Celebrating Betsy Writer's Room 10th Anniversary
Betsy Welcome by Lesley Goldwasser
Hosted by Rosie Gordon-Wallace, DVCAI at The Betsy - South Beach, please enter thru 1433 Collins Ave.
Presented in partnership with The Betsy Writers Room as part of DVCAI's bi-annual initiative to host thought-leaders studying, advocating for, and supporting Latin and Caribbean Diasporic art and artists.
About the Author
Halima Taha is best known for her groundbreaking book Collecting African American Art: Works on Paper and Canvas (1998, 2005), the first book to validate collecting African American fine art and photography as an asset and commodity in the marketplace.
"Dr. Halima Taha is renowned in art circles for an exuberant personality that is just as memorable as the creative art she appraises." - Quassan Castro
“It took her eight years to find a publisher because they told her a book about art needed to be associated with an exhibition, that black people don’t buy art or read books, and white people don’t buy black art. Fortunately, Taha used her intelligence to subvert the naysayers. She did her own market research by calling popular magazines for their demographics to attest to their diverse readerships. When the Metropolitan Museum of Art had a seminal Bill Traylor exhibition, she called to find out their attendance and published catalogue numbers. All of the Bill Traylor hardcover catalogues were sold out and they had fewer than half of the softbound catalogues within the first month of the show’. She says, “I was able to utilize all of the data. So, the hoops I had to jump through for those eight years reinforced how invisible and devalued African American visual culture was in mainstream institutions and with publishers at the end of the 20th century. Knowing how valuable Black culture is and how integral it is to American culture made me push harder.” —interview with HALIMA TAHA, Black Art in America
Dr. Taha is also the Principle Consultant at taha THINKS, LLC. - www.tahathinks.art - which is a professional arts and education service company specializing in art advisory, appraisal, collection management, and curatorial services for more than 25 years. Corporate, academic, and civic lectures include Collecting, Protecting, and Appraising Fine Art, Building Bridges between Art School and the Art World, Corporate Collection Strategies & Ethics, Intellectual Property & Diversity in Art.
ABOUT DIASPORA VIBE CULTURAL ARTS INCUBATOR
Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator commitment to artists of Caribbean and diverse cultures ensures they receive validation, visibility and professional opportunities. Our artists break boundaries of traditional forms and work outside of institutionalized systems, they often must create new systems and infrastructures to sustain their practice. We promote, nurture and exhibit the diverse talents of emerging artists from the Latin and Caribbean Diasporas through an artist-in-residence program, international exchanges, community arts events and a dynamic exhibition program collaborating with art spaces and inhabiting the virtual landscape.
