Happy Wednesday. We’re trying some new things with our newsletter this week, as a way of bringing you (our beloved readers) more insights into the stories we care about most. 

— Dessane Lopez Cassell, Reviews Editor

In case you missed it, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that New York City museums and “low-risk” indoor cultural https://hyperallergic.com/583256/nyc-museums-reopening-covid-19/centers may reopen starting on August 24, and will be allowed to welcome visitors at 25% capacity, provided they enforce face coverings among other safety measures.

We’ve got you covered with this growing list of reopening dates for NYC museums.

Easy, though. As Cuomo explained, “Now we have to protect the progress that we have made.” Don’t forget your mask, and make sure to keep up a vigorous hand washing routine, à la Gloria Gaynor. (Sing it with me now, “we will survive.”)

The New-York Historical Society recently opened Hope Wanted: New York City Under Quarantine, a tender outdoor exhibition that points to both the grave challenges faced by New Yorkers amid the pandemic, and their resilience. A collaboration between writer Kevin Powell and photographer Kay Hickman, the project offers a crucial free opportunity to ruminate on art as well as local history in the making.

Artist Shellyne Rodriguez began creating this body of work after she helped organize FTP3 — “the third in a series of actions protesting police intervention in the city’s subway system, led by activist groups Take Back the Bronx, Decolonize This Place (DTP), Why Accountability, and others.”

As Rodriguez explains,

Looking for some end of summer reading? Check out this list of essential feminist texts from the New York Public Library, published in honor of the recent 19th Amendment centennial. While not all women actually gained the right to vote after its passage — Black women had to wait another 50 years, cause of course, racism — the NYPL list acknowledges “the shortcomings of the feminist movement and celebrates those who contributed to its diversity”.

Brown Girls Doc Mafia, a collective of over 4,000 BIPOC women and nonbinary documentary film professionals has launched a searchable directory.

Founded by Bronx resident Iyabo Boyd, who is a filmmaker herself, the directory currently features 228 directors, writers, producers, programmers, and more, including many in New York, and is a clever, practical rebuke to the “excuse many gatekeepers use of ‘not knowing how to find’ quality filmmakers or executives of color.”

For more on this topic, I’d also recommend revisiting Miasarah Lai’s powerhouse of an op-ed on the need for documentarians of color to tell their own stories.

Stay safe!