Audio produced by The Phillips Collection in collaboration with the artist.

#510: Joiri Minaya, Divergence Series

Featuring Senior Consulting Curator Adrienne Childs. Audio produced by The Phillips Collection.

#511: Ebony G. Patterson, ...PINK...RED...STRIPED..CARNATIONS...

This audio tour stop was written and recorded by a local high school student as a part of the museum’s school partnership program, ArtLinks. Audio produced by The Phillips Collection.

#525: Shinique Smith, PROPHECY

#509: Lester Julian Merriweather, #BetterGardensAndJungles (artist interview)

Written by Jesse Stone
Re-recorded by The Phillips Collection

Lyrics:
The W.P.A. 
The W.P.A. 
Sleep while you work, while you rest, while you play 
Lean on your shovel to pass the time away 
T'ain't what you do, kick your boots off and say 
The W.P.A. 

The W.P.A. 
The W.P.A. 
Now don't be a fool working hard is passé 
You'll stand from five to six hours a day 
Sit down and joke while you smoke, it's OK. 
The W.P.A. 

Chorus
I'm so tired, I don't know what to do 
Can't get fired, so I'll take my rest until my work Is through. 

The W.P.A. 
The W.P.A. 
Don't mind the boss if he's cross when you're gay 
He'll get a pink slip next month anyway 
Three little letters than make life OK. 
The W.P.A.

Copyright Shapiro Bernstein and Co. Inc.
License provided by Easy Song

W.P.A.

Written by Woody Guthrie
Re-recorded by The Phillips Collection

Lyrics:
Well, the world has seven wonders that the trav'lers always tell,
Some gardens and some towers, I guess you know them well,
But now the greatest wonder is in Uncle Sam's fair lang,
It's the big Columbia River and the big Grand Coulee Dam.

She heads up the Canadian Rockies where the rippling waters glide,
Comes a-roaring down the canyon to meet the salty tide,
Of the wide Pacific Ocean where the sun sets in the West
And the big Grand Coulee country in the land I love the best.

In the misty crystal glitter of that wild and wind ward spray,
Men have fought the pounding waters and met a watery grave,
Well, she tore their boats to splinters but she gave men dreams to dream
Of the day the Coulee Dam would cross that wild and wasted stream.

Uncle Sam took up the challenge in the year of 'thrity-three,
For the farmer and the factory and all of you and me,
He said, "Roll along, Columbia, you can ramble to the sea,
But river, while you're rambling, you can do some work for me."

Now in Washington and Oregon you can hear the factories hum,
Making chrome and making manganese and light aluminum,
And there roars the flying fortress now to fight for Uncle Sam,
Spawned upon the King Columbia by the big Grand Coulee Dam.

Copyright Woody Guthrie Publications c/o Ludlow Music Inc.
License provided by Easy Song

Grand Coulee Dam

Written by E.S.Nelson
Re-recorded by The Phillips Collection

Lyrics:
[Verse 1]
Conditions they are bad
And some of you are sad
You cannot see your enemy
The class that lives in luxury

[Verse 2]
You workingmen are poor
Will be forevermore
As long as you permit the few
To guide your destiny

[Chorus]
Shall we still be slaves and work for wages?
It is outrageous, has been for ages
This earth by right belongs to toilers
And not to spoilers of liberty

[Verse 3]
The master class is small
But they have lots of gall
When we unite to gain our right
If they resist, we'll use our might

[Verse 4]
There is no middle ground
This fight must be one round
To victory, for liberty
Our class is marching on

Note: This song is known to be in the public domain.
Licensed via EasySong

Workingman Unite

Written by Woody Guthrie
Re-recorded by The Phillips Collection

Lyrics:
There's a great and a bloody fight 'round this whole world tonight
And the battle, the bombs and shrapnel reign
Hitler told the world around he would tear our union down
But our union's gonna break them slavery chains
Our union's gonna break them slavery chains
I walked up on a mountain in the middle of the sky
Could see every farm and every town
I could see all the people in this whole wide world
That's the union that'll tear the fascists down, down, down
That's the union that'll tear the fascists down
When I think of the men and the ships going down
While the Russians fight on across the Don
There's London in ruins and Paris in chains
Good people, what are we waiting on?
Good people, what are we waiting on?
So, I thank the Soviets and the mighty Chinese vets
The Allies the whole wide world around
To the battling British, thanks, you can have ten million Yanks
If it takes 'em to tear the fascists down, down, down
If it takes 'em to tear the fascists down But
But when I think of the ships and the men going down
And the Russians fight on across the Don
There's London in ruins and Paris in chains
Good people, what are we waiting on?
Good people, what are we waiting on?

Copyright Woody Guthrie Publications Inc. dba BMG Bumblebee

Tear the Fascists Down

Narrator: 
In addition to her celebrated artistic career, Vivian Browne was a dedicated activist throughout her life. Her fight for equality was deeply informed by her experience teaching in a segregated high school in the South, and by her travels in Europe, where she first felt a sense of freedom from the racial prejudice of the United States. In a 1968 interview, she recalled that early trip. 

Vivian Browne (1968): 
And I found that in Europe you are not a Negro, you're a person. And oh, that was just a wonderful life experience. I didn't wanna come home. 

Narrator:  
Back in New York, she became a key figure in the fight for equal representation in the city's major art institutions, often taking her protests directly to the streets. Here's co-curator Adrienne Childs. 

Adrienne Childs: 
She also did a protest where she stood outside in front of the Guggenheim and just yelled and shouted the names of Black women artists who were not represented in the Guggenheim. She's also involved with a group called the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition. And they are the ones who were really organized to make sure Black artists and women artists got into exhibitions in New York. 

Narrator: 
Yet throughout her life, Browne resisted the expectation that her art must be a vehicle of political protest. She was often asked why she wasn't creating explicitly political work during such a turbulent time. For Browne, her protest was the seemingly radical act of demanding artistic freedom. 

Adrienne Childs: 
As a woman of color, as a Black woman, the fact that you're going to dare to paint landscapes, dare to paint the toxicity of white bureaucratic men, dare to deal with abstraction, to draw on people like Francisco de Goya, to be part of this sort of dialogue with the history of art—that is a protest. That's her own kind of protest, that she is using her voice in the way she wants to. 

 

Notes:  
This audio stop contains excerpts from: Oral history interview with Vivian Browne, 1968 July 1. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

#906_Activism and Protest

2013-02-28 CWA Tehching Hsieh

Founded by art collector and philanthropist Duncan Phillips in 1921, The Phillips Collection has been collecting groundbreaking works of modern and contemporary art for one hundred years. Duncan Phillips’s former home—and modern additions to it—in Washington’s historic Dupont Circle neighborhood provides a unique setting for the collection’s nearly 6,000 works. Following Phillips’s unconventional approach to exhibitions, The Phillips Collection galleries are frequently rearranged to facilitate new conversations between artworks and fresh experiences for visitors.

2013-02-28 CWA Tehching Hsieh

The Phillips Collection

Related tracks