Wanted: Ed Bereal For Disturbing the Peace

Amy Chaloupka is curator at the Whatcom Museum. Matthew Simms is author of Robert Irwin: Site Determined. Malik Gaines is author of Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left: A History of the Impossible. Vernon Damani Johnson is professor of political science at Western Washington University.

Additional contributing authors include: Matthew Simms is author and curator of Robert Irwin: Site Determined, professor at California State University-Long Beach, and the Gerald and Bente Buck West Coast Collector for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Simms delves into Bereal's early journal sketches, particularly his self-portraits, from his time at Chouinard, where Bereal was a student of Irwin's.Malik Gaines, assistant professor of performance studies at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, is author of Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left: A History of the Impossible. Gaines is responsible for bringing Bereal's Bodacious Buggerilla theater troupe together for a reunion performance in 2012 as part of the Getty's Pacific Standard Time initiative. He discusses the importance of Bereal's contributions to guerrilla theater arising in the Post-Watts atmosphere in Southern California. Vernon Damani Johnson, Western Washington University Professor of Political Science with a focus on race and public policy, concentrates on Bereal's politically charged paintings and installations, and particularly his motif of Miss America. Johnson will trace the trajectory of Bereal's powerful iconography across three decades and what it has to say in a Post-Ferguson era.