It wasn’t in, like, Netflix documentaries, or Wikipedia pages, or something that grad students were studying.
“It wasn’t really something that was documented. “I always knew that I wanted to create some archive around my dad’s bar,” she told Observer. At The Kitchen, this reconstituted piece of history has itself been activated as a site of multiple convergent and overlapping historical archives, becoming in the process a place of both remembrance and imagination for a vanishing vision of New York.įor Barnette, the project began as a way to capture a particular essence that was at risk of being forgotten entirely. The piece, titled The New Eagle Creek Saloon, is a tribute to her father Rodney’s shuttered bar of the same name, which was the first Black-owned gay bar to open in San Francisco. The glittering half-crescent saloon, on display at the performance arts venue the Kitchen through March, is the creation of the artist Sadie Barnette. In a black box theater off of frigid 19th Street in Chelsea, a lone neon-drenched bar echoes with history. Installation view of Sadie Barnette: The New Eagle Creek Saloon, The Kitchen, New York, Janu– MaPhoto: Adam Reich
