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Banjo lesson sparked graduate student's journey from Wall Street to Yale

Every once in a while William Casey King wonders if he did the right thing by leaving his well-paying Wall Street job to pursue more "pro-social" projects out in the wider world. "I recently ran into a friend that I used to work with, and he's doing pretty well for himself financially," he says.

It could be argued that King has also done "pretty well for himself" since leaving his post at Salomon Bros. investment bankers in New York City. He founded a nonprofit organization that has produced both an acclaimed documentary (which is being screened this week as part of Film Fest New Haven) and an award-winning children's book; he taught youngsters in inner-city schools in Washington, D.C.; and he is now expanding his own educational horizons as a graduate student in Yale's departments of American studies and African American studies.

The metamorphosis in King's life began when the then-bonds trader decided to teach himself to play the banjo. In the instruction book, he discovered a reproduction of "The Banjo Lesson," a painting by 19th-century artist Henry Ossawa Tanner. The artwork, which shows an elderly black musician teaching a young child how to play the instrument, was so touching that King set out to learn more about the artist.

He discovered that very little was known about Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), an African-American painter who lived and worked most of his adult life in Paris. In France, Tanner was considered one of the greatest American artists of his time; in fact, the French government presented him with the Legion of Honor, the highest award it bestows upon civilians for contributions to culture (the only other American artists to receive the honor are John Sargent and James Whistler). Yet in the United States, Tanner's achievements were little-known. "The French saw him as American, but the press in the U.S. marginalized his accomplishments because of his race," explains King.

Determined to bring Tanner's story to a wider audience, King left his job in the financial sector and established The Tanner Film Group, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to promoting racial understanding through the media. With a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he set out to create a video about Tanner in conjunction with a retrospective exhibit on the artist being organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The resulting work, "Henry Ossawa Tanner" (1990), featuring narration by Julian Bond, will be shown as part of Film Fest New Haven at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 4, in The Little Theatre, 1 Lincoln St. There is an admission fee. Call 481-6789 for information.

Although the Tanner video is only 16 minutes long, it took three years to complete. "As a cultural outsider, I wanted to proceed carefully, to approach the topic with great care and sensitivity," says King, who wrote, directed and produced the film. From his base on the campus of Howard University in Washington, D.C., King gathered together a panel of scholars who were experts on Tanner to serve as his advisers, and began hunting for material about the artist "which was difficult because so little is known about him," explains the Yale student.

At one point, King learned that home movies about Tanner had been left to the care of a major U.S. museum, only to discover later that the museum had destroyed the footage years ago because it was on flammable film and was not at that time considered worth saving. King even traveled to Paris in a futile search for the footage. He finally found copies of the film in the basement of the home of one of Tanner's relatives in Philadelphia.

In the short "but dense" video, King examines a number of themes. To show Tanner's importance as the first major African-American painter, King interviewed black artists in their 80s and 90s, "some of whom had gone to Paris to meet Tanner," as well as members of the younger generation who were also influenced by his work. King also addresses the criticism that Tanner did not create many "black-themed" works. "There's a tension that still exists between ethnic identity and artistic identity," says King. "It's easy to apply 20th-century political standards to Tanner, but we have to remember he was a Victorian. He was very much an artist of his age."

The "Henry Ossawa Tanner" video traveled to venues throughout the country with the Philadelphia Museum exhibit, winning the Muse Prize for Best Documentary from the American Museum Association. The film, now part of the Yale film studies program's collection, is available for educational use through The Tanner Film Group and has been shown by teachers in classrooms ranging from elementary schools to Harvard University.

"I think it's an important film because it looks at the contributions of African Americans to the fine arts," rather than to the performing arts or sports, says King. Additional educational materials about the artist are also available on The Tanner Film Group's web site at www.tiac.net/users/vivona/Tanner.html.

To support himself while working on the Tanner film, King took a job teaching elementary and middle school students in inner-city schools in the District of Columbia. As part of his work there, King asked his students to interview family members and friends about their experiences during the early days of the civil rights movement. Thirty-one of these interviews were compiled in The Tanner Film Group's next project, a children's book titled "Oh, Freedom!" published by Knopf in 1997. The work recently won the Flora Stieglitz Straus Award from the Child Study Children's Book Committee at Bank Street College of Education in New York.

While he is eager to continue creating multicultural programming through The Tanner Film Group, King believes it is more important to first bolster his own knowledge about the contributions of African-American culture in the United States. "I decided if I'm going to do this well, I can't continue to rely on outside scholars and experts, so I came back to school to make sure I was solidly versed in the issues," he explains.

Although he expresses contentment at the course his life has taken, King says that on those rare days when he does think back with fleeting regret to his Wall Street days, it's not the work or the lifestyle he misses, but the high salary. "Think of all the worthwhile projects I could be supporting with that kind of money," he says wistfully.

-- By LuAnn Bishop


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