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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. There is an exhibition currently in the Bronx, that's the first major retrospective dedicated to Michael Richards. In 2001, Michael Richards was a New York artist who was about to make it big, adding major residencies and solo exhibitions to his name. But after working overnight on September 10th at his studio on the 92nd floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower, Richard's life was tragically cut short. He was killed on 9/11. He was 38 years old.

Michael Richards was recognized for his work as a sculptor and was a prominent figure in the New York contemporary art scene of the 1990s, at a time when a new wave of artists of color were coming of age and being recognized. You may know Richard's sculptures of Tuskegee airmen he often made, casting his own body, as well as symbols of flight like planes. All the while weaving in biblical and mythological references.

The show has traveled from Miami to North Carolina as now at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the museum where Richards had his first-ever museum exhibition. The current show is called Michael Richards: Are You Down? Is on view through January 7th. With me now, are co-curators Alex Fialho. Alex, welcome to the studio.

Alex Fialho: Welcome. Thank you so much.

Alison Stewart: Melissa Levin. Hi, Melissa.

Melissa Levin: Hi.

Alison Stewart: The show is called Are You Down? It takes its name from a sculpture Richard's made of the same name, featuring three casts of Tuskegee pilots. Alex, would you describe the sculpture a little bit for us?

Alex Fialho: Yes. Are You Down is, as you noted, a sculpture of three Tuskegee Airmen figures. They're cast from Michael's body. They're full-scale figures, and it's a complex homage to the Tuskegee Airmen. They're on the ground. Their uniforms are tattered and they're in a circle. It's a powerful sculpture at the back of the exhibition, and it feels really meaningful as one of the examples in which Michael cast the sculpture from his full body and you see the full range of his sculptural skillset.

Alison Stewart: Melissa, the phrase "Are You Down?" has a couple of different meanings. One that could apply to the sculpture as also apply to the vernacular of how people talk to each other. Can you explain why and why that is such an important title for this show?

Melissa Levin: Sure. The phrase, "Are You Down?" Michael Richards was just extremely beautiful with language, and his titles iterate and have multiple meanings often. Are You Down? is definitely not an exception, and of course we named the exhibition for it for that reason. It has this meaning potentially directly related to the pilots. It's been shared with us it could've been something the pilots themselves were saying to each other, "Are you down?" They're actually landing on the ground in these tattered uniforms as Alex just described, and then it also has this colloquial meaning, are you down? Are you into this? Then for us, it's also as the title that Michael gave the work, and for the show, it's a prompt to the audience. It's a prompt to the viewer. Are you down?

Alison Stewart: Alex? We see the Tuskegee Airmen, these Black pilots who fought in World War II. There are multiple sculptures throughout the show. What did Richard see in the story of the Tuskegee Airmen that he wanted to tap into or that inspired him creatively?

Alex Fialho: Yes. The Tuskegee Airmen were the central reference in Michael Richard's body of work throughout the second half of the 1990s. He speaks to them as a complicated metaphor for questions of American democracy and justice. The Tuskegee Airmen were the first Black African American military pilots in the United States military history, flying in World War II. Michael speaks to the fact that they often had to fly more missions than their white counterparts, but then would eat in segregated barracks. He was thinking again about these complicated ways that they stood as a metaphor for American ideals, but also the contradictions in that idea.

Alison Stewart: Melissa, the sculptures, as Alex said, "He cast himself in some of these sculptures." Do we know why he made that choice?

Melissa Levin: Yes, we do a bit. We think that first and foremost, as a friend of his has also shared with us, he had access to his own body. He viewed it as a way, as he says in his artist statement, "As a die from which to make casts," he says, and as a surrogate, as a way to enter the work by using his own figure. Also, the process of casting the figure, casting especially his face would've been extremely laborious. It would've been an act of endurance, potentially. You can see often in his face, his eyes are closed, his mouth is closed. That could be- it translates as a facial expression and also could just also translate what the process was like. He had to have mouth closed, eyes closed in a meditative state to endure having his face wrapped.

Alison Stewart: You blew my mind when you're saying, "Enter the work." That's so provocative. That's such an interesting thing to think about. We're talking about Michael Richards: Are You Down? On view at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. My guests are the co-curators, Alex Fialho and Melissa Levin. When we look through the exhibition, as people go to the exhibition, Alex, what issues can we see that Michael Richards cared about and wanted to comment on through his art?

Alex Fialho: Yes. Michael was of Jamaican and Costa Rican lineage and was making really powerful and prescient sculptures and artworks in his lifetime addressing themes of Blackness, diaspora, flight, spirituality, police brutality, monuments, and monumentality. The questions he was addressing in his lifetime and throughout the 1990s remain with us, and the sculptures continue to really powerfully speak to our contemporary moment, while also really being very of their time in the 1990s in the New York City art world and beyond.

Alison Stewart: Planes are a constant presence throughout the exhibition, which is eerie. He was once quoted saying, "I've been traveling since I was a child. I grew up in Jamaica in the West Indies, and planes have always been a big part of my life. Pilots in my work function as a symbol. They are almost images of transcendence." Whereas we talked about the Tuskegee Airmen. Where else do we see planes in the show?

Melissa Levin: Yes, there are several instances of airplanes, of wings, pilots, aviation imagery throughout the exhibition and throughout the work. Something that we have been prompted and worked really hard to do in our curatorial process is to really center the issues and pursuits that Michael was addressing during his lifetime and really take him on his own terms. You see an airplane on the ground wrapped in barbed wire. It's made of paper, it appears to be covered in a tar-like substance.

There's this idea of entrapment. That work is called Escape Plan 76 (Brier Plan in the Briar Patch), bringing together multiple references with flight and escape is a recurring theme, and you really see it throughout the body of work. Of course then we also understand the really powerful afterlife that this imagery has when we're looking at Michael's work, given the circumstances of his passing.

Alison Stewart: What about religious symbolism? Where do we see it in the show, Alex?

Alex Fialho: Yes. One of the central sculptures in the exhibition is a sculpture called Tar Baby versus Saint Sebastian. Saint Sebastian is a figure a martyr in Christianity. Michael speaks to his own Catholic upbringing and talks about these ideas of ascendants, but also descent as being really central to his thinking. There's another sculpture called Climbing Jacob's Ladder (He Lost His Head). Thinking about the Biblical Jacob's ladder narrative comes before.

Alison Stewart: You have to describe that one though, for people so they can get a sense of it, because it's really wild.

Alex Fialho: This sculpture is from 1994 and it's right at the entranceway to the gallery in the Bronx Museum. It has seven boxes, sort of minimal stacked boxes and they're light boxes. On the side, you can see the title reading down the side, Climbing Jacob's Ladder (He Lost His Head). There are fragmented feet and a bullseye target with fragmented heads at the bottom of the base of the sculpture. It's this commentary thinking about this ladder of success, but also biblical possibilities. Again, there's the climbing and the ascent, but also the descent and the fragmented heads at the base with the bullseye target.

Alison Stewart: We've been talking about his sculpture, Melissa, but there's a series of drawings in the show called Escape Plan drawings. What are they made of there?

Melissa Levin: They're mostly graphite or colored pencil on paper, though there are some that contain rubber molds and things like that, again, with kind of facial- with lips and teeth, but most of the drawings are from a series called the Escape Plan Series. We're showing about 25 of them in the exhibition. These are just incredibly poetic, also provocative drawings that take on racial stereotypes. Alongside this poetic text written by Michael, written in calligraphy by a friend of his, Michelle Wong. With these incredibly intricate drawings, there's one of a hand, likely his hand, that contains just the nighttime sky that's really beautiful. Then Escape Plan 100, which is a lottery ticket in colored pencil with the signature yellow and red.

Alison Stewart: What is the poetry like?

Melissa Levin: The poetry, we believe this is all written by Michael, and he's taking on these ideas of thwarted escapes. Plans that include being invisible, walking through gates. Different ideas of ascending as Alex was describing, this idea of ascent, ascending to heaven. There's one called The Mothership Connection, bringing up Parliament-Funkadelic, of course, but is like a beam just on what appeared to be for children and looking up into this beam of light in the sky.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing the exhibition, Michael Richards: Are You Down? It's on view at the Bronx Museum of the Arts through January 7th. I'm speaking with its co-curators, Alex Fialho and Melissa Levin. Let's talk a little bit about his biography. Michael was born in Brooklyn, but mostly raised in Jamaica. His parents were Jamaican and Costa Rican. What do we know about his childhood? What it was like?

Alex Fialho: As you said, Michael Richards was born in the United States, but then traveled back to Jamaica. We know his primary schools and his high school. We know that he went to Catholic church in Jamaica and his father owned a guest hotel on-site there, and often he would travel back and forth to the United States. Planes, as we've noted, were really central to Michael's life. These questions of the possibilities of immigration, but also the perils of planes. We know that Michael Richards moved back to the United States for college to go to Queens College after his years in Jamaica.

Alison Stewart: Do we know when he first became interested in art and becoming an artist?

Melissa Levin: We do have a little bit of an understanding from family members. We've worked really closely with his cousin, Dawn Dale, who's been the familial caretaker and steward of his estate and this collection of his work for over 20 years now. Also, another cousin of his who's still in Jamaica have given us some insight into this. We understand that he did become interested in art in high school and that he came to New York City to pursue a life in art. He went to Queens College and studied art in undergrad and then went to NYU for grad school, and then, as you said, he pursued fellowships and artist residencies and grants in order to really support his art-making practice.

Alison Stewart: You two have been collaborating on this exhibition since 2016. Really, this has been a part of you. Where did the initial interest come in for you, Alex?

Alex Fialho: We were working for the organization, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, curating exhibitions and Michael received the artist studio in the World Trade Center through LMCC, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. We were interested in the institutional history and his connections to that space and knew a few of his works, particularly the Studio Museum in Harlem in which he was an artist and resident in '95-'96. Had continued to bring his legacy to the force.

We were interested in the institutional history and some of the sculptures that we had seen, but really it developed once we were in contact with Dawn who stored all of or the majority of Michael Richards' works from 2001 until 2016 and currently between self-storage spaces and her home garage. That was a really major moment when we became able to visit Dawn and get to know the work better in that way.

Alison Stewart: That's amazing. A lot of his work was in storage for a long time. How did you discover this? What did you think when you found out about this?

Melissa Levin: It was really incredible. We had Dawn's contact information through LMCC and gave her a call when we had the idea to pursue doing an exhibition in late 2015, early 2016. She was incredibly generous. Welcomed us up to her home. We went to her home and garage and she had a one-car garage full of boxes that had been unopened between 2001 and 2016. As you can imagine, took several trips up there. The first, just to observe, get a sense of what was there. Then we revisited with art handlers and other staff.

This project is deeply collaborative and also very community-oriented. We sometimes refer to it as community-based research even in this process to really understand how the sculptures existed, how they came together, which also involved places like the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Bronx Museum of the Arts. It's really a homecoming to bring the show back to the Bronx Museum who have one of the largest archives on Michael's life in art.

Alison Stewart: I know this show has been traveling a bit. What's unique about the Bronx Museum version of it?

Melissa Levin: It truly is a homecoming. Michael had a relationship, an artistic home relationship to the Bronx Museum during his lifetime. He participated in a program called The Artists in the Marketplace Program in 1994 which is a program that still runs today. That is what led to his first museum group exhibition. Then in 1997, he had a really significant two-person show there curated by Marysol Nieves with another artist named Kathleen Lewis. This two-person show also yielded, it published interview, which also contains some of the most firsthand knowledge we have of Michael's voice. Truly a homecoming in so many ways.

Alison Stewart: Obviously, Michael Richards will always be connected to 9/11. He was killed while in his studio on the 92nd floor of the North Tower at 38 years old. Alex, where was he in his career around the time he died?

Alex Fialho: He had had about a decade of showing his work in New York City and beyond. He was really an emerging artist who was well respected, well regarded, had done many of the most esteemed residency and museum programs in the country. He was very much, as the recent New York Times article said, a meteoric career and so he was very much on his way. Frankly, in the decade of work that he did create that's widely shown in the exhibition, really prolific. He made a wide range of work in a relatively short amount of time. You see the deep range of ideas and questions that he's considering iterate throughout the exhibition.

Alison Stewart: Melissa, as you talk to friends and colleagues, often when you talk to them about someone who's passed, they want you to know something about the person. What was it that people seemed to want you to know about Michael Richards?

Melissa Levin: Something that we've really tried to do in the show actually is not only show this incredible range of Michael Richards' work that Alex just described but also show him as a person. We actually have about 20 remembrances from friends and colleagues about 150 words of folks just talking about his artistic rigor, his friendship, their grief at his passing. Often people talk about his friendship. His smile comes up really frequently. There's a big beautiful picture of him at the entrance of the exhibition where you can see his smile along with some other images in some archival materials and photographs. I think friendship, his smile, and his incredible artistic practice.

Alison Stewart: The name of the show is Michael Richards: Are You Down? It's on view at the Bronx Museum of the Arts through January 7th. My guests have been co-curators Alex Fialho and Melissa Levin. Thank you so much for sharing with us.

Melissa Levin: Thank you.

Alex Fialho: Thank you so much.

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Alison Stewart: Tomorrow in All Of It, the new musical Hell's Kitchen tells the story of a 17-year-old girl growing up in a cramped apartment near Times Square. She feels trapped until she discovers music. It is loosely based on the life of Alicia Keys who wrote the music for the show. Coming up tomorrow, I'll be joined by members of the creative team of Hell's Kitchen, which is at the public theater. That is All Of It for today. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you. I'll meet you back here next time.

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