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AND AGAIN I DREAM inWashington D.C. |
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Betye Saar’s light was soft and generous, a rare glow. She held a deep and abiding conviction that fragments are not debris. Shards, shreds, threads are materials, memory, and myth, that she could arrange into a truth bigger, more complete in its amalgamation than any single whole object could ever be. She turned family photographs, birdcages, bones, cast-off windows, and broken mirrors into altars, insisting that nothing discarded is ever truly finished. Betye was the best kind of artist who didn't just make art but made a way of seeing, handing it forward to anyone willing to look closely at what's already right in front of them.
She died four days before her hundredth birthday, on July 26, having spent a century transforming what was broken into the luminous. I'm grateful, beyond words, that I got to sit in MoMA's garden and feel the warmth of her in early June light, as she was celebrated alongside Martin Puryear, still radiant, still assembling, still deciding what belonged next to what, still finding the sacred order hidden in things the world had thrown away. I carry her with me a little longer, as she carried everything, as that which is worth keeping, worth honoring, worth building into whatever comes next.
- Catherine Gund |
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Martin Puryear & Betye Saar, June 2, 2026. |
Yale Student Keely Balfour Writes Powerful Essay:"Painting My Own Road" |
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In her final paper for Prof. Thomas Allen Harris's course Archive Aesthetics and Community Storytelling at Yale, Keely Balfour writes about how PAINT ME A ROAD OUT OF HERE helped her shape her idea of personal archive. Through the film, she finds self-understanding in Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter's similar upbringing, in Mary's vibrant self-assurance and constant reclamation of her own story, and Faith Ringgold's dedication to archiving the stories of incarcerated women through her painting.
"The same childhood produced different archives depending on who was remembering it... This made clear that there is no singular, objective version of my childhood waiting to be uncovered. If no archive offers a complete account, then the person whose life is being narrated must have some role in defining its meaning.
It was Mary Elizabeth Baxter’s story in Paint Me a Road Out of Here that helped me arrive at this way of thinking in the first place. Although our lives diverge in many ways, I recognized in Mary, a former foster youth whose life moved through incarceration and into artistic authorship, a shared history of being described by systems before being understood as a person."
- Keely Balfour |
Words of Art Available to Playat The Uncommons |
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You can now play Words of Art at The Uncommons on Thompson Street.
Go now and email us a picture of you playing it at info@aubinpictures.com!
In the words of Agnes Gund, art “is a right, not a privilege.” In this Apples to Apples–style game, players feast their eyes and exercise their brains as they challenge friends and family to come up with the art card that best expresses the verbal prompt given by the designated Storyteller. It’s a beautiful, informative game to play with friends and family that will teach everyone more about art, imagination, and each other.
The art featured on the cards draws from a wide range of artists, from world famous (Jasper Johns, Romare Bearden, Picasso, Warhol, Louise Bourgeois) to newer stars (Sarah Sze, Nick Cave, Teresita Fernández, Cecily Brown). More than half the works are by women and more than a third are by artists of color.
The Uncommons 230 Thompson St, New York, NY 10012 |
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PBS Kids has released the video book version of Jacqueline Woodson's The Day You Begin and it is now available online.
There are many reasons to feel different. Maybe it's how you look or talk, or where you're from; maybe it's what you eat, or something just as random. It's not easy to take those first steps into a place where nobody really knows you yet, but somehow you do it. Jackie's lyrical text and Rafael López's dazzling art reminds us that we all feel like outsiders sometimes-and how brave it is that we go forth anyway. And that sometimes, when we reach out and begin to share our stories, others will be happy to meet us halfway. |
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Kaya is on their World Tour and will be performing at 3 Dollar Bill on September 19th, 2026.
They are a visual kei artist who exemplifies the unique Japanese music and fashion movement, bringing a gothic, elegant, and theatrical performance to 3 Dollar Bill for one night only. |
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Some of Our Films andWhere to Find Them |
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In 1995, artists Catherine Lord and Millie Wilson committed what they called "an act of anthropology", and they intended it to be doomed from the start. For a large mixed-media exhibition on lesbian culture at the Santa Fe Museum of Fine Arts, they asked 83 individuals from around the state of New Mexico to lend one small object of personal significance to the museum for display. Not just lesbians. Women willing to be identified as lesbians. Women who were once lesbians. Women who prefer not to describe themselves as lesbians. Women who entertain the idea of being a lesbian. And men wishing to commemorate a lesbian. The objects arrived. The show opened. And the category dissolved on contact.
.......Visibility is not safety. But erasure is violence. The space between those two truths is where this film lives. |
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Originally aired on Independent Lens, and nominated for Best Documentary Emmy, A TOUCH OF GREATNESS (2004) is a bolt of lightning disguised as a documentary. Director Leslie Sullivan and producer Catherine Gund train their lens on Albert Cullum, a force-of-nature elementary school teacher who blew the roof off Rye, New York public schools by handing Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Whitman directly to seven-year-olds and compelling them to feel it.
The film's secret weapon is its ravishing, grain-soaked 16mm black-and-white film shot in 1964 by the legendary Robert Downey Sr.; images so alive and strange they feel like they were smuggled out of another dimension.
Woven through the archival material are TV broadcast fragments from the era and deeply emotional contemporary interviews with Cullum himself and the now-grown, devoted students whose lives he permanently altered. Together they make the case that one radical, wildly imaginative teacher is an act of historical consequence. |
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“This is, indeed, poetry.” - The New York Times
“A gorgeous, quietly energetic, and moving meditation..” - The New Yorker |
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Frame by Frame: 30 Years of Magicwhat you can expect |
2026 is an exciting year for Aubin as we celebrate our 30th Anniversary!
Our 30th Anniversary programming includes screenings, convenings, celebrations, and more! We are celebrating our work across our FIVE PILLARS: Studio (documentary filmmaking to transform narratives); Impact (justice-oriented campaigns to amplify urgent issues); Workshop (fiscal sponsorship, project incubation, and community events); Lab (mentorship and training); and Rewind (uncovering and activating our past work and shared history).
Over the course of this year, we are working to inspire, learn, and scale Aubin Pictures’s model for storytelling for social change in its next 30 years.
Help us launch our Aubin 30 campaign by watching this wonderful sizzle reel of the amazing work that the Aubin team has been able to accomplish since 1996! |
Aubin 30 Sizzle Reel with clips from more than 20 of our films! |
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