Crown Heights Riot 20 Years Later: Crown Heights Gold

PROSPECT HEIGHTS - PATCH
By Jonathon Mandell

"What If" by Jamel Shabazz

NEW YORK - How do you turn deat into art? On one wall of Crown Heights Gold, an exhibition by 23 artists marking the 20th anniversary of the Crown Heights riot, there are two photographs of happy families – one Hasidic in a park, another Afro-Caribbean on a stoop. Both are entitled “What If?” What photographer Jamel Shabazz means by that question is: What if on August 19, 1991, seven-year-old Gavin Cato had not been killed in a car accident and 29-year-old doctoral student Yankel Rosenbaum had not been killed in the ensuing riot? What if both had lived?  “Crown Heights Gold” will be shown through October 31, 2011 at the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation Center for Arts and Culture Skylight Gallery, located at 1368 Fulton Street, 3rd floor. [link]