Robin Holder: Public Artist

Michele Cohen, Ph.D.

The sculptors of the exterior free standing pieces explored different objectives. Todd Williams's untitled aluminum abstraction suggests a fan unfolding. Chris Shelton experimented with color and structure. Edward Wilson's scathing indictment of slavery, Middle Passage, makes the viewer uncomfortable by creating physically constricting spaces punctuated with disturbing low-relief bronze images of the hold of a slave ship.

Regardless of the artists' positions on the nature and categorization of black art and how they defined themselves, this group of artwork collectively reinforced the sense of victory that community residents felt in retaining the high school in their neighborhood and marking it as their own. But Charles Alston, a mentor to some of these artists and one of the few black artists at that time who had a national reputation in both the black and white art worlds, was conflicted about the commissions, possibly because of his own earlier experience at Harlem Hospital:

First, let me state that, as a black American artist myself, I am very much in favor of giving competent black artists every opportunity to create murals and sculptures for city projects…However, to make a wholesale package of these artists in one project, as had been done at Boys High, is in my opinion, an unfortunate and dangerous precedent, and amounts to a kind of segregation to which I object.²⁴

In the years following the completion of Boys and Girls High School, public art in New York City and elsewhere has aimed to present a balanced view of American culture by celebrating the myriad ethnic strands that constitute the "public" rather than focusing on singular expressions of ethnicity. Artists and those who commission them are careful to promote heterogeneity over homogeneity, a multiplicity of viewpoints, regardless of the artist's own ethnicity. Public art, whether by African American, Latino, Asian American, Native American or Anglo artists goes beyond an artist's specific heritage to address art, literature, and technology—really culture—in its broadest form. Holder's public art installations and her studio work further the trajectory of Bloch's aspirational mural projecting intercultural understanding. The arc of Holder's life and art follows the sociopolitical evolution of America itself, dramatized by the recent election of President Barack Obama.

Robin Holder's personal story as "the child of a middle-class inter-ethnic leftist family,"²⁵ mother of an Ecuadorian son, fluent in Spanish and English, raised in a politically engaged home where she learned to question the status quo and challenge racist ideology, has made her uniquely suited to navigate the treacherous waters of politically correct public art.²⁶ Her work draws on her commitment to social justice, respect for her audience, and image reservoir to reflect communities as she perceives herself: complex, nuanced, and unencumbered by stereotypes.

MICHELE COHEN, PH.D., IS AN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ARTS ADMINISTRATION AND DIRECTOR OF THE TRUSTMAN GALLERY, SIMMONS COLLEGE, BOSTON, MA. PREVIOUSLY, COHEN SERVED AS THE FOUNDING DIRECTOR OF THE PUBLIC ART FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS PROGRAM IN NEW YORK CITY.