Music played on the first floor of the Haney & Company building in downtown Newark as a Newark school board member walked to the beat of what has become a regular Thursday night event.
A visual exhibit created by students in honor of the artist, formerly known as Prince, will run through at least the end of November.” Curated by students from five Newark high schools, the “A Tribute to the Purple Prince” exhibit features artwork, historical news clippings, quotes from musicians and replicas of guitars designed by Prince.
Princess-Olivia Clarke, 16, a junior at Bard High School Early College in Newark, is one of the curators. In showing the exhibit to reporters, she explained that it was the students who drove the design of the exhibit.
We were able to decide where we wanted to put the photos, or how we wanted the flow of the exhibit to be, or if we wanted people to be able to interact, or if we wanted the photos to be here,” Clark said.
Students began working on the project in late June, she said. The exhibit details other aspects of Prince Rogers Nelson’s career, his break with Warner Bros. and the development of his personal brand.
Clark said that while the exhibit is meant to honor the artist once known as Prince (he died in 2016 at age 57), it’s also meant to pay tribute to the students who participated in the exhibit – students from West Side High School, Central High School, High School for the Arts, and Bard High School, as well as Great Oaks Heritage Charter School.
“It’s more about giving students an opportunity to express themselves,” she said.
Thomas Owens, executive director of Newark MENTOR, which works with schools on mentoring programs such as exhibits, said the program began at the High School of the Arts.
Owens said most of the artwork comes from the archives of the Rich Benson Collection in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
“The idea,” Owens said, “is to teach them every step of the way.” Everything you see here. Everything on the wall is carefully planned by the kids. They had to make choices. They helped build the wall.
He said it was significant to have the exhibition in the Hahne & Co building, noting that the building has undergone a positive transformation in recent years.
“The building wasn’t always the most popular building with the kids in the neighborhood, especially historically,” Owens said.
The students who curated the exhibit and served as docents not only received educational benefits from the program. They also get paid through the city’s summer youth employment program, Owens said.
Key to the program is the guidance of experts, such as museum curator David Byer-Tyre, who has a background in African-American materials and culture.
“My role in this is to create a model that can be emulated and implemented in schools from start to finish so that information about creating exhibition spaces can be provided to kids in bulk,” Byer-Tyre said.
Byr-Tell said, “The program provides young people, especially African American young people in the ghetto, with the confidence to participate in art spaces that may not have been available before.
“It gives them the confidence to participate in these spaces,” says Bertell.” That was our overall motivation, so we started by introducing them to how to handle the artwork, how to catalog the collection, how to go through the process and learn about the history of the artwork.
Clark and her peers understand that negotiation is part of the educational process.
“We were all teenagers. We all had very strong opinions about what we thought was right,” Clark said.” I said ‘I like this, I think it should go here,’ but they said ‘no.’ I’m sure that conflict was a huge challenge. In the end, we all got along fine.
Owens said the program received a $25,000 grant from the New Jersey Devil’s Youth Foundation, as well as additional logistical and financial support from the Newark Alliance. Other partners include Newark Symphony Hall, the Newark Festival of the Arts, the Halsey Music Festival and the Board of Education, he said.
If you go.
“Memorial Purple One,” a tribute to the life of Rogers Nelson, is located in the atrium of the Hahn Building at 50 Halsey St. in Newark, next to the Kite & Key. free flash mob museum, curated by Newark students, is open Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, from 4-6 p.m. Thursday’s Purple Thursday exhibit will be open until 9 p.m.