Once again, another article discusses The Bronx as some undiscovered paradise, a terra incognita for artists looking for a new place to colonize and bring their art and culture (and gentrification in tow) as if the borough was somehow bereft of the arts—and people.
Let’s get one thing straight before we even continue: The Bronx is not some undiscovered virgin territory in waiting—our borough is and has always been alive with arts, music, culture, and a beautiful tapestry of people from around the world. From City Island to The South Bronx, Riverdale to Hunts Point and every neighborhood in between, we’ve been creating.
When we first started writing about The Bronx seven years ago, you would be hard pressed to find a remotely positive article on our beautiful borough. In fact, that was the reason we began to write: To challenge head on the negative stereotypes that have been perpetuated by the media for decades.
People looked at us as recently as even 5 years ago that we were crazy if we thought The Bronx was a great place.
Now, for the past few years and particularly this year, everyone is jumping on The Bronx bandwagon as if we didn’t exist before they wrote about it, ate at some local mom and pop restaurant we’ve been eating at for half a century, or went to The Bronx Museum or any of our many cultural institutions that have been rooted and cemented in our community’s DNA for decades.
The article by Crain’s starts:
Bye bye Bushwick: The Bronx is the city’s next new arts scene. Cheap rent, great transit, new and growing cultural organizations. It’s easy to be a working artist in the Bronx—and outsiders are beginning to take note.
Wait what? New and growing cultural organizations? Sure there are new kids on the block in The Bronx art scene but this statement implies somehow that this is a recent “phenomenon”.
Easy to be a working artist? It might be easier for some, especially those coming in from overpriced Manhattan and Brooklyn, but overall, Bronx artists don’t necessarily find it easier to be a working artist. In fact, many of our artists who have been working here for decades or their entire lives, constantly are in conversations on the difficulties and financial challenges they face to survive as an artist in our borough.
The path of the native Bronx artist is anything but easy.
Not that we know every, single artist working in The Bronx, but we are immersed in the art scene and artists rarely if ever are proclaiming how easy it is. Many artists are juggling one or two jobs, and overtime just to be able to afford living in The Bronx with ever increasing rents and to be able to focus on their crafts.
The article proceeds to speak about Chilean artist, Ivan Gaete, as moving to The Bronx from Brooklyn a few years ago to “join a small but growing number of artists living in The Bronx.”
Yet another WTF moment. Small? The Bronx art scene has been anything but small. We are the borough that birthed Hip Hop, Salsa, taking graffiti from the subway and streets to the top museums and galleries in the world, a slew of cultural icons and giants that shape today’s entertainment industry from fashion to theater to the big screen and our radio airwaves.
We are and have been everywhere.
The ridiculous article continues with other moronic ascertations like, “there is a true [artistic] community developing” which again is pretty insulting and dismissive of the dozens of organizations that have been deeply rooted in our borough for decades.
Yes there are newer institutions such as The Andrew Freedman Home, which thanks to a major exhibition by New Longer Empty four years ago, is now a major cultural hub under the leadership of its director, Walter Puryear.
The Andrew Freedman Home went from being a place many knew little about to an important fixture in out community practically overnight.
The BxArts Factory is also mentioned (perhaps one of the most active art organizations of its size and age), a collective of Bronx artists bringing art projects to the community and helping bridge that gap.
The Bronx Documentary Center, which celebrates its 5th year anniversary this fall has been an incubator of photojournalism and documentary photography of Bronx photographers from middle school and high school students to photographers living in our borough for practically their entire lives.
It’s wonderful that our artists and organizations get the recognition they deserve and have worked hard for but it’s offensive to imply our beautiful Bronx is somehow just starting this artistic journey when in fact we have opened the doors and way to so many artistic disciplines now considered mainstream.
Keep creating, Bronx artists.
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