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Goode Bryant, Linda

    Full Name: Goode Bryant, Linda

    Other Names:

    • Linda Goode Bryant

    Gender: female

    Date Born: 21 July 1949

    Place Born: Columbus, Franklin, OH, USA

    Home Country/ies: United States

    Subject Area(s): African American

    Career(s): administrators and founders (originators)

    Institution(s): The Studio Museum in Harlem


    Overview

    Founder and director of several art associations to foster artists of color. Goode Bryant was born in Columbus, Ohio to Floyd and Josephine Goode.  She attended Spelman College between 1968-1972, graduating with a degree in studio art and a minor in drama. She studied art history at the City College of New York until 1974, during which period she also was a fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and worked as the Director of Education at the Studio Museum in Harlem, which included overseeing the Artist-in-Residence program. Motivated to confront challenges in access faced by black artists, she founded Just Above Midtown (JAM) in 1974, a gallery designed to provide a platform for African American and minority artists to work and grow equal to what was given to white artists, and she left the Studio Museum at Harlem shortly after.

    JAM was located in the commercial art district of New York City on Fifty-Seventh Street, which was dominated by white gallerists, artists, and buyers at the time. Securing nonprofit status in 1975, Goode Bryant was able to bring more awareness of black artists to buyers and collectors by implementing public programs, such as ‘Brunch with JAM’, designed to build community and exposure for black artists and professionals across different sectors. During this period, Goode Bryant also ran a program called “The Business of Being an Artist,” which was a workshop designed to aid artists’ professional development.

    Goode Bryant co-authored the book Contextures with Marcy S. Phillips in 1978, written as an accompaniment to the exhibit “The Afro-American Artists in the Abstract Continuum of American Art: 1945–1977”, hosted at JAM.  The book provided a detailed account of abstraction in black art through 1970, and a perspective of the changing field during the years 1970-1977. JAM was moved to the Tribeca neighborhood in New York in 1980 because of rent increases.  The new space offered the capacity to put on performance art and videos and to showcase more artists; during this year, Goode Bryant also was awarded an MBA from Columbia University. In 1982, she also began to publish Black Currant with Janet Henry, a broadsheet featuring JAM artist interventions, and B Culture, an interdisciplinary publication featuring art, music, and popular culture.

    In 1984, JAM’s third and final move to SoHo offered the chance to provide production facilities to artists, which gave them space to create without exhibiting. As such, Goode Bryant turned JAM’s focus from exhibiting to providing a laboratory for artistic development, including aiding artists in financial, administrative, and creative endeavors by leasing its office and studio spaces at lowered rates.  Building upon her previous program established at JAM, Goode Bryant and Dieter Froese produced and directed The Business of Being an Artist (1984), a film seeking support for artist communities and their gallery. In August 1986, JAM’s SoHo location permanently closed after legal battles with its landlord over its leasing space to artists, but Goode Bryant and the JAM staff continued programming under the names CATconcerts and JAM Presents until 1989, putting on events at various venues across New York City. Her initiatives in social engagement made JAM a cultural landmark, influencing generations of artists and curators.

    Following JAM’s closing, Goode Bryant worked as a senior policy analyst in economic development under New York City Mayor David Dinkins in 1990-1991. Eventually, her interests turned to filmmaking. Filmed over four years, Goode Bryant and Laura Poitras directed Flag Wars (2003), a documentary about the evolution of a working-class black neighborhood in Columbus and its gentrification by white homosexual homeowners, which won a Peabody Award and a nomination for an Emmy. For this film, Goode Bryant also was awarded the Center for Documentary Studies Filmmaker Award (2003) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2004).

    In 2003, she also founded the Active Citizen Project (ACP), an initiative designed to be a laboratory for public activism using art and new media as the tools for social change. ACP was created to involve disenfranchised and non-voting youth and adults around the country to campaign and create local and national platforms, and she founded several other social activism projects through ACP. One such project was Open Caucus, which Goode Bryant founded while filming the 2004 presidential elections for her documentary The Vote, which documented the American electoral process from the perspective of voters and non-voters. Open Caucus engaged high school students in creating social change via art, new media, and internet activism and events.

    Amid the food crisis of 2008, Goode Bryant also founded and served as president of Project EATS, which was designed to integrate food production with art programs, transforming empty lots and rooftops into high-yield, low-acreage farms to help communities in need, continuing her original mission from JAM–for people to be able to provide for and enrich their own lives and agency, and to create a community surrounding art. For her work on Project EATS, she was awarded the Anonymous Was A Woman award in 2020, and for her continued social activism and care of artists, she was awarded the Berresford Prize by the United States Artists.


    Selected Bibliography

    • [ed.] Lax, T. and Taboada, L. Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces. Museum of Modern Art, 2022.
    • Phillips, M. Contextures. Just Above Midtown, Inc., 1978.

    Sources



    Contributors: Monet Shum


    Citation

    Monet Shum. "Goode Bryant, Linda." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/goode-bryant-linda/.


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