Public Programs and Pandemics
By Gladys Ramirez, Public Programs Manager at the Norton Museum of Art
Public Programs Manager Gladys Ramirez reflects on creating engaging, artistic, and inspirational programs for a digital audience during COVID-19.
I have to confess; this hasn’t been all bad.
Putting aside the harsh reality of the world we live in today, purely from a creative standpoint, this has been an exciting exercise in letting go, reimagining, and experimenting. As creators, how often are we given a chance to completely dismantle what we know and reliably create? How often are we forced into exploration? Reinvention? Made to abandon our routines and try everything for the first time? Like, um, never. I saw it as a once in a lifetime opportunity.
As the Public Programs Manager of the Norton Museum, my main charge is our free, weekly Art After Dark series. Every Friday night, the museum welcomed hundreds of guests for a new lineup of talks, performances, artists tours, and more. I work with many colleagues to conceptualize, create, and present a new experience for audiences featuring a selection of performers, presenters, and partners every single week.
In my mind, I see myself as the mother of two children — Artist and Audience (go with me here). I love them both; I respect, uphold, and nurture them both; and I see it as my responsibility to elevate and empower them both through my work. In reality, I’m more of a middleman. I marry artworks on view and curatorial themes with music, dance, and films in hopes of reaching new audiences, creating memorable experiences, and sparking conversation. That’s essentially what Public Programs are about: teasing out these threads for our audiences to hold on to.
A major part of my job is selecting and contracting performers and artists of all disciplines for live, in-person programs, giving them a platform as well as a paycheck. As the world shut down and I had to make cancellation after cancellation, I knew my call was one of many these artists (who make their living performing) received. I really hit a low point. I felt helpless; I felt the pressure. I had to do something.
Let’s do the same thing but…different? Quickly, the idea of doing what we do live, but virtually, went out of the window. We can’t harness the magic of a live experience into someone’s laptop; we needed to create new ways to reach people at home. We needed to level with them, be authentic in where we were, and find a way to be together again.
I, as well as many others, immediately started recording virtual concerts. The first one we presented was a concert by Oigo, who skillfully filmed his own concert from home. We continued this monthly and, although our budgets were being cut, at least artists were performing and getting paid again. As time passed, artists themselves were becoming more creative and upped the production value of the footage they submitted — one standout for me was the concert by King Hoodie.
In addition to virtual concerts, Art After Dark presented a series called Artist at Home. We looked at the impact the pandemic was having on emerging artists, their work, and their creative process as they encountered new ways of living, creating, and reacting to the world around them. The episode featuring Juan Luis Matos is one of my favorites. He has the eye of a filmmaker, which resulted in a beautiful and intimate glimpse at his life — a snapshot in time for the audience. There was something comforting, something vulnerable, about seeing him barefoot in the middle of his bedroom, something that connected me to him as I watched barefoot from my own bedroom.
As spring turned to summer and then into fall, we all expanded our abilities and capabilities. I spent a large part of my career in theater as a director and producer, so shifting into directing videos, writing scripts, and hosting virtual programs was familiar but also a welcome opportunity to learn (and try) new things. Many of us had totally new responsibilities in our new, post-pandemic world; we were forced to create and present things in new ways. We started filming on-site with our own crew (as safely as possible) and expanding our online content. In terms of production quality, you can see the transformation when you compare our first virtual Art After Dark concert to one of our more recent concerts by Soprano Robyn Marie Lamp from Opera Fusion, filmed in the galleries.
Another one of my tasks as Public Programs Manager was to organize our community day in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. This event would (obviously) be very different — we couldn’t host our annual event at the museum, so I took the opportunity to deconstruct and reinvent. I didn’t want to do what had been done before in any sense, so I developed a new idea: ¡Vista!, an online series expanding on the concept of Hispanic Heritage month through art, discussion, film, music, and dance. In honoring the people and cultures of Central America, South America, and the Caribbean, ¡Vista! celebrated South Florida’s rich cultural diversity. It was a nine-part, month-long series. Two moments in particular, stand out for me.
First, our kickoff event: a virtual presentation called Borne Bizarre by Drag Artist Cherub Borne. Not only was the original visual experience Cherub created totally unlike anything I’d ever seen, it really gave me that sense of a shared experience again. We had a large audience watching the live premiere with us, and the chat was running wild with comments and reactions. It’d been a long time since I felt that sense of community. I was thrilled with the quality of the content we shared and the reaction we received.
The second ¡Vista! event that stands out for me is a panel discussion called Who, Me? ¿Quien, Yo? This program focused on “Latinidad” labels and race and identity issues among people from South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. I hosted the discussion and spoke with a diverse group of panelists — diverse both in perspective and as people — about topics and questions I’ve found myself juggling with over the years about being under the umbrella of “Latinidad.” Audiences were talking to us live in the moment, leaving dozens of comments and posing questions, giving a real synergy to the program. I doubt I would have expanded my thinking to conceptualize a series like ¡Vista! had it not been for being forced to think differently due to the pandemic.
As we approached our new season in October, I wanted to make sure we got back to our Art After Dark audience on a weekly basis. We continued filming virtual concerts related to works on view and collaborated with other cultural organizations — here’s a fabulous string ensemble from the Palm Beach Symphony — and expanded beyond concerts to The Biscayne Poet’s spoken word performance in the garden. Norton Museum of Art Docents are once again giving tours (in a virtual-sense) with the Docent Spotlight series highlighting a different work from the collection every first Friday of the month.
After a short hiatus, Jazz Friday returns to Art After Dark in 2021! The popular series will be presented live at the Norton as a socially-distanced outdoor concert every first Friday of the month. For those unable to attend in-person, the concerts will be recorded and released on YouTube every third Friday of the month. February features Brasoul playing an eclectic blend of jazz standards and contemporary soul music with Brazilian rhythms and instrumentation. In March, Eric & The Jazzers perform jazz standards from the great era of Duke Ellington, Dizzy, Bird, Coltrane and Miles Davis, and many more.
Art After Dark continues to broaden its virtual offerings with a new film series: Across Lines. This three-part series explores identity through the lens of diaspora presented in collaboration with Third Horizon, a Caribbean filmmaking and creative collective. Audiences are invited to watch a new lineup of films every last Friday of the month from January through March.
Looking back as we embark on another year full of unknowns, after a year full of firsts, I can’t help but think about all the things we’ve been able to overcome and accomplish as Public Program professionals. What we have been able to create out of need, how we’ve been able to unite artists and audiences over distances, and how we found new ways to be a community. There were bumps, barriers, workarounds, mistakes made, things tried, things failed, and new things that took their place, but that’s what makes it exciting, right?
I encourage those of us who conceptualize, create, and connect people with art to embrace our new skills boldly, welcome new audiences, challenge your thinking, and keep creating new stuff in new ways! Through the turmoil around us, we kept going. We kept trying new things. We kept doing what we do; we kept connecting artists and audiences. It is in that spirit that we will continue, in hopes that our new creations give everyone at least one thing to walk away with — a creative outlet, a bit of financial support, an escape from reality, or even just a moment to connect.
-Gladys Ramirez
To find out more about Art After Dark, please visit norton.org/artafterdark.
