Are you in the '80s, are you in the '70s, or is this fantasy, or is it both?
Mickalene Thomas was inspired by one single Polaroid that she found that belonged to her
mother, and the Polaroid referenced parties that she would have in the late '70s and beginnings
of the '80s.
It was almost like a timestamp.
She was looking at the '70s, '80s style, but also looking at a very specific history that
belonged to the artist.
Better Nights very directly refers to her mother and memories of her mother in a very
personal way.
Her mother was doing the parties to raise money for sickle cell anemia.
It's this metaphor of a community coming together for a good cause, and I think that is really
the exhibition as an homage to her mother and how that happened.
And now Mickalene is bringing together the community for a good cause, as well.
I'm Silvia Karman Cubina, I'm executive director and chief curator of the Bass.
I like to say that Better Nights really is like walking into Mickalene Thomas's painting.
The Bass is recently looking for immersive experiences and artists that are willing to
work with the public and bring them into their works of art and sort of make it whole that
way.
Mickalene Thomas, when she presented this to me, she said, "It's a social space.
"It's a space that not only other artists show in, "it's a space where I want the public
to come in, "and interact, and share moments, "and sort of activate the space."
Better Nights kind of opens up to us with this collage, which is called Jet Blue #13,
but it picks up sort of her very characteristic way of creating collages, and also paintings,
but even Better Nights.
As you can see, the wallpaper seems to sort of pick itself off the wall and continue on
to the work of art, but also you can see sort of wooden areas that I see sort of in there,
and it also picks up the floor, so it's all this patterns, and you can see Mickalene Thomas's
very characteristic women of color, so black women in her work, and posing sort of like,
"I am beautiful, and I am bold, and here I am," and all those wonderful qualities.
Then you walk into the gallery where she's invited all her friends.
Most of these works, and we realized it as we were installing, are figurative works,
so a lot of them are portraits or self-portraits of people, and many of them, people of color.
That's something that is very, very present in her work.
So this is almost like a 3D rendition of a painting with the portraits, with the textures,
and with the different spaces.
The video selection room is also many different works of art.
The bar area, with six different Mickalene Thomas works of art.
It functions as a whole, but it also functions in different little parts.
It's very multidisciplinary.
Not only did she invite artists to participate, she also invited musicians and performers
to be part of this whole adventure.
♪ Oh yeah ♪ Interactive art, it is wonderful once it's being done, but it presents lots
of challenges for museums.
We are museum professionals, and we're trained to receive objects and take care of them and
almost put them on a shelf, or on a pedestal, literally, and bringing in an interactive
art, you have to accept the public, which you don't know if they're going to sit on
the furniture, stand on the furniture, you really don't know what is going to happen,
and that is a little bit of the beauty and the challenge of it.
So all throughout planning this project, we kept saying, "Okay, this is an art exhibition.
"We have to do condition reports on the works of art "and put 'em on the wall.
"Oh, but wait, this is also a bar, "so people are going to be dancing on this dance floor
"and it's gonna scratched up."
But we want it to get scratched up, so it's a little bit of a tug of war, and it really
puts museums at a tension point, good tension point, where you're always examining, okay,
why do we exist?
Do we exist for the objects?
Yes, but we also exist for the guests, and how do we balance that out?
The beauty of interactive work is that you get a different work of art every time you
open your door.