Meet the Artist and the Curator: Bayeté Ross Smith and Jennifer Jankauskas

Meet and chat with New York-based interdisciplinary artist Bayeté Ross Smith whose site-specific work—a 14-feet tall and 8-feet wide tower constructed from hundreds of boomboxes—from his Got the Power: Boomboxes series makes its Montgomery debut.

Ross Smith’s tower explores how boomboxes have been an important element in urban communities and also within popular culture. For this new work, the artist collected stories about Montgomery and favorite songs from members of the community to form a playlist as part of the project. The sculptural installation will broadcast this audio story. Together, the sculpture and the soundscape function, as he says, as “a symbol of pride, power, and autonomy.”