Gender and ethnicity at heart of new exhibits at Sugar Hill Children's Museum in Harlem
NEW YORK -- A series of exhibits now on display at the Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art & Storytelling aim to introduce kids to conversations around gender and ethnicity.
CBS New York has learned more on how the uptown institution tapped into local talent to connect to the community.
Challenging and transforming gender norms, Sugar Hill's untold stories exhibit greets guests with "Six Women Artists in Conversation," encouraging girls to be free.
"It's so important that we treat the small girls and the small boys equally, and tell the girls that they can be as wild and crazy as the boys," artist Mie Olise Kjaergaard said.
Crazy colors dazzle the gallery in "Skysoul," a giant mobile of cartoonish characters with recognizable features.
"The head represents the humanity with the body of a four-legged animal, which represents work, and from that work comes freedom, which is the wings," artist Moses Ros said.
Afros, backwards hats and braids bring these dream creatures down to earth.
"The idea is that people can identify with the work where they see themselves," Ros said.
That theme can be seen throughout the museum.
A perspective often not shared in the story of uptown is that of Bengalis, living as Black during the Harlem Renaissance.
"Once you're comfortable in the space, then you can start to look more closely at the various objects and then you realize that you're already immersed in contemporary art," said "Along 155th Street" artist Priyanka Dasgupta.
In the interactive exhibit, Dasgupta created a narrative inspired by her own home on the same block as the museum, exploring a fictional-yet-realistic story of Harlem Renaissance-era Bengali jazz musician Bobby Alam, who would have lived as a Black man at a time when Asian immigration was outlawed.
"One of the reasons that we created this character was because this history has not been remembered or documented the way that a history worthy of being remembered would have been," Dasgupta said.
Looking east across Jackie Robinson Park, imagining a home beyond the horizon in India, children can imagine something greater in their own lives.
"We have to work and combating what we want to call the 'isms' right, whether it's sexism, racism, but giving children the understanding and the language so that they can create meaning of the world around them," said Charlene Melville, executive director of Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art & Storytelling.
All of the works show how humanities bring out our humanity.
The exhibits will stay on display through next February.
If you have a story you'd like to share with Jessi, email her at harlemtip@cbs.com.
