The renovated courtyard at Devon House, as photographed by the author on December 29, 2022 This post was originally published in the Monitor Tribune on January 1 and 8, 2023. It is reproduced here with a few minor changes. There has been intense outrage on social media recently since the Devon House courtyard reopened, after... Continue Reading →
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND CENSORSHIP IN THE ARTS
This post was originally published, in three parts, in the Monitor Tribune of September 17 and October 15 and 23,2022. Freedom of expression is considered a basic human right, and is in fact enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a related... Continue Reading →
Bogle versus Jennings: Another Perspective
The presumed photograph of Paul Bogle This article was originally published, in two parts, in the Jamaica Monitor, now Monitor Tribune, of September 4 and 11, 2022. A recent article by Richard Hugh Blackford in the Jamaica Monitor called for a credible image of National Hero Paul Bogle and asserted, as a few other, mostly... Continue Reading →
Art Criticism and the Jamaican Art Ecology – Part 1
The self-taught artist Everald Brown with the author in 1987, in the Kapo Gallery at the National Gallery. Part of Kapo's head (and turban) can be seen to the right Why is it that locally directed and published art criticism has all but disappeared in Jamaica? I am talking mainly about newspaper criticism, which was... Continue Reading →
Notes on the Columbus Statues of the Caribbean
Ernesto Gilbert - Columbus (1887), Columbus Park, Santo Domingo (Photo: Veerle Poupeye, all righs reserved) This post is extracted from an ongoing and as yet incomplete research project on monuments and statues in the Caribbean. There is hardly an island in the Caribbean that does not have a Columbus monument and some have more than... Continue Reading →
Throwing Words at the Status Quo
Waldane Walker, 2019 Valedictorian, Edna Manley College One night, an evil spirit held me downI could not make one single soundJah told me, 'Son, use the word'And now I'm as free as a bird- Peter Tosh - Oh B@&#o k$&%t (1981) Every culture, and every language has its expletives and some are, well, more potent... Continue Reading →