Bergen Community College: Bergen Secures Coveted Katz Prize For Ringgold Project

Press release from Bergen Community College:

October 18, 2023

Faith Ringgold’s art took center stage as part of a capstone concert in April.

The celebration of the Englewood artist and activist included musical and stage performances, an oral history project and a children’s reading room/makerspace where parents could accompany their children to hear stories from Ringgold’s 17 books and create artwork inspired by what they have seen and heard.

Grammy-nominated composer Rufus Reid, who has recorded on more than 500 albums and received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, created a new work with four movements for the “With Faith, Coming to Jones Road” culminating event in April. Professors Christine Eubank, Ph.D., and Leigh Jonaitis, Ph.D., led the development of the verbatim theatre performance that offered a window into the origin stories of ancestor journeys to Bergen County alongside Reid’s suite.

“This project truly exemplified the humanities in a community-based context,” New Jersey Council for the Humanities Executive Director Carin Berkowitz, Ph.D., said. “Bringing together partners from the Bergen faculty, local public libraries and governmental and nonprofit organizations, it used a combination of both creative and established public humanities practices to tell stories, preserve history, and encourage community dialogue,”

Born in 1930 in Harlem, Ringgold began painting in the 1960s. Later, she would create tankas (inspired by a Tibetan art form of paintings framed in fabric), of which her “Tar Beach” remains in the permanent collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. As a writer, Ringgold received the Caldecott Medal and the Coretta Scott King award for the best-illustrated children’s book of 1991 for “Tar Beach” as well. Professor Emeritus of Art at the University of California in San Diego, Ringgold has received 23 honorary doctorates.

The Katz prize represents the latest honor recognizing the Ringgold project, as it previously secured $22,500 in grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Puffin Foundation and the Bergen County Division of Cultural and Historic Affairs to develop the comprehensive celebration. Gallery Bergen Director Tim Blunk led the initiative and also collaborated with the National Coalition of 100 Black Women (Bergen/Passaic Chapter), the Englewood Public Library, the Teaneck Public Library, the Bergen County Office for Children and the Black Child Development Institute (BCDI) – Paramus Affiliate in support of the projects. The Puffin Foundation presented a smaller, contemporaneous show of printed works by Ringgold at the Puffin Cultural Forum in Teaneck.

Based in Paramus, Bergen Community College (www.bergen.edu), a public two-year coeducational college, enrolls more than 13,000 students at locations in Paramus, the Philip Ciarco Jr. Learning Center in Hackensack and Bergen Community College at the Meadowlands in Lyndhurst. The College offers associate degree, certificate and continuing education programs in a variety of fields. More students graduate from Bergen than any other community college in the state.

This press release was produced by Bergen Community College. The views expressed here are the author’s own.