In his essay “Before and After Watts: Black Art in Los Angeles,” UCLA African American studies scholar Paul Von Blum writes that the uprising forced public dialogue about race and pushed government agencies to fund social and cultural programming in the city.
“We took our wagon into the streets and looked for things that looked beautiful: the signs of neon, the signs that had melted and broken and pieces that were infused with glass,” Powell recalled in a 2015 Times interview. “They looked like beautiful jewels in the sunshine.” “It was an epically successful show,” said Sarah Loyer, an associate curator at the Broad. “It was … looking at the symbolic moment of the Watts rebellion in L.A. and what that meant locally and nationally.”
“For many years, I had been collecting derogatory images of black people, and I decided to use those images, to recycle them and transform them into an army against racism,” said Saar, 92, by email.
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