加布里埃尔·科伦

Aspiring art educators at 十大博彩推荐排名州立大学 found inspiration from sculptor 加布里埃尔·科伦, who recently visited campus to share how her artistic journey from her native 匈牙利 to New York City led to her work of prominent African Americans.

Koren was the guest of the Montclair’s Center of Pedagogy, which invited the artist to speak to Art Education students in the 大学’s art studios. In providing a lens for looking at art as a platform for social justice, the future teachers learned how including the arts in the study of black history can make a difference in the lives of their future elementary and secondary school students.

在她的演讲中, Koren shared how she emigrated 46 years ago to New York from Budapest, 匈牙利, to experience cultural diversity in all of its many forms. 她很快就明白了, 然而, that understanding culture is more than mere immersion and she also learned how segregated the United States really is.

After many attempts to develop cross-cultural friendships, Koren decided she felt a connection to the Civil Rights activists she had listened to and seen at lectures. A new passion to learn about the African American experience grew, according to her 艺术家的声明. “For 15 years I attended history lectures in African American churches and community centers,她说。. “I learned from the most respected history professors in the community, 教授非裔美国人历史.”

These lectures were the source of her inspiration to create sculptures of great African American historical figures.

When the city of New York decided to re-vision and remake the northwest corner of Central Park into something more than a turn-around, they considered the history of Harlem and the African American experience in America. Koren won the Central Park Conservancy design competition. She created the eight-foot bronze portrait sculpture of Frederick Douglas that now anchors the crossroads of Central Park West and 110th Street-Frederick Douglass Boulevard.

Douglass was committed to women’s rights and endorsed women’s suffrage and Koren included granite blocks that form seating encircling the bronze sculpture of Douglass. On one of the granite blocks one can read Douglass’ words: “Whatever may be said as to a division of duties and avocations, /The rights of man and the rights of woman are one and/inseparable, 站在同样坚不可摧的基础上. 1851”

“为正义创造空间, equity and fairness might seem like a lofty and unreachable goal,” says Art and Design Assistant Professor Dorothy Heard, 谁在我们的Calcia工作室招待雕刻家. “Except when we remember Frederick Douglass who lived a life that showed us that we all individually and collectively, have the capacity to rethink and recreate our relationships and our spaces. We can rethink and remake our ideas about race and gender.”

Koren follows in the path of other women artists who depicted the lives of ordinary people and paths of possibility extraordinary people create, 听到解释说. Anne Whitney (1821-1915) was a successful American woman artist who made portrait-sculptures of abolitionists and suffragists. African American woman artist Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907) carved a medallion depicting abolitionist John Brown. Best known for her sculpture of a young black boy in ordinary clothing, the 1930s African American woman artist Augusta Savage (1892-1962) opened a community art center in Harlem.

就像那些在她之前的女艺术家一样, 韩国人对社会有着敏锐的意识, 的地方, 空间与历史.

Koren’s life-sized sculpture of Malcolm X is on display in the Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz Educational and Resource Center, in the very location where El-Hajj Malik Shabazz, Malcolm X, was assassinated in Harlem.

她不太知名的作品， 普律当丝·克兰德尔和学生, is most revealing of Koren’s desire to use art to tell profound stories about people who made a difference. 教友派废奴主义积极分子教师, Crandall withstood white supremacist backlash when she opened the first school in 1833 for African American girls in Canterbury, 康涅狄格州. Koren refused to complete the project commissioned by the state of 康涅狄格州ecticut until the entire story was told. According to Koren, the statue would be incomplete without a statue of her student standing nearby.

“Find your passion,” Koren told the future art teachers. “然后用你所有的决心去追求它. 然后你就会在生活中找到成功和满足.”

照片由大学摄影师迈克·彼得斯提供.