Connections/Black

My name is Aimee Dixon and I'm a museum educator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Black has influenced every aspect of my life from my interests

to my own background, to

things that I'm attracted to. The concept that black is the absence of color is an idea that I've struggled with, because

when I think of black, I think of power and warmth and

strength, and often when you see blackness it's

what grabs your attention, it exudes confidence, it's full of color and impact.

Black is velvet, and it's soothing and it's calming, and when you go to sleep, you turn out the lights, you're in blackness.

My grandmother is from Virginia, and I remember spending summers there and walking outside and there's these open spaces, and you look up in the sky and it's like a black-blue.

And you see the stars and the heavens. It's such an amazing connection to the universe. Black – it's endless; it's the cosmos.

You don't see the stars in New York, but living in New York City, black is around me, especially in the architecture, in the

concrete streets. The energy of the black night, thinking of photographs such as

Stieglitz's From the Back Window. When the lights come out of that building against that black surface, it shows that energy and spirit that I think many people connect with New York City.

The little black dress is the ideal urban costume because of its wearability, but still its elegance. When I was young

I would put on black to show that I was fashionable, but my elders would think that it was inappropriate because it usually meant something depressing and dark. But my generation had

punk music and hip-hop. Black was being on the edge.

We're always looking at black on white. We communicate with writing and I think we often take for granted that calligraphy is considered an art form.

It is a medium unto itself that permeates all of our lives.

The most important aspect of black to me is the fact that I'm African American, and I grew up in Washington, D.C..

So I was surrounded by African Americans, or when I was growing up we were called black Americans, who were mentors to me

and leaders that I looked up to. So when I see Faith Ringgold's Street Story Quilt, talking about the black community

and its importance to this character and her story, I think of my own story.

I also think of Winslow Homer's The Gulf Stream. The power of that black man in the middle of the waters, surrounded by all of these terrible, tragic things potentially coming to him,

and yet there's a strength to him. And seeing that figure gives me a sense of pride.

I love Kara Walker's work. She makes these beautifully crafted silhouettes that are so powerful that you look at them from afar and you see one image that seems so elegant, and you walk

closely up to them and you see something else that tells a story of race, of women, of people of different sexuality. There was a period where a silhouette helped identify ethnicity, and yet everyone in the silhouette was black.

The use of black that's soft and beautiful in Georgia O'Keeffe's Black Iris is significant to me in talking about black because she's using paint to create the richness of this variety of black, like

I see variety of black in my life.