(NEWS) N.Y. art museum to hold exhibition on rap music
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History of Hip-Hop Featured in New Exhibit
The Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York will host "Hip-Hop Nation: Roots,
Rhyme and Rage," a special exhibition celebrating twenty-five years of
hip-hop, beginning Sept. 22. Kevin Powell, best known as one of the cast
members of MTV's original Real World, is guest curator for the exhibit.
"Hip-Hop Nation" will showcase clothing and accessories worn by artists like
Afrika Bambaataa, Run-DMC, the Beastie Boys, Salt N' Pepa, Tupac Shakur,
Puff Daddy, Eminem and Missy Elliot. Other items on display at the exhibit
include a letter from the F.B.I. to Priority Records expressing concern over
an N.W.A. song and manuscripts of lyrics by artists like Public Enemy, Ice-T
and Arrested Development.
"I think the exhibition is important because hip-hop is the dominant global
youth culture of the moment," says Powell. "I have visited forty-three
states in America and several countries around the planet and have been
amazed at how big this culture has become."
"Hip-Hop Nation" will be organized into five sections, tracing the
development of hip-hop over the last twenty-five years: "The Block Party,"
"The Roots," "The Golden Era," "Controversy: Outrage and the Rise of Gangsta
Rap" and "Pop Goes the Culture." The exhibit will run through December 31,
2000 and is sponsored by Levi's, 360hiphop.com and the National Endowment of
the Arts.
"Even though America remains a terribly troubled country around the issue of
race, the mass embrace of hip-hop at least says that there is something we
have in common," says Powell. In addition to his involvement with the BMA
exhibition, Powell is working on a narrative history of hip-hop, to be
published in 2004.
GABRIELLE SCHAFER
(August 8, 2000)