The walls and floors of Milwaukee Art Museum's new Quadracci Pavilion are stark white, but there's a group at the museum that's doing its best to add some color to the patrons of the museum and to the collections that hang there.
The African American Art Alliance -- affectionately dubbed "Quad A" for the four letters that make up its acronym -- was founded in 1990. Today it boasts dozens of members whose goal is to increase African-American and community interest and participation in the museum, to support the acquisition of works by African-American artists and to encourage education, discussion and enjoyment of African-American art.
The group made its debut in conunction with the 1990 show, "Black Art Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African American Art," and has since taken a strong role in shows and programs by Lois Mailou Jones, Faith Ringgold, Katherine Dunham, Gordon Parks and others.
{INSERT_RELATED}"Dorothy Nelle met with Russell Bowman about the 'Black Art Ancestral Legacy' exhibit," says Sandra Robinson, Quad A vice president, "wanting to know how the African-American community could get more involved in that exhibit and it took off as a grass roots efffort to get us more involved. It formally organized from there into an official support group. Dorothy perceived a need and moved from there."
The group has been growing, especially lately, as MAM prepares to host a pair of exhibitions of interest to the African-American community: "African Sculpture: Bamana Art from Mali" and "The Quilts of Gee's Bend."
Quad A and art museum staff have combined forces to host a number of events that allow members of the Milwaukee community -- including members of the media, community groups and local corporations -- to contribute ideas and assistance in bringing these shows to wider audiences here.
"We're expecting even more people to join us this year," Robinson says. "We're up to about 85 people now. We have found some pockets of enthusiam and a lot of pockets of people who need to be educated about what we do and we hope to reach out more to let people know how we work with the museum and support African-American artists in Milwaukee that don't necessarily have any connection to the museum."
In 2001, Quad A hosted the Third Annual Conference of African and African-American Art Support Groups and, in fact, Quad A was one of the first of such groups in the United States and has been called upon to offer advice and assistance to groups across the country.
"That's right, there are several groups that started after ours and we now have a national association; an informal one, not one that's incorporated," Robinson says. "We were one of the charter groups and now another 10 or 15 have joined in doing the same sort of thing. We hosted the third conference -- the fifth one will take place this year in New Orleans -- and it was kind of the pivotal one that took us from being mom and pop kind of groups into a more official status."
In addition to collaborating with the Milwaukee Art Museum for the "Bamana" and "Gee's Bend" exhibitions, AAAA will also host a major fundraising garden walk event in July.
If you are interested in becoming a member of the African-American Art Alliance or just want to know more about the group, contact Quad A secretary Jody Alexander at (414) 224-3279 or Fran Serlin, Milwaukee Art Museum's Quad A liaison, at (414) 223-3840.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
