‘Soul Shadows’

By focusing on charges of racism, favoritism and excessive spending regarding New Orleans artist Dawn Dedeaux’s exhibition at the Los Angeles Photography Center, “ ‘Soul Shadows’ Exhibition: $19,000 Well Spent?” (May 1) inappropriately tainted the Cultural Affairs Department.

A context for how to think of the exhibition should include these salient points: Was the exhibition of sufficient quality to merit an L.A. showing? What contribution did it make to public understanding of city issues? For whom was it intended--a handful of artists and teachers or the general public?

The show was provocative, unsettling, disturbing and riveting. It was responsive to a culture that is inaccessible to our understanding except through negative stereotypes. By allowing a subculture to address its own issues, the exhibition had the potential of refuting assumptions, penetrating biases and examining how a particular community functions.

If the exhibition was worth mounting--and in my opinion it certainly was--then it needed a more accessible venue and promotion. By avoiding discussion in the article of the cultural context that “Soul Shadows” explored, the reader was denied consideration of what dissolves the contention of racism: the exhibition and its link to cultural democracy.

DOLO BROOKING, Director

Arts Administration Program

Cal State, Dominguez Hills