Project Description

Silence is an installation by artists Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry that portrays the struggle of a church to desegregate its sanctuary’s seating in 1820. The multi-media photography exhibit was first displayed at the actual sanctuary site—the Center Church on the Green in New Haven, CT—and then moved to the Rush Arts Gallery in New York. A series of dialogues took place at both venues, addressing the underlying themes in the artwork and the controversy it caused within the church.

In 1820, members of the Center Church who were of African descent wrote a petition wherein they asked for the right to sit on the ground floor in the central pews during services. When their petition was denied, they left the church to establish a new one: the first ever black Congregationalist church in America’s history, known today as the Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church. The installation, Silence, was developed with Reverend Shepard Parsons, current senior pastor at the Center Church, along with current members of the Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church.

The main exhibit in Silence was a series of portraits taken of current members of the Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church in New Haven, CT. The photographs were then installed—or, metaphorically, “seated”—in the central pews on the ground floor of the Center Church. In addition to the 19 photographs placed on podiums attached to the pews on the main floor, there were 16 granite plaques installed in the sanctuary’s balcony, thereby acknowledging the church members who originally wrote the petition to desegregate the sanctuary. McCallum and Tarry used the church’s actual historical record from the 1820s for the material used for the plaques’ inscriptions. However, they found the information preserved to be limited, containing only the member’s name, membership number, dismissal date, and a racial designation of “colored.” The artists therefore added material to the plaques, including text from both the church’s commemorative memorials found in the sanctuary and gravestones from the church’s crypt, and excepts from runaway-slave bulletins. The sepia-toned photographs and the plaques were created in collaboration with photographer Mark Luttrell and graphic designers Matthew McGuinness and Francesca Jacchia. Further collaboration with singer Imani Uzuri produced an audio recording that was played on a continuous loop in the sanctuary. The recording was a vocal interpretation based on a speech delivered by Reverend James Wright to the Anti-Slavery Society in 1834.

Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry have been creating politically and historically motivated art installations since 1996, when they collaborated on their first installation, Witness: Perspectives on Police Violence. They have recently worked on Civic Endurance in Seattle, an examination of issues facing homeless youth (see this project profiled here in the profile database). McCallum and Tarry are also establishing a residency program in Beijing, China, as well as serving as the artistic directors of ConjunctionArts, a nonprofit organization that “supports public art that engages divergent communities on civic issues.”

Civic Engagement/Dialogue Activities

According to McCallum and Tarry, the Silence installation aimed to “investigate the role of silence as a conscious, active civic decision.” As an interracial couple, they say that they are dedicated to making art that explores race throughout history, specifically through the Underground Railroad and the civil rights movement, as well as in the present. McCallum and Tarry defined Silence, like their other works, as a piece of “performative sculpture,” which they hope reflects “the complexity of changing social issues over time and space.”

The dialogues about the exhibit began when a controversy arose within the walls of the church. Silence was metaphorically organized to grant a wish denied to black parishioners approximately 150 years ago, the wish to leave their seats in the church balcony and join the white congregants on the main floor. The 19 photographs used in the exhibit were mounted on podiums and attached to the pews, to give the effect that the descendents of the 19 parishioners were now able to be seated among their fellow worshippers. However, some members of the church were concerned that the photographs obstructed the view of the pulpit, and damaged the pews and cushions. The exhibit had been up for two and one half weeks until a group of church members conducted a telephone poll of opinions about the art, resulting in their decision to move the photographs installed on the pews to the balcony. McCallum and Tarry felt that the removal of this part of their work held tremendous significance, as it referenced history: the point of the photograph’s being placed on the pews was to have current members confront the past injustice, sitting shoulder to shoulder with one of the images. Shawn J. Garris, who is the first black moderator of Center Church, explained that his members were just hurt by the exhibit, as they felt excluded from the art-making process and were not informed about the work until it was installed in their church. The remainder of the exhibit stayed up for another two weeks, though the memorial plaques were shrouded and windows shuttered. The artists held three discussions at the Center Church, each attended by a dozen or more members of the New Haven and New York art community and people who facilitate discussions about race; however, with the exception of Reverend Shepard Parsons, who participated in one of the sessions, no church members attended.

When Silence moved to the Rush Arts Gallery in New York, three discussions were held, bringing together 23 artists, curators, scholars, historians, and community members to talk about the underlying issues addressed in the installation and its recent controversy. Some of the topics raised from the dialogue’s participants ranged from general issues around making historical, site-specific art, to specific choices made by the artists who made Silence. For example, Norman Frisch—executive director of Snug Harbor Cultural Center in Staten Island, NY—brought up the concept of “my house,” which is an issue he said he often recognizes when watching late-night reality television shows. Participants discussed how “my house” (or the ownership of a space) is a difficult territorial issue that must be talked about. There is an aspect of danger to artists creating site-specific art that artist should be aware of, specifically that artists sometimes take complete ownership of the space. In response, artist Jacqueline Tarry asked the group how much ownership artists can take over not just a space they are using, but a historical event that their art is addressing.

Regarding the aesthetics of the installation, participants discussed their reactions to the art and their questions regarding artistic choices made by McCallum and Tarry. One of the main issues debated was about the text written on the granite, memorial plaques. For example, Donna Harvakay, an independent curator, wondered why the plaques contained more text than just the historical record. Thinking about the persecution endured by those church members at that time period however, she concluded that the plaques written with verse and poetry “gave a respect to death that may not have been granted in life.” Johanna Bodensab, a freelance journalist, spoke about how she saw that the plaques were not a historical document, but a piece of art. The beauty of historical art, she said, was that “you can invent something on the basis of what you know and go beyond…you can give a voice to what you think should have been said.”

To conclude one of the dialogues, Reverend Shepard Parsons shared information about the remarkable growth of the Center Church, which was once the site of prejudice. He explained that they had recently completed a two-year process to declare themselves “open and affirming to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans-gendered folks.” Reverend Parsons continues to lead other churches through this process of tolerance, however he still notices that the same questions about race and class repeatedly present themselves, continuing the need for civic discussions.