know the names of the creators, but with all that you have, with every bit of information or provenance you can gather about an object, throw it up there so that people can continue to do the research too, 'cause I think also when you don't source things properly, you deny people the opportunity to do the research. And so you're doubly making a mistake, and so being able to take that slower time and understand that these images can have a real impact on people, the practitioners, the audience, yourself, should you run into an issue with rights, or Getty Images comes for you there's just so much more of an ecosystem around all of these things that we cherish and it needs to be respected.
>> KYRA KYLES: What do you think about the notion of having so much digital output, making people lazier? So if someone decided for whatever reason, 'cause this would be crazy, not to come to this beautiful institution because they feel like they can see these things on line, or they can experience them, you know, through a screen, do you think that that is realistic? Is that something that institutions should be mindful of? Are there steps that they should take in order to make that tactile experience more important so that people know there's something to that? We face the same challenge with a magazine and paper format versus digital format. You don't want one cannibalizing the other. How do you interact with that dynamic?
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Yeah. I... I think that digital technology I mean the line is really getting super fuzzy in the most amazing way. I think in the coming years, we're going to see so many more exhibitions that are digitally integrated. I think by way of some institutions like the Tate is doing amazing work fusing technology and/or new technologies with kind of older ways of viewing artwork. For example, at the Met Cloisters right now, we have an exhibition where there's these really old, very delicate box wood carvings and then there's a VR experience paired with it. And you're like what?!
>> KYRA KYLES: It's a multi dimensional. Ok...
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Right. It's just different entryways into viewing artwork and so I think from my desk, that's kind of how I view digital technology as well. I see my job as making more opportunities to create more doors into the museum. So for me it's really a door, it's an opportunity to say this is some insight to what we have going on. Hopefully it is intriguing enough for you that you want to come in. I think if there's a mistake that people in the museum world make quite often is that we assume that people care, and they simply don't always, and so it's our job to make sure that we, when they do finally, you know, strike up an interest that we're there with open arms to welcome them into our institution but in the meantime, digital is an opportunity on the frontline to meet people where they're at. You know, we are going on to Twitter and publishing these messages and Instagram, we want to meet you guys where you're at. That's something I was trying to do early in black contemporary art. I want communities of people to have access to these images in their pockets so it feels like a regular encounter to be able to see new images every day but at the same time I think there is nothing like seeing artwork in person. But it gets into a weird kind of hierarchy in this old school versus new school thing that I'm very disinterested in. If you want to look at it in your pocket or in a gallery, go for it. Do the institutions need you to survive? Do we need your physical presence to survive? Absolutely. And so that's the other part that happens within that ecosystem too. The programs can't go on without people coming and setting their butts in the seat. That participation is vital but at the same time I would be a fool to say that there's one best way of viewing something or one best way of encountering an experience.
>> KYRA KYLES: Understandable, and it sounds like in the future there's some initiatives in this direction. You might go into a museum, you might be immersed in some sort of experience that's related to an exhibit and then there are tactile aspects to, virtual reality, audio, so everything could be a multimedia experience. That sounds interesting. Do you see that coming soon or is that something further out in the future?
>> KIMBERLY DREW: We're here. It's definitely happening and for some organizations with more resources, you're seeing is more readily. And I think from an accessibility standpoint, we all really benefit, because you think about a tactile art experience that you have, visitors coming into the museum blind or partially blind they can have an experience in the galleries and that's amazing. The Baltimore museum of art thinks about tactile art as well. It's hang now. It de happening now. It depends on which institutions where you're seeing these things. I think history and science museums are at the forefront of thinking through digital technology in the galleries. But there's a lot of new ways of viewing and I think it's really exciting and hopefully in the same turn we'll listen better to constituents who come in and say maybe not that and maybe that and there can be an evolution.
>> KYRA KYLES: I wanted to talk to you a little bit, we deal with this a lot on Ebony in terms of just different things. Like for example the fact that I didn't know this, but Kim Kardashian invented the corn roll. Kylie Jenner is the first who had plump lips. I think in the art world there's a similar like what we've been able to do is we show receipts and that's what we call it, where we can go back in the history, we can go back in the different magazines, we can go back into pop culture from the 70s and 60s, and dispel some of the myths that come about from maybe laziness or lack of introspection that we have in our culture. Do you see in the art world this people of color, black people being able to use digital to kind of show receipts for things that they've done in the artistic vein? Is that something that you think is a power that we have, or are we still kind of disenfranchised in terms of knowing different input that people of color have had in the art world and different mediums?
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Yeah. I think right now, not right now, the last few decades really, scholarship in art history being acted out by black scholars has very much been dispelling the myth of the first, because a lot of times I think people will tent pole someone as the first or the only, and then it does a disservice to their peers at the time. So for me I'm intrigued especially by the social history of artwork to say this was what was going on politically, that is who they bumped to, this is the graduating class or this was the downtown scene. This was the person who may have been at that opening. They may not have been a civilian bystander in this art historic moment. So I think as people are writing into those histories, it's really important to be able to give a full context and not just look at the actual artifacts that are produced, but thinking about a more fuller story around everything that's created that we're understanding. The battle for I think it's different, of course, within the art historical discourse. But if you look at something like the history of modernism of course you think about how, you know, African masks arrive in paintings or these kind of particular ways of viewing a face or these structures or the way that these abstracts are constructed are very much sourced from elsewhere and not properly credited. Or thinking about photographers specifically have a really crazy history of this, and being super voyeuristic. But I think that the receipt building is something that's far more not far more luscious but definitely an exercise where you do this disservice to the work in ways that unfortunately haven't had the opportunity to happen yet. I really am would be remiss not to bring up a scholar like Dev Willis who has dedicated her life to unpacking images of black beauty and images by black practitioners. But going through those histories and really sitting with it, right now in New York there's an exhibition called we wanted a revolution about black women artists from I think 1965 to 1985. Those exhibitions in that kind of work is the receipts of our world. And being able to say this story needs to be told in this particular way as something that is important and divine to understanding a historical moment and these stories will not go quiet any longer.
>> KYRA KYLES: Wonderful. I think the receipts are important, and the spreading of the receipts is even more important. Do you see, like we've always had these people that have this scholarly notion, but it is spreading, you think widely enough is the question, because sometimes I'm still surprised in 2017, some of the first that we get across any kind of scholarship that's film, that's literature, anything. Do you see that spreading widely enough for your tastes based on your own knowledge?
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Yeah.
>> KYRA KYLES: You do?
>> KIMBERLY DREW: I mean I think for me, I love the opportunity to be someone who can like straddle academia and pop culture world because it's so easy to do and I think it's really like an understanding on both not easy, I'm tired.
(Laughter.)
Let me tell you, I'm working very hard. But aside from that, being able to privilege both communities equally is something that I feel a great privilege to be able to do and people follow me with it, because it's an important thing. I think last weekend, my humble (inaudible) salon.
>> KYRA KYLES: She did a great job. You got to look this up.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: But she was really excellent in talking about some of her inspirations in the world of art specifically or within the world of culture and just being able to understand that we are all kind of these we're all constantly receiving images from all different kinds of modes of thinking. We all have access to different levels of text and so I think that that proliferation is happening really rapidly now. We're thinking about someone like Amanda (inaudible) or these young people who are taking a really political stance on information.
>> KYRA KYLES: Right.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: And pairing it with these robust images that people want to participate in or thinking of the world of teen vogue where there is an intensely and Ebony for all time. I mean shit.
>> KYRA KYLES: I was going to say, I was jealous over here.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: But these publications that have the ability to, like I said, meet people where they're at, and take these really difficult to understand histories, the writers, take that to task, break it down, and provide it to a general public. That's everything, and it's something that is a really it's life's work, you know? Taking really complicated histories and making it something that everybody from the babies to the grandmas can really understand it and feel a part of and want to retell the story and any opportunity I think that we have at cultural workers to take something and turn it into oral history, to turn it into something that there's a hand off as you described is a real success and there's not a numeric value or a dollar amount that you can really put on it. It's really qualitative.
>> KYRA KYLES: I like your point about Solange, she does a wonderful job of infusing her music, his videos, her visuals with this rich tapestry of artistry and you can see her appreciation for it and her lesser known sister, Beyonce, got a lot of attention through daughters of the dust through her lemonade video. But it's even if it's late, you know, it's still not too late. But it just seems like more artists are artists even if they're not in the art or the fine arts world are taking it upon themselves to say, hey, I have this platform and I need to disseminate information that goes beyond me and beyond my ego and beyond fame. I want to infuse this with things that people can then take and make that leap. Like you said, daughters of the dust I believe is rereleased and I got to believe it has something to do with, you know, the demand from the lemonade visuals. But like who would you say, I know you find her very inspiring. You know she found you inspiring. You interviewed Alicia keys. Who are some of the artists out there and it can be across any platform who are pushing the envelope. You mentioned Yara, you mentioned Amanda. Are there our musicians or people in that space who are pushing the envelope and are bringing forth the artistic images?
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Of course Kanye. Another gem.
>> KYRA KYLES: He's Chicagoish.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Right. Oh, yes. So topical. Oh, my God. I didn't even do that on purpose.
>> KYRA KYLES: She did that on purpose.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: But I also really love someone like Cary May Weems who is artist who has an activist history and also has an incredible legacy as an educator. Dewaoud was here at noon, who is incredibly important to our scholarship. I'm trying to think who else would be really great to know. Martin Simms is an artist working out of Los Angeles, and previously Chicago. I keep doing it. I'm so good at it.
>> KYRA KYLES: She's doing it on purpose.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: No. Just kidding. But I think that Martine who is an artist personally who I want to bring up because she during the week, it's unfortunate because I can't parse out which week, which person was killed, you know, unjustly. But there was an incident where for me I sit on the Internet all day, it's what I do professionally, and after a while, it starts to wear on you psychologically, and I've been really struggling in the past year to sit in the Internet and be able to contest with these ideas and know, and to try to really maintain an optimistic outflow. But I think Martine who on one of those days was doing a program at a place in New York called light industries and she showed these videos by black women, I'd never seen them before. And it was just this opportunity to see that the moving image could be a place of positivity. And reality. Right? Not every image has to be a smiling face but not every image has to be violence or misery or earlier Cecil was talking about showing images that aren't just based in black misery. I try to share as much information as possible every day. And I think that that is what makes the culture rich. It's like this gumbo that we're all throwing in ingredient to.
>> KYRA KYLES: Love that. I've been a question hog up here.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Who was inspiring to you? Whose killing it for you?
>> KYRA KYLES: I'll say I'm going to go with the pop culture angle. And I'm a little embarrassed with this. I was on the plane listening to Kendrik Lamar's damn and I was tearing up. To use rap in that way to communicate spiritual, about the political, about a condition that is not your own, I think that you could do whatever you want with the talent like that and the fact that he chooses to use it in this really distinct way, and then what I was thinking about specifically as he was talking about how America's good to you if you're a certain type of person, and I think that's what got to me, as you say, I work in this industry, I can't help but see all this bleakness and sadness and black misery and death, and hearing him kind of crystallize that was very powerful for me from an audio perspective. So you know I believe in art every way and for me at that moment that was a really powerful piece of art and people on the plane thought I was off but that's okay.
(Laughter.)
I knew what I was upset about. So that's fine.
(Laughter.)
>> KYRA KYLES: Right.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: I need to open it up to the audience to get some questions for the amazing Kimberly Drew and she is just that.
>> We have two microphones, there's Grace up there and I'm down here. And here's the first question right here.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. Kim, I'm wondering how you negotiate the political with the institution?
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Well, it is an interesting challenge, right? Because as you know, as a former as a met alum, there are particular difficulties when you try to politicize an institution because there's so many things that institutions signifies, right? And so being able to corral all of those signifiers and make a statement about a particular time is something that I think is a unique challenge every day for us. But for me, I find it thrilling to be able to use the voice of the institution to share as many stories as possible through the collection, right? One of the things that makes the Met unlike like the Louvre, we don't have an Mona Lisa, there's not one particular piece that's the master of the institution. So taking something like this painting or this ritual object and put them on the same pedestal I think is revolutionary, but when you think about this political climate, there's always difficulties because some days you just want to scream and use this like huge beacon to say something but like I said, there's different ways, there's quiet work that can be done in the meantime to really be able to leverage that power, and to be able to craft new narratives about a particularly old institution and let people know that there's more than meets the eye with what you may encounter within the galleries.
And also we miss you.
(Laughter.)
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. I had a quick question about how like you engage with millenials, with getting from seeing this on social media to where they say they're going, but getting them and getting them interested in it. What are the tactics you use when cultivating those posts?
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Yeah. For me one of the things that I'm most focused on in the work that I'm doing is making something that wants to inspire that in people. I think that there are many reasons in which people don't go into museum spaces, whether those be physical or economic or, you know, there's just so many difficulties, and even thinking about, you know, what it means to pass through the threshold at an institution, but for me I want for people to especially through my work on black contemporary art, I like the idea that if people knew the name of five artists, that they may feel more inspired to enter into a museum space, because I think a lot of times people may feel like okay, I don't know all of it and the thing is you don't have to. That's why the institution exists, you come there to learn at the end of the day, right? So for me I want to be able to provide people with a vocabulary before they make their entry, whether they come or not is up to them and up to circumstance. But when they do arrive, I want people to feel empowered once they're there.
>> A question on your left.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have a question about like with activism and curating an online space, how do you promote a mention of activism, then like selling the idea of activism? Because I know like upcoming publications, when they usually talk about activism they sometimes sell you an image without actually showing stuff to how to better your community. So my question is how you like differentiate the two?
>> KIMBERLY DREW: I think that's a great question for you, Kyra.
>> KYRA KYLES: I think it's an interesting question because there's one thing to report about activism and another to advocate for it, and I think that a lot of publications struggle with that. Ebony, I'm really proud to say for the first time in my career, I've work for many mainstream publications, I feel we're comfortable telling you what to do. I was telling Kimberly in the back that we have an actual series called in our cities where we put the focus on cities that people malign on an average basis, like Chicago is so terrible, all the crime, and Detroit is burned out and we actually go into these cities, show you these positive examples of things being done but also give you the racial backdrop of the city and let you know how it got that way and try to connect people with activists and others in the community who are trying to better it whether they're in the media or not. So if I were at a different publication, I would have an issue where I would have to figure out how to toe the line but at Ebony, because we're about bettering the black experience and the black community, we do that and we try to do that. So there are a lot of articles about what you can do, what steps you can take, here's a fund raiser going on, where I feel other people feel they need to report on it with a disinterested, dispassionate, we're standing back behind the curtain. We will say why is this person dead, what did he do to this police officer. We're not afraid to ask that question. So I think I'm in a bit of unique experience but more people are asking their out lets to do that and not take the official police or state stance on things. They want to really know what happened and what to do to avoid this in the future. But that's a really good question and had it been six or seven years ago, I may not have been able to answer it like that but I'm really happy that I can say that today.
>> We have another question over here.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes. You talked about the digital world. But in many respects in the early 20th century, could you say that the invention of radio was equally radical in terms of conveying information and changing people's attitude and exposure to music, et cetera?
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Yeah, I think I think that all of those modernities in the way that technologies have evolved over time have given us new opportunities to learn things. I'm particularly fascinated in the way your question about the podcast culture of right now, throughout like the early 2010s to this moment and thinking about how they are opportunities for us to be in constant contact with culture and these very rigorous dialogues in new ways. Because in the same way that not everybody is going to pick up the paper and read it page to page or not everybody is going to read a full novel, there's many opportunities to encounter things and as the podcast boom, there are many more voices and vantage points and so I think it does serve the cultural dialogue. I want to have as many people's opinions on something as possible, in the world. I don't want to hear all of them per se, but I do think that that scale is really quite important for us as we are viewing the world and I think it does a service to marginalized communities especially to have these out lets. To not have one version of the story. It's not the New York Times saying this about this show. It's this magazine based out of this neighborhood.
>> KYRA KYLES: I think one of the important things is you brought up podcasts is the cost of ownership. You couldn't start up a radio station. You don't have the resources to start a magazine, but you can certainly jump on Facebook live, you can be on Instagram, there's a democratization of voice. The radio opened that up and there's almost a two way exchange, so yeah, the mainstream has a voice but the people have a voice and they have almost an equally effective way of having that exchange back with the main entities.
>> Right here in the middle.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: My question is kind of segues from that. Do you have any suggestions or tips for us as individuals on how best to curate our own art in the digital world? When we're posting it on?
>> KIMBERLY DREW: One thing I always say and this is going to sound like a copout but it's totally not is it's really up to you. I think for me when I was starting my blog, I did not anticipate that it would be successful. If you had talked to me if 2010 and told me I would be on this stage, I would call you a liar and be like why are you talking to me?
(Laughter.)
But for me, what made one of the great successes of my blog and one of the great successes of my career is I truly love it so I remained committed to doing the research, to do the slow work of who created these images and all these things because I was deeply fascinated by the images, and so as you are a practitioner and engaging on these platforms, you find the one that works for you. You don't have to be on all ten social media networks. But if you know that Instagram works for you in your daily life because you're picking up the kids or your gardening or whatever, you find the medium that works best for the way that you want to tell your story and you tell it as much as you can with the frequency that makes sense for you. Because if you don't love to do it, you're not going to do it and that's the true failure. It's not that you posted at 2 p.m. when you should have been posting at 4. No.
>> KYRA KYLES: It's the passion.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Yeah.
>> Next question up here.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. So I guess my question is about the Internet, social media and alienation. I guess you touched on this about working behind the Internet. You said that you can use social media as a platform to educate others about your tastes. I feel like in my experience, I think that's a positive and brilliant. It also can be alienated because there's so much work that goes into ensuring that we project a certain image on to the world and it doesn't really seem genuine. And I just feel like it's hard for me to engage with that because it's not I don't know, I find it taxing to curate the perfect image, like des played to the world. displayed to the world. I was wondering if you could elaborate about being alienating about social media and constructing an image constructing the image that you want the world to see.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Yeah. I'm not sure I understand your question.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. Sorry.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Is it about images that are like too choreographed?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I guess it's more like platforms like Instagram and people put a lot of work and (inaudible) persona.
>> KYRA KYLES: Are you saying it's a turnoff to have that choreographed constructed image? I think you can look at the fire what was that, the fire festival? What happened there, you know, where they were like oh, my God, you're going to be swimming with the swimming pigs and sitting on turtle backs and people ended up in refugee tents and because Bella Hadid told them to go. I get what he's saying in terms of personally I from a media perspective, I think we're going to get away from that really carefully constructed perfect image, cup of coffee with just the right amount of foam, because I think we reached the tipping point. We all know that it's foolishness, and at this point people are being totally exposed. We have some of these influencers who accidentally put all the information, post this at 2 p.m., please, wow, you don't really use that product your advertising, you're being very naked about it. So I think personally from a media perspective, I can't speak from the artistic perspective, I think we've reached a point where people are tired of that, they want more authenticity and are going to be projecting that, because if you're doing Instagrams and they all look like commercials, you should be doing commercials, so I think we've reached the tipping point. Because the fire festival was a mess. If it was on Instagram
>> KYRA KYLES: I'm curious about that too, because for me I have or not so much now but in the beginning I had a little bit of anxiety about my Instagram account because I would look at peers who were very beautiful kind of posed image and know that was not my style. All of my pictures are taken with my phone in my real life and.
>> KYRA KYLES: They are beautiful but there is an authenticity to it.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: I'm not going to spend three hours on it. I respect people who want to have that because I believe very much in the right to an aesthetic, but at the same time, I want to be able to tell a true story about what I do. Because I know very much that I am, one not alone as a woman of color in the arts and I want to be able to show my friends who do those things who have different stories. But to also say this is what can did look like because none of this was guaranteed for me and that's what I was thinking about in the beginning of my career, because so much of the art on my account was because I would go to Chelsea every Saturday and go look at exhibitions there. One because the exhibitions were free and I was broke as hell, and so being able to show you too can go and see these shows free of charge in New York City, so I use it to bring to reality to flow through the things I'm seeing in the world, as a way of recording things I see in the world as my life continues to accelerate. But and if you like it, that's great. If you don't, that's fine. And that's always been kind of my philosophy too. I think it's funny when people who obsessed. (Inaudible) I'm not going to put you on to some good stuff.
>> KYRA KYLES: If you want to leave, you can go.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Right. It's an open door policy. But I do think too, influencer culture thing is an interesting thing because there's so much shade about it existing but then people got to make people are writing a book and also doing these cute little posts and getting their cool thing. Get your money out.
>> KYRA KYLES: But I always thought about I could do the editor in chief of celebrity selfie. I would like to do the dazed look in my eyes after the shoot is over and there's litter every way. It took all day to do the shoot but here's an hours worth of pictures. I want people to not look at this and think it's a glamorous job but it's work. Her Instagram, I do highly recommend it. It's a balance. You got cool things that she's doing and she talked about the struggle, she talked about everything and I think social media has made us feel like we need to be perfect. Personally I find that confining, so that's why I like the fact that, if you want to do it that way and you want to make it look like LL bean that's fine, but if you want to be real, there's a way for.
>> KIMBERLY DREW: And if you want to stay off fire island.
>> We're going to try two more quick ones before we end. We might go a little over. But we'll do what we can. Right here.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. First thank you guys for both being here. And then this is a question that you can both answer. I'm kind of curious about how you maintain the nuance of your blackness without getting to this place of black exhaustion and I'll elaborate a little bit more. So I'm a writer artist and a lot of times I get called into places, it will be like, oh, great, we have a black. Please be the black that's going to speak about blackness so we can feel like we've done our part as non racists to have you here, and so yes, I want to speak for black people and black women and black artists. I want to have that voice, but at the same time I also want people to understand that I cry, I do all these other things as well as any other human. I don't just exist as a black person. I exist as a human person who is also black. So how do you balance for being a voice for black women and blackness and not get to this place of black exhaustion?
>> KYRA KYLES: She turned to me.
(Laughter.)
All right. I'm going in. Okay.
(Laughter.)
So I will say that earlier in my career, when I was in some sad cases the black, you know, and I felt an enormous amount of pressure, what if the black says the wrong thing and gets everyone in trouble? You know, I actually remember a situation where after Hurricane Katrina, some editors at this publication I was working for asked me, they had never spoken to me before but they summoned me to a room and they asked me what do you think about us calling them refugees. And I said would you do that if it happened in Iowa or would you do that if it happened in Milwaukee? Well, no, and I was like, well then I'm going to let you go with that.
(Laughter.)
Because I'm not the spokesperson of blackness and I cannot cover you and sanctify blackness and keep you safe from anger, but I would just challenge you to use your own mind and what I usually try to do is I put them in the position so that they understand that they're not talking to an extra terrestrial being, you're talking to a fellow human. So why would you do something to a group of people that you wouldn't want be done to the group of people that you most closely identify with. So what I value I don't mind being the black if that's the situation. What I try to do is get involved in hiring, get involved in mentoring so I can make sure that I'm not the only one around, but if I am, I will speak up but I make it clear, A, that I am not the spokesperson, and I also try to turn it around and find whatever commonality this individual might have or individuals might have, and try to put it on them to figure it out versus me telling them, I'm about to call Jesse Jackson. I know you didn't just say
(Laughter.)
I could have done that. I could have done it. I know the reverend's number, but no, I'm going to let you tell me what you think is right here. And they made the right in my opinion, the right decision but I think that's what it is. It is wearisome and it becomes a bit of a drag and sometimes I have to go oh, my God, not again. When they called me in there, I never had seen all these people before, but all of a sudden I'm the sage, but hopefully we're getting to a space where we're less and less of that, because we need to have more representation. And people understand that. Look at the Pepsi commercial and I'll leave it at that.
(Applause.)
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Yeah, I don't think I could say it any better. When it comes down to what could be an exhaustion, I try to travel that energy into a younger generation of thinkers and to make sure that the rooms I'm in have more people that look and don't look like me, but yeah, I don't know. I'm not I try not to let that kind of stuff get to me. I don't ever feel like a particular burden about it. I think that might be my distance or something. But for me I'm more than happy to be the black person in the space and I am always, you know, hypercritical and thoughtful about invitations that I get, right? And thinking about how especially as a visible person I align myself with spaces and brands and media. And say a lot of noes, absolutely to certain opportunities and then have guilt, why did I say no to this check? But I remember that integrity is the most important and valuable thing to me. But I absolutely understand that one of my greatest callings is to be a person who can be a representative of a lot of people and I don't fear that burden at all. Because I know for me when I came into this world, I only had one or two examples of other black women in the arts, and for me I've been really set on being an example for other folks and that comes with a set of responsibilities. But yeah, so for me I don't mind to be the black. I'm happy to be the black.
>> One last question.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: So I'm curious how you weigh the desire for good metrics on social with the responsibility of curation, so the audience is interested in impressionism. How do you make sure to share an equal percentage of types of art or do you or are you more motivated by showing people what they want to see and what they're going to react to?
>> KIMBERLY DREW: Yeah. The variables are really pretty broad, so I try to just think generally per season, per exhibition, make the best guesses on what will do the best, but it's really more about thinking within frameworks so if I know that I want to dedicate three posts this week to Polynesian art, then I want to make sure that I find a work from that particular culture that I think will perform best within the channels, but it's really not like, okay, I'm going to weigh all these things as equal because that's not how museums are built. If there's an Seurat exhibition that is high on the chain, of course I'm going to have to work with that. I wouldn't consider it with a work in storage. But when I do think about on a more macro level all of the things I'm sharing, I try to do it in more like in buckets, like to say I want to share this particular type of sculpture from this particular region of the worlds, so I'll pair it with something else, so how the met kids think about this culture and share a fun fact as opposed to just sharing an image. But it's not weighing them all because there are thousands and hundreds of thousands of things to consider every day, and I have to get these tweets out, so it's about limiting the variables in terms of what I have to share first and then trying to dig through all those parameters or buckets to find the most, you know, appealing image, and some things are duds and some things need to get shared anyway. I'm just going to push this off and I know it's not going to do well, next tweet. So that happens sometimes too.
>> Thank you again, Kim and Kyra, everyone. Thank you so much.
(Applause.)
(End of event.)

****

This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.

****