Why Josephine Baker?
” (page 2 of 4) On the one hand, Josephine Baker: A Century in the Spotlight was meant to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of the last century’s most important and widely celebrated artists. In some ways, though, Josephine Baker’s birthday was a pretext, an ideal point of departure from which to examine a whole host of issues and phenomena that have marked both Europe and the Americas over the course of the past 100 years. American-born, French-bred, and world-renowned, Josephine Baker shines a revealing light on the transatlantic spaces and moments through which she moved. And so, much more than a centenary celebration of one woman’s exceptional life, this event—and the pages of this web journal—were designed to explore in as many ways as possible Baker’s Parisian triumph and her persistent impact on the international cultural scene. While Baker’s story is perhaps most spectacular—both literally and figuratively—in the 1920s and 1930s in Paris, her influence can b
