Mary Schmidt Campbell, Harlem: Parable of Promise or Peril

ForeseeableFutures #2

Position Papers from Imagining America

Mary Schmidt Campbell’s Essay, is the story of one institution’s successful struggle to make the impossible merely difficult 0 to build a museum in a mythic urban ruin and to make that museum a force in both economic development and community empowerment. It is also a case study in democratic culture making. As the essay moves through Campbell’s tireless campaigns and myriad strategies to push her museum forward, she adds to our collective tool-kit fire the public arts and humanities and she feeds our ambitions.