Claudia Rankine Discusses Plan to Donate MacArthur Stipend to Racial Imaginary Institute

Inspiring everyone everywhere, Claudia Rankine explains her plan "to donate her $625,000 stipend from her MacArthur genius grant to found the Racial Imaginary Institute." What is--or will be--the Racial Imaginary Institute, you ask? Steven W. Thrasher reports for the Guardian:

Rankine is part of a group of thinkers who are dreaming up a “presenting space and a think tank all at once” where artists and writers can really wrestle with race. She wants it to be a “space which allows us to show art, to curate dialogues, have readings, and talk about the ways in which the structure of white supremacy in American society influences our culture.” These, it’s safe to say, are not the organizing questions of most of the art spaces in New York City.

To Rankine, it’s important to have the institute in downtown Manhattan, because “this is where those discussions begin” and “it has to be in the same playing field” as the world’s major galleries, like Gagosian or Pace. While she admits that galleries “might not be altering legislation”, Rankine is spot-on in understanding that “culture really does determine what we think [and] how we think about things.”

Thrasher also talked to Rankine about recent lectures, such as "her viral keynote speech at the American Writers and Writing Programs conference in April, in which she called out the racism of writing programs, and Lionel Shriver’s speech at the Brisbane Literary Festival, in which [Shriver] ridiculed the idea of 'cultural appropriation' while wearing a sombrero"; the poet's interest in the subject of whiteness; and other future creative plans:

...She is currently working on a play “in conversation with” Citizen. “There’s a dinner party. The dinner party is where many things get talked about. The people in the play are in the art world. You’ll recognize passages from Citizen, but it is not an attempt to stage Citizen.”

Read more at the Guardian.