Pilgrim

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      Cauleen Smith, Pilgrim, 2017, digital video, color, sound; 07:41 minutes, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by the SJ Weiler Fund, 2020.54.2, © 2020, Cauleen Smith

      Artwork Details

      Title
      Pilgrim
      Date
      2017
      Location
      Not on view
      Copyright
      © 2020, Cauleen Smith
      Credit Line
      Museum purchase made possible by the SJ Weiler Fund
      Mediums
      Mediums Description
      digital video, color, sound; 07:41 minutes
      Classifications
      Subjects
      • Landscape
      • Architecture Exterior
      Object Number
      2020.54.2

      Artwork Description

      Smith's art and filmmaking has always been driven by histories of Black brilliance that resonate across time. Listening closely to the spiritual and musical philosophies of composer, performer, and swamini Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda (1937--2007) has inspired Smith's recent works. Smith's cinematic collages connect Coltrane's transformative visions to others who create spaces for liberation from the nineteenth century to the present.

      In Pilgrim, Coltrane's experimental jazz piano unfurls as Smith's camera moves solemnly through the white ashram buildings and hillside setting of the Hindu community Coltrane founded in California. These scenes soon merge with the gothic spirals of Watts Towers, mid-twentieth-century folk sculptures in southern Los Angeles, before fading into a Shaker cemetery in upstate New York, where a pre--Civil War religious group lived the values of racial and gender equality.

      Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies, 2023

      Works by this artist (240 items)

      Paul Cadmus, Night in Bologna, 1958, egg tempera on fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation, 1986.6.87
      Night in Bologna
      Date1958
      egg tempera on fiberboard
      On view
      Paul Cadmus, Aspects of Suburban Life: Golf, 1936, oil and tempera on fiberboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Department of State, 1978.76.1
      Aspects of Suburban Life: Golf
      Date1936
      oil and tempera on fiberboard
      On view
      Jared French, Margaret French, PaJaMa, Paul Cadmus, PaJaMa (Box A), ca. 1937, gelatin silver prints, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Margaret French, 1999.98.5.16
      PaJaMa (Box A)
      Dateca. 1937
      gelatin silver prints
      Not on view
      Jared French, Margaret French, PaJaMa, Paul Cadmus, PaJaMa (Box A), ca. 1937, gelatin silver prints, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Margaret French, 1999.98.5.15
      PaJaMa (Box A)
      Dateca. 1937
      gelatin silver prints
      Not on view

      Related Books

      The cover of the publication Musical Thinking New Video Art & Sonic Strategies
      Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies 
      Exploring the powerful resonances between recent video art and popular music, the exhibition Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies features ten leading contemporary artists and the work.

      Exhibitions

      Media - 2020.54.1 - SAAM-2020.54.1_2 - 139600
      Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies
      June 23, 2023January 28, 2024
      Musical Thinking explores the powerful resonances between recent video art and popular music.

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      Four Winds, Two Poles
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