“We all have dreams. In order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline and effort.”
— Jesse Owens, world-record-setting Olympian
James Claiborne certainly seems to be living a dream – although, as he will admit, it’s far from any athletic field. As the programming manager at the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Clairborne spends his time helping artists in Philadelphia and throughout the country shine their brightest. Shameless plug: He is extending that help to The Women’s Film Festival on March 19 with a special night of films at the museum.
I spoke to the affable Claiborne while he was surrounded by some of the amazing artwork collected over the years at AAMP. If you haven’t been there lately, make your way over and stop in the first-floor gift shop for some really wonderful finds.
PGN: Where do you hail from?
JC: I’m a native Philadelphian. Born and raised in West Oak Lane and I’ve been living in Point Breeze for the last three or four years. I bought a house there in 2014.
PGN: What was little Jimmy like? How would your mother describe you?
JC: [Laughs] A lot like big James! I like to have fun. I like to laugh. I’m very drawn to creative things and art. I was never much interested in sports. I’m probably the only one in this town that didn’t get wrapped up in the Eagles Super Bowl drama.
PGN: [Laughs] Super Bowl drama! Only you would call it that.
JC: Yeah, and this is very much how I was as a child. I was more interested in painting and singing and drawing. I would rather be in my room with my crayons than out on a baseball field somewhere.
PGN: It sounds like you’re an artistic fella.
JC: Well, I had more of a personal practice as a child probably through my 20s, but now I focus more on my career as an art-maker by creating space for others, working with organizations and artists to create capacity for their work rather than my own personal practice. But it’s something that still burns within me. I miss singing. I miss drawing. I miss painting. But it’s all about finding the spark and the capacity and the energy and the drive to want to be back in that space, and I really haven’t had the time. But I do have a longing to express myself more personally through the arts, so maybe I’ll revisit it.
PGN: What was the one piece of art that you gave your mother that she displayed on the mantelpiece … or refrigerator?
JC: That’s hard. I know I once made an angel out of a plastic cone with a cotton-ball head and it sat on top of our Christmas tree for years. It’s gone missing and I know she’s been trying to find it. She also really loves a lot of Asian art-Japanese-Chinese and so a few years back, I found a photo that I really liked and recreated the image. I used a Japanese style and drew it by hand as a gift for her. That was about 10 years ago and it still hangs in her house.
PGN: Nice. Who was your best friend as a kid?
JC: Leonard. He and I hung out a lot at my house and [at] his house, and he went to a lot of family reunions with us. He even traveled with us a little bit, so he was one of my best friends. One of my oldest friends is Rebecca B. We were drawn to each other in middle school. Years later, we found out that we both were gay and, through Facebook, we’ve reconnected and have started hanging out together again. That’s something really special to me.
PGN: Do you have siblings?
JC: Yes. I have a sister and a nephew. Both my parents are still living and I have a host of cousins. And plenty of people who feel like family!
PGN: And what did your parents do?
JC: My mother was a homemaker and my father worked in the union for many years as a sprinkler- and pipe-fitter. He was involved with a lot of the buildings that are up throughout Philadelphia, designing the sprinkler systems that protect those buildings.
PGN: That’s quite a feat. It was difficult for a black man to get into the unions back then.
JC: I don’t know a lot about it but I’d imagine so. My dad was someone who worked really hard to provide for us. He still has the inclination to provide for and take care of us — to look after me and my sister and help us out. I had a closet system that fell down in my house not long ago and I didn’t know what to do with it, so it sat on the ground for a month. My dad found out and within a week, he was there with plywood and a hammer trying to show me how to anchor it into the wall and how to find the studs. He’s a very hands-on guy; he has the gift and knowledge for fixing things. I’m very grateful for all that he’s done and that he’s still here.
PGN: That’s great [chuckling] – though I won’t write that your father taught you how to find studs.
JC: [Loud laugh] Oh my gosh. No, don’t write that!
PGN: Of course not. So where did you go to college?
JC: I went to Drexel University and studied business administration. Very boring. I’m glad I escaped it but it comes in handy.
PGN: What did you do when you graduated?
JC: I’ve always been someone who worked. From the time I was in high school, I worked. I had a job at SmithKline and Beecham, which is now GlaxoSmithKline, during summers in high school. In college, I worked for a risk-management firm while attending school and then when I left Drexel, I worked for Blue Cross for a few years until I found my way into the arts-and-culture scene. I spent seven years at the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance doing membership, advocacy and engagement work and that’s when I found my groove. The work since then has been really formative both for my career and for me as a person.
PGN: What is your current job?
JC: I’m the public programming manager at the African American Museum in Philadelphia. I look at our exhibition offerings and find ways to complement them through events and programs, film series, conversations, panels, musical performances, receptions, etc. That’s my full-time job but I like to keep my hands in a couple of different pots, so I also curate shows independently. I just curated a show at the August Wilson Center in Pittsburgh with scholar and photographer Dr. Deborah Willis. I’m excited to announce that show opened on Feb. 15 here at the museum. I also sit on a bunch of nonprofit boards [such as] Art Sanctuary, which is an organization invested in using black art as a tool to educate youth and build community.
PGN: I just met the mother and daughter who run the Art Sanctuary at a Leeway event! They were both really lovely people.
JC: They are great. I also sit on the board of The Philadelphia Cultural Fund, which of course is the conduit by which the city invests around $3 million to arts and culture groups across the city.
PGN: [Laughing] I need to get to know you better! One thing I always appreciated about AAMP is how LGBT-affirming they’ve always been. Often the social world of the black community revolves around churches, which are not always as friendly as they could be, though it’s getting better. But AAMP has always been a welcoming place.
JC: Yeah. AAMP has always been inclusive and accepting of all walks of life. As the programming manager here, I’m proud to be a continuation of that. Back in 2014, they did a show called “Legendary” that features photos of the ballroom scene that Gerard Gaskin had been chronicling for decades. I wasn’t here yet and I’d love to build a time machine so I could go back and be the program director for that! But I’m always looking for ideas and programs to continue that and foster that narrative. During our MLK celebration, we screened “Brother Outsider,” the documentary about gay activist Bayard Rustin, and had a really great discussion about his life and what it looks like through a contemporary lens. We’re showing “Looking for Langston” in March, which parallels the London nightclub scene with the Harlem Renaissance. So at AAMP, we want to explore a range of communities and experiences in black culture and being a black gay man myself, I know that there’s a need for programming that speaks to my peers and friends. We want everyone to see themselves reflected in what we do. For me, personally, I found solace in the church and it was important to me but it could only take me so far. I found that the arts picked me up and embraced me and allowed me to express the fullness of myself.
PGN: What was a favorite performance you’ve attended?
JC: Oh, I don’t know. I’m just always moved by artists and what folks can do with their minds and their bodies and their voices. The way that they interpret sound and connections or translate history, there’s something beautiful about it. I think the most moving thing that I’ve experienced recently was not one I produced. A very dear friend of mine, jazz-vocalist Laurin Talese, performed an incredible tribute to Nancy Wilson at the Kimmel Center. She did a version of “Someone To Watch Over Me” that was so beautiful. It made you feel loved and connected just listening to it. It made you grateful to be there and to be alive and communing with others experiencing the same moment.
PGN: Speaking of moments, I remember that moment the first time I stepped into a gay bar, the feeling of coming home. What was your first community experience?
JC: I remember being with my friend Tyrone and another friend from high school. We had just graduated 12th grade and we weren’t quite old enough to get into the clubs but we knew we wanted to be around gay folk, so we would come down to the Gayborhood and would walk around from 13th Street and Locust to Pine, back up around to Walnut. We’d sit on people’s stoops and go sit at what used to be Cosi but back then was X and O or Xando. We all pronounced it differently! I just remember being in that area with loving friends and feeling comfortable in a way that I hadn’t in other places in my life like church. Church was really important to me at the time and I experienced comfort there, but this was a different kind of comfort. This was being in a space that accepted you through and through, and I’ll never forget how beautiful that was to me.
PGN: I’m guessing you’re old enough to go in the bars now.
JC: Yeah. I’m still not a big club person but my friends would occasionally drag me out in Philly or D.C. to party. I have memories of being in clubs with the music throbbing, though I don’t dance, which can be challenging. There’s an assumption that if you’re in a club and just sitting or standing against the wall that you’re not enjoying yourself, but I always was like, Leave the wall flowers alone! Some of us get life just enjoying the vibe! I was always amazed by the pulsing room full of people who were just like me. Those moments of community make you resilient in other places where you’re not so accepted.
PGN: First crush?
JC: It was a guy I met at Bible camp. I think I was 14. Back then, there were no cellphones or pagers, so I would call him from the payphone at my church. I don’t think I was even fully acknowledging what I was feeling. I just knew I liked to talk to him. Later I found out he was gay, but I had no idea about either of us at the time.
PGN: Do you collect anything?
JC: I do! Art! [Laughing] It’s like my Jesus. You can’t go wrong with it.
PGN: What’s the farthest you’ve traveled?
JC: I would say Japan. I travel quite a lot. I was in Paris last year but my favorite trip was the most recent. I was in Havana, Cuba, for my birthday. It was stunning. The best thing was the ability to disconnect. Using your phone is ridiculously expensive, so you rely on making personal connections that we usually don’t anymore. There was no Google Maps. You needed to talk to people and meet people to find your way around. It culminated in a party with my best friends that had come down with me and new friends that I met along the way, all cooking me a birthday dinner in the house we were renting. How special was that?
PGN: What was your best dance as a kid? The Running Man? The Worm?
JC: I cannot dance! There’s a reason I’m a wallflower. If I get a drink or two in me, I may move my feet a little, but I certainly cannot do any kind of style or choreographed dance. I get on the floor and something just freezes my joints!
PGN: What’s your worst fashion faux pas?
JC: I don’t think I believe in fashion faux pas. They only exist because people allow them to.
PGN: [Laughing] I don’t know, I think I’ve had a few! How about a favorite piece of clothing?
JC: I love jewelry. I like to be adorned! I used to work at Visit Philadelphia and when I left, they gave me one of those “love letters from Philadelphia.” It said something like, “James, you’re a man of many hats … and rings … and scarves … Thanks for making me look good. Love, Philadelphia!” It was great.
For more information on the African American Museum in Philadelphia, visit www.aampmuseum.org.
To suggest a community member for Family Portrait, email [email protected].