“To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.”

-bell hooks

When we sat down to write to you about inclusion this month, we found ourselves struggling with what to say. Not because we’re not passionate about inclusion, but because honestly? It just seems like common sense. We would be bereft without the diversity of people in our lives. We think of Four Objects as part of the larger culture of arts and sciences and wonder what film, album or visual art would we have missed had that “different” person not created it? What lives might have been lost without that breakthrough by someone who was marginalized? What might we have already lost, not knowing what could have been?

 "The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see."

-James Baldwin’s

We honor the people who have inspired us and who have made our lives more rich, more safe, longer. We dedicate ourselves to the deepening and loving maintenance of any space we may be privileged enough to hold in the hopes that everyone may be free, be safe, and to fulfill their potential. Who knows what we might discover, and how incredible our future may be for it. 

-Mae and Ku

Listen to Audre Lorde: There is No Hierarchy of Oppressions

Watch David Hammons documentary about Day’s End: A video about the Christopher Street Piers Community 

Watch Catherine Opie's Interview: A World Beyond Selfies

Take a Drive and Listen: Frank Ocean's Channel Orange and Brittany Howards's Jaime

 

Donate: There's no time like the present. 

HRC

 

GLAAD

ACLU