By Sabrina Völz

As many of you might know, Hid­den Fig­ures (2016) is a biopic direct­ed by Theodore Melfi based on Mar­got Lee Shetterly’s pop­u­lar his­to­ry book and New York Times Best­seller, Hid­den Fig­ures: The Amer­i­can Dream and the Untold Sto­ry of the Black Women Math­e­mati­cians Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016). The film about the NASA’s black female com­put­ing group at Langley’s Research Cen­ter dur­ing the Space Race was nom­i­nat­ed for three Oscars and has reaped high praise from movie crit­ics the world over. I was among the droves of peo­ple who rushed to the the­ater to see the movie when I read that Hid­den Fig­ures is an inspi­ra­tional film that makes lit­tle known achieve­ments of intel­li­gent, deter­mined women vis­i­ble. I also appre­ci­at­ed the fact that this ‘feel good’ Christ­mas film might encour­age girls to seek Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, Engi­neer­ing, and Math (STEM) careers. The plot also avoid­ed all too famil­iar themes in black films, such as bru­tal beat­ings and rape of black women, which were tak­en to an extreme in Pre­cious and 12 Year’s a Slave. It seemed like a win-win sit­u­a­tion for all and the per­fect sto­ry of tri­umph in dark times. And to be hon­est, that is exact­ly how I expe­ri­enced the film. Well, at first. Then I read the book.

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By Pelle Koppen

Dur­ing the spring of 1971, 19-year-old Amer­i­can table ten­nis play­er, Glenn Cow­an, wrapped up his train­ing ses­sion in Nagoya (Japan) in order to pre­pare for the 31^st World Table Ten­nis Cham­pi­onship about to take place lat­er that week. He had been con­cen­trat­ing on per­fect­ing his game for hours before he left the build­ing. To his great sur­prise, Cow­an encoun­tered an almost emp­ty park­ing lot. His team bus had left with­out him. But when the Chi­nese play­ers, who were about to leave as well, saw a young Amer­i­can who looked lost, they motioned to him to hop on their team bus. Dur­ing the short bus ride, Glenn was approached by the Chi­nese star play­er Zhuang Zedong. Against instruc­tions to not seek con­tact with the Amer­i­can play­ers, Zhuang intro­duced him­self to Cow­an and pre­sent­ed him with a gift – a silk-screen por­trait of a Chi­nese moun­tain range. The next day, this friend­ly ges­ture was repaid in kind when Glenn gave Zhuang one of his per­son­al t‑shirts which had a peace sym­bol and the Bea­t­les’ lyrics for “Let It Be” on it. These small, spon­ta­neous acts of human kind­ness trig­gered a series of events with great polit­i­cal con­se­quences. Read more »

By Roger Nichols

In 2017, just five years after a Min­neso­ta art exhi­bi­tion marked the 150^th anniver­sary of the 1862 hang­ing of 38 Dako­ta Sioux men at Manka­to, that gris­ly event drew new pub­lic atten­tion. Well-known mul­ti-media artist Sam Durant – whose instal­la­tions often focus on events from Amer­i­can his­to­ry – erect­ed his lat­est work, a two-sto­ry wood-and-met­al sculp­ture enti­tled Scaf­fold, in the gar­den of the Walk­er Art Muse­um in Minneapolis.

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