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The Maxine Greene Institute Newsletter
January 2019
Vol. 5 No. 1
The Mission
The Maxine Greene Institute promotes the philosophy of Maxine Greene and the practice of aesthetic education and social imagination.
The Vision
The Institute provides community activities and a virtual space for dialogue and reflection among educators, teaching artists, scholars, students, and those interested in related philosophies and practices.
In This Issue:
The Board Report
Recent Events and Updates
In Memoriam: Patrick McKearn
Upcoming Events
Board Report
In keeping with our commitment to the Maxine Greene Institute, each Board member volunteers their expertise, time and efforts to various Action Committees. These committees (Library, Events, Finance, Steering, etc.) support the work necessary to pursue the mission of the Institute as well as the day-to-day operations required of a not-for-profit organization. Thank you to Board members and Advisory Board members who so generously give of their resources towards our goals. For more information on our Board Members, please visit our website.
Recent Events and Updates
Maxine Greene High School
MGHS, under the guidance of principal Steve Noonan and in partnership with MGI, Lehman College and The Writing Project, has been developing understandings of Imaginative Inquiry in collaboration with the staff and faculty. The new mission statement reads as follows:
The Maxine Greene High School for Imaginative Inquiry is a learning community in which deep engagement with works of art enhances the intellectual rigor and imaginative capacity of all students.
This approach to learning is based on the philosophy of Dr. Maxine Greene in partnership with Lincoln Center Education. It fosters a sense of self worth, curiosity and empathy which empowers all members of this diverse community to work towards a more just, humane and vibrant world.
Community of Learners
Our Community of Learners series brings together teaching artists, faculty, teachers and college students who meet for several events throughout the year to explore aesthetic education in action. This past year, these interactive workshops included visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with a workshop led by John Toth and Holly Fairbank and a visit to The Joyce Theater to see the work of choreographer Brian Brooks. This event included a special session backstage with the choreographer.
Peggy Ann Richards Series
The Peggy Ann Richards Lecture Series, established in 2018, offered numerous workshops and lectures this past year, hosted by MGI at The New School for Social Research and at other locations. Some of the highlights included a poetry workshop given by Anne McCrary Sullivan on “The Aesthetics of Nature’, an investigation of The Audubon Mural Project located in upper Manhattan, a lecture by Ping Chong on his “Undesirable Elements” series addressing issues of culture and identity of individuals who are outsiders within the mainstream community.
Audubon Mural Project Explorers
A Gathering of Teaching Artists
MGI hosted a gathering of teaching artists this past fall, held at the New School.
The event included:
• A guided conversation around a site-specific work by Kara Walker
• Viewing of a recent documentary about Maxine entitled "On Being Maxine" - a new film by filmmakers Karyn Cooper and Alison Mann
• A conversation around a writing by Maxine, which was provided to participants
• Opportunity to network and converse with colleagues of like mind and spirit
American Educational Research Association (AERA) Conference 2018
The Maxine Greene Institute was represented in several sessions at the AERA conference this last year, held in NYC. One workshop, entitled “Heroes and Heroines of the Harlem Renaissance”, invited participants on a trip to Harlem. Our first stop focused on Faith Ringgold’s mosaic mural Flying Home: Harlem Heroes and Heroines (Downtown and Uptown). The session concluded with a visit to the Langston Hughes House on 127th St. where participants encountered poetry by Hughes and wrote some of their own as well.
Maxine Greene Institute at Lehman College
On April 12, 2018, the Lehman College School of Education at the Leonard Lief Library in the Bronx hosted an event to honor Maxine Greene, her influence in education and her legacy.
The event not only brought together many items from her personal library, which had been donated to the library, but also presented artifacts, photos and various texts which had influenced Dr. Greene. The reception to celebrate the opening of the exhibit that evening included a screening of a new documentary of Maxine’s life entitled “On Being Maxine Greene”. The filmmakers, Karyn Cooper and Alison Mann were both present at this inaugural screening.
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In Memoriam
The MGI community mourns the loss of musician, teaching artist and friend Patrick McKearn who passed away last fall after a long illness.
Among many of his admirers, Justin Poindexter stands out as a particularly eloquent spokesperson for Patrick.
He shares his thoughts and memories of Patrick for us here.
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Patrick McKearn: Master Mentor
Patrick McKearn’s East Village apartment looked exactly how I thought a New York artist’s apartment should look. Four floors up a dim and rickety stairwell above a vegetarian Indian restaurant, walls were painted in various colors, an old grand piano dominating the room. Books of poetry and spirituality were stacked precariously high on tall bookshelves. A bathroom that perhaps began as a broom closet a century ago. He called it the “patina of poverty,” said with only a hint of humor.
Growing up in North Carolina, my image of the big city was informed by the gritty 1970s images of Scorsese and Woody Allen, and the alternately celebratory and intimidating words of the Sinatra anthem. It was where jazz legends lived, and where bohemians passionately created, discussed, and defended ideas at all-night diners. I didn’t come to New York for the first time until I was 18 years old, and the city I saw didn’t feel like those movies or songs. There were too many banks and pet spas.
In 2006 I applied for the William R. Kenan, Jr. Fellowship at Lincoln Center Education in New York City (formerly Lincoln Center Institute). I didn’t get it. I had graduated a year before as a Music Composition major at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and was writing songs and playing guitar in a country band in North Carolina. I had a full-time job in the maintenance department of a historical section of town that functioned as a museum, assisting a carpenter.
I was feeling uneasy about the career in music I had pursued. In the woodshop one afternoon, I was working on a window sash when I got a phone call from the Kenan Institute. Someone had dropped out of the Fellowship and I was being offered the chance to move immediately to New York, with a living stipend and nine months of paid work learning the Aesthetic Education practice at Lincoln Center Institute. I hesitated for a moment. It was hard to imagine this kind of life upheaval on such short notice. I drove around in the company pickup truck and after a little urging from my coworker Stu, decided to pack up 23 years of living in the same area code and try the big city.
The obvious perk of the Kenan Fellowship is that the living stipend and paid work offer an entrance into New York City, certainly a hallowed destination for many of us musicians. The lasting impact is in the Aesthetic Education practice and assigned mentorship that accompany the fellowship. This transcends any physical boundaries. If you had asked me before why I initially sought this opportunity, it was to leave my hometown and begin my career as a successful New York artist, whatever that is. Ten years later, I see that the practice not only opened and transformed my perception of a life in the arts, but also of the arts in general. A big part of this change came from the influence of Patrick McKearn.
Being assigned a mentor is inherently difficult. I read through Patrick’s bio and poked around for answers on the internet in a time where Facebook was primarily for college students, and the bulk of the world’s population was still totally invisible to search engines. I didn’t come up with much. When I finally met Patrick, it was hard to get a read on him. We were in an introductory meeting with LCI staff, the six artist Fellows selected for the program, and their assigned mentors, who were all teaching artists at LCI. He seemed uncomfortable with some of the pomp. Gruff and melancholy, he made no attempt at showboating in the introductions. But when we started talking music, the temperature changed. His vast intellect came pouring out, and I was immediately struck by his unique blend of hard-worn authenticity and incredible openness and sensitivity to
everything around him. After the meeting we went to Central Park and sat on a park bench with coffees. He asked me questions that demanded real answers and that cut to the core of who I was, and what I wanted to be doing. I realized immediately that he was for real.
The first time we hung out I went to his apartment with my guitar. We played “Body and Soul,” a beautiful jazz standard that we also played one of the last times I saw him ten years later. We talked about Duke Ellington and the blues and drank tall Indian beers. We howled “Goodnight Irene” at his old grand piano, through the open windows and over the noise on Houston Street. Then we played “Hip Hug-Her” by Booker T. and the M.G.’s. I wasn’t sure if we were having a lesson or just hanging. The lines between teacher and student, adult and kid, were unclear. But there was no doubt that he was trying to impress upon me a kind of ethos. We talked about retiling his floor, and I think he was mildly impressed that I had some knowledge on how to go about it. Then we played the theme from “Valley of the Dolls.”
Patrick must have sensed that I needed to explore different avenues in the arts. He introduced me to people from all over the arts and education world — people I still see regularly. Through him, I started jamming and gigging at funky clubs with Dr. Jerry James. I interned for Jessica Meyer’s chamber group, Counter-Induction. He arranged for me to write a piece for trumpeter Frank London, who was then doing a residency at LCI. He took me to play lap-steel at a studio party with David Wallace, and he introduced me to Eli Yamin, who later became a treasured colleague and helped me greatly in preparing for my first State Department tour with my band. I was fascinated by all these people and their relationships to their art and to the city. Time with Patrick, which was initially documented and paid time as part of my fellowship, would stray from musical analysis
into discussions of spirituality and macrobiotic food. He could be hard on me, challenging my self-awareness and making me want to better understand things I had limited knowledge of: political processes, exercise, Eastern religion.
When we started doing workshops in schools, he was astonishingly open and emotional. We wrote a mournful song with a group of second-graders about families leaving Ireland, in advance of their seeing a Cathie Ryan performance at Lincoln Center. I strummed guitar and Patrick played melodica, bobbing his head back and forth, beating waltz time on our sorrowful sea shanty. The song was not only real for the students, it was real for him. We sang loud and with our full hearts. This was his way.
Patrick played piano on my final project for LCI: a modern dance collaboration with original songs I composed for string trio and Jazz trio. I remember his questioning why I harmonized a seemingly inconsequential chord a certain way, and then plunking at the keyboard until he found a tension he preferred. He gave me albums to listen to, challenging my ear and encouraging me to step outside of my comfort zone. One was by the French composer Messaien, another by the eccentric Afro-futurist bandleader and composer Sun Ra.
When the Fellowship ended I was determined to stay in the city. After a cold winter gigging around, and a good deal of anxiety around my future, I applied to be a teaching artist for LCI. In my training classes was my future wife, the pianist and songwriter Sasha Papernik. We began collaborating and eventually played some songs that Patrick had written. Patrick came to a gig of ours at the old Living Room on the Lower East Side and was enamored by our cowboy-noir interpretation of Nina Simone’s “The Other Woman.” He also barked at our performing a piece by modern composer Alexander Scriabin alongside a reworked “Jolene” by Dolly Parton. Patrick may have been open to high/low culture, but he had definite opinions about programming. Right around the end of the LCI training I got a call from Jazz at Lincoln Center — then a small and scrappy company with a
massive new facility at Broadway and 60th. I would be working on a vast array of rapidly growing community and educational programs. I immediately began collaborating and performing with musicians I had idolized since I was a kid poring through LPs and music reference books. As the company grew, I found more opportunities to build and shape programming in innovative ways.
I began to hire Patrick as a consultant to design workshops for teachers and families around our concert season. One memorable event was a big concert for families in Rose Theater, focusing on Free Jazz and the music of Sun Ra, for whom Patrick had a great affinity. We had a giant bubble machine, space costumes, and original members of Sun Ra’s “Arkestra” in the band. “And where is this Mr. Ra from?” said a smarmy, sarcastic Upper West Side mom. “He’s from Saturn,” said Patrick, without a tinge of pretension or malice.
Patrick told me he was sick after one of the family concerts. He was matter-of-fact about how he wouldn’t be able to do more family workshops because his voice would be affected by the treatment. He began blogging shortly afterward, and like so many, I was spellbound by his beautiful and direct storytelling. His evolution was remarkable: never defying his image while allowing us in to share in his experiences and thoughts with brutal freshness.
I don’t remember the very last time I saw Patrick. As I did during my grandfather’s slow decline, I shy away from placing too much emphasis on a final moment. It may have been at his apartment. We played “Body and Soul” and some tunes he had written during chemo, and he talked about how we should record them together with Sasha. I remember drinking smoothies he made and telling him about playing for teenage audiences in China on a recent tour, and how they screamed like we were Beatles through the whole concert. They obviously couldn’t hear the music we had worked so hard on, but it was exhilarating to feel that energy. Patrick’s relationship with music was so sacred and organic. It felt funny to tell him about a hysterical audience of teenagers.
Patrick’s memoir, “Caregiver,” intimately recalls his experience caring for his late wife and collaborator, Linda Gibbs, through her long battle with cancer. His fierce intellect and familiarity with the procedures and medical jargon must have made him an unusual patient for the many doctors and professionals he worked with on his own journey with cancer. What strikes me is how, with all of his hard knocks and unvarnished authenticity, he kept creative, kept hopeful, and kept working toward self-improvement when it would have been so easy to become cynical. He affected and was affected by other people, and he seemed to push himself toward a personal fulfillment that was oblivious to career trajectories or any other less noble trappings. All I can think now is how lucky I was to be assigned this guy as a mentor. He was there when I was open and thin-skinned.
He taught me how to be thick-skinned, but also how to stay open.
Justin Poindexter is Director of School and Community Programs at Jazz at Lincoln Center, where he produces over 600 concerts annually around the world. An accomplished guitarist, he has toured extensively overseas for the American Music Abroad program with his own bands, and has performed with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, David Amram, Ken Peplowski, Bria Skonberg, Ranger Doug, Nellie McKay, Catherine Russell, and Jon Batiste among many others. His 2014 album with the Amigos, “Diner in the Sky,” won Americana Album of Year from the Independent Music Awards.
Patrick with Sasha Papernik and Justin Poindexter
UPCOMING EVENTS
The I-4 Conference
This year, on March 30th, 2019, The 5th annual I-4 conference (Imagination, Inquiry & Innovation Instititute) will be co-hosted by MGI and Manhattan College. The theme this year is:
Look Again: The Art of Multiple Perspectives
The Keynote address will be given by Heidi Latsky, director of the Heidi Latsky Dance, a NYC based physically integrated dance company.
To register for this conference, please email:
I-4@manhattan.edu
To view the Request for Proposals, please visit our website
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