One hot exhibit

By Alex Rush

Calling all Coney history buffs.

Learn all about the amusement area’s biggest disaster -— which, ironically, became its greatest attraction — in a new museum exhibition opening this month.

The Coney Island History Project will present a photo exhibition and offer a walking tour to mark the centennial of a fire that nearly destroyed the whole neighborhood.

The 1911 fire, which sparked after hot tar leaked from a water slide — go figure — burned down three amusement parks, and its aftermath was nearly as thrilling as the rollercoasters it destroyed.

“After the fire, everybody came to Coney Island to see the ruins,” said History Project founder Charles Denson. “Photo booths were even set up to take pictures of people standing in the rubble.”

Denson’s gathered old newspaper photos for the display — the more bizarre the better. One highlight includes the image of a police officer shooting an escaped lion that was climbing a roller coaster.

Visitors can also listen to pre-recorded interviews with the living relatives of the police and fire fighters who battled the blaze. And, for an extra $20, you can follow Denson on a walking tour of the area where one of the amusement parks, Dreamland, once stood. Its Surf Avenue address is now home to the New York Aquarium, but Denson has collected many artifacts, including beer bottles, so you can step back in history.

Dreamland Fire exhibition and walking tour at the Coney Island History Project (3059 W. 12th St. near Bowery Street in Coney Island, no phone), May 27 and 29 at 12:15 pm. Tickets $20. For info, visit www.coneyislandhistory.org.

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Home on the range

By Meredith Deliso

This exhibit puts the art in artifacts.

“Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains,” opening this Friday at the Brooklyn Museum, celebrates Native American culture and tradition through century-old clothing, weaponry, artwork, and, of course, the housing that were once called “teepees.”

“It was really important to tell the story about its history over time, that the tipi is still very much an active part of the Plains culture today, and the context in which it’s used,” said Nancy Rosoff, who co-curated the exhibition with Susan Kennedy Zeller. “But we’re still an art museum, so we take an aesthetic approach to showing the beauty of these objects, and we let the objects speak for themselves.”

With the tipi as your guide, the museum gives you the full Plains experience — there’s sections on tipi life, tipi construction and history, pre-reservation life, women and the tipi, and, the piece de resistance, a 27-foot-tall canvas tipi commissioned by the museum and constructed and painted by members of the Blackfeet tribe that visitors can enter (pictured).

“We wanted people to be able to experience what it’s like to enter a tipi, what the canvas looks like, and how it’s set up,” said Rosoff.

The museum also commissioned a second tipi made of buffalo hide, and has a Southern Cheyenne tipi from the turn of the 20th century on loan.

The rest of the exhibition offers plenty of gems, including intricately beaded dresses, moccasins, and dolls, feathered headdresses and intact tomahawks from the late 1880s, as well as contemporary art from Native American artists.

“It was important to demonstrate the continuity of artistic traditions and ongoing ingenuity of Plains existence,” said Rosoff.

With nearly 150 items, this is the largest exhibition of its kind outside of museums strictly devoted to Native American culture, said Kennedy Zeller, which is a real treat for those of us west of the Mississippi.

“In artwork, aesthetic and lifestyle, we thought, how can Brooklyn learn about these people?” said Kennedy Zeller. “Not everyone can get to the Great Plains. This is a way to experience it.”

“Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains” at the Brooklyn Museum [200 Eastern Pkwy. at Washington Avenue in Prospect Heights, (718) 638-5000], Feb. 18-May 15. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays. For info, visit www.brooklynmuseum.org.

Photo by Blackfeet tipi by Stefano Giovannini.

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The face of Darfur behind the wheel of a taxi cab

By Joe Maniscalco

An entire ocean and half a continent separates Brooklyn from the suffering and dying in Darfur, Sudan — but you don’t have to look that hard to see the human cost.

“The world is small,” says documentary photographer Damian Wampler. “There is no such thing as a far away country or a distant land anymore.”

To glimpse the reality of Darfur for a compelling new photo series included in a School of Visual Arts exhibition called “Surface Tension” (now on view through November 14), Wampler, 32, only had to train his camera lens on one Brooklyn cabbie named Omer Omar.

About four-and-a-half years ago, Omar, now 30, won a green card lottery in Sudan that allowed him to emigrate to the United States.Today Omar is one of over 300 Darfuri refugees residing in the Kensington section of Brooklyn.

“It’s good,” Omar says. “Here is safer than in Darfur. I found nice people here.”

As appealing as Brooklyn is, Omar’s thoughts are never far from the 20 members of his extended family back home in Sudan who rely on his modest taxi cab salary to help them survive.

“My family is not safe,” admits Omar, whose father passed away two years ago. “One brother, I don’t know where he is. Friends told me they saw him outside their village, but I haven’t talked to him in three years.”

The sad fact is, Omar says, “Genocide continues in Darfur. People die everyday.”

Wampler started out his “Darfur in Brooklyn” photo project documenting the lives of the greater Darfuri community in Kensington, but soon came to the conclusion that Omar alone could represent the “face” of the refugee population.

“The tragedy of Darfur is forcing people like Omar to move all around the world to live a life that isn’t theirs,” Wampler explains.

The Delaware transplant, SVA graduate and former Park Slope resident, calls his friend Omar “an accidental American.”

Through stark, but intimate photographs of Omar — some behind the wheel of his yellow taxi cab, others waiting on the slushed-covered streets of Brooklyn — Wampler finds a man driven by a love of family, and yet someone profoundly and sadly alone.

“What impressed me the most about this group of photographers is how fearless each one of them is in capturing their subjects,” “Surface Tension” curator Dan Halm says. “From technical know-how to emotional impact, they all move beyond what one comes to expect within the realm of digital photography.”

For “Darfur in Brooklyn,” Wampler says he made a conscious choice to venture far outside the usual boundaries of what constitutes normal photojournalism.

“I create mood pieces that show how I interpreted this man’s feelings instead of using the language of traditional photojournalism, in which the photographer assumes much more responsibility for the content of the image,” Wampler says. “I leave each picture open to interpretation.”

On most days over the four-month period Wampler spent with Omar, he says the two passed the time just hanging out and talking. “We’d drive around in the cab or he’d run errands. It wouldn’t be until the very end when I would take out my camera.”

Omar says he hopes people will see his photos and want to ask questions about what’s happening in Darfur. After all, Wampler says, “It’s not far away — it’s right here.”

“Brooklyn in Darfur” is now showing at the School of Visual Arts as part of the “Surface Tension” exhibit. The show runs through November 14. Gallery hours are Monday thru Friday 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.SVA is located at 209 East 23rd Street in Manhattan. For more information, or to purchase exhibited work call 212-592-2145.

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