{"id":29494,"date":"2023-07-27T14:28:24","date_gmt":"2023-07-27T18:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewestmoreland.org\/?p=29494"},"modified":"2023-09-21T18:25:52","modified_gmt":"2023-09-21T22:25:52","slug":"block-party-community-celebration-in-american-art-exhibition-overview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewestmoreland.org\/blog\/block-party-community-celebration-in-american-art-exhibition-overview\/","title":{"rendered":"Block Party: Community & Celebration in American Art<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

June 25 – September 17, 2023<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Author: Jeremiah William McCarthy, Chief Curator, The Westmoreland Museum of American Art<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Since the beginning of the year, our Museum has been hard at work organizing Block Party: Community and Celebration in American Art<\/em>. This exhibition is important to us for many reasons, but two stand apart. The first is that this show coincides with the 250th anniversary of Westmoreland County. It is our Museum\u2019s way of honoring this past and gesturing toward possible futures. The second is that, in the times in which we find ourselves, people are seeking new and novel ways to connect and find joy more than ever. This focus on the intersection of community and celebration resulted in Block Party<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Bruno
Bruno de Abreu-Grizzo, Casinha, swimming,<\/em> 2022. Glazed stoneware, 7 x 10 3\/4 x 7 1\/4 in. Courtesy the artist. \u00a9 Bruno de Abreu-Grizzo.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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This show takes as its point of departure the World War I innovation of the urban \u201cblock party\u201d and uses it as a lens to view artists’ ideas on belonging and mutual solidarity. Beginning in the mid-1910s, the story goes, people on Manhattan\u2019s East Side began to take to the streets. They joined together to eat, dance, sing patriotic songs, and honor the men and women recently gone off to war\u2014many of them young, with the average soldier’s age then being only 25. While in most cities you needed a permit to hold a public party, and still do today, these NYC block parties were different. They seemed vital for the mental health of citizens wrestling with war and the beginnings of modern alienation. For these reasons, they were permitted by the authorities and allowed to flourish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over time, these block parties grew into signal events for urban communities, and even now the association between national patrimony and party continues, with so many block parties falling on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, or Veterans Day. From barbeques to bounce houses, the idea of a block party is indelibly set in the American mind. These events offer us occasion to engage with our neighbors, share news, get loud, and revel outside the usual spaces of work and home. Paradoxically, although they are often held on military holidays, block parties offer an escape from the craziness of current events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n