As someone who runs an online publication I “meet” lots of people through their writing. That was the case with Dereck Mangus, who I met when he applied to the Artblog Art Writing Challenge in 2019 and had his article awarded honorable mention. In his writing I sensed Dereck’s gravitas as a human, an artist and writer, and also sensed the fearlessness of someone who was taking a risk and revealing himself in his written words. In my experience, arts writers are not so much inclined to self revelation. Dereck’s forte was to tell a story that revealed himself along with other truths (confessing his joy at discovering the many Duchamps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and how he spun Duchamp’s bicycle wheel when nobody was looking; or weeping in a gallery at the Barnes Foundation before all the beauty there). Even though he didn’t live in Philadelphia, I reached out to invite him to join our writing team and he joined. He wrote about Baltimore, mostly, and I was delighted for that, because the art world is small and we all should know more about each other’s backyards. Dereck was both a soulful writer, as well as a researcher and idea generator who loved a challenge.
When AI crashed onto the Internet’s front page last year, I asked our writing team if anyone wanted to write about AI and I knew Dereck would jump on that, and he did, turning in a fine reasoned essay on the subject that reminded everyone that technology had always caused changes and that those changes always trickled over into the art world. Painting survived the advent of photography, basically, so don’t panic. He loved being part of a community of writers. During the Covid pandemic, Dereck attended Artblog’s team Zooms and had thoughtful things to say. When we had a team meetup last summer, he came up to Philly with a friend and joined us (then went to the Barnes the next day to see all that beauty!). I am personally heartbroken to think that Dereck is no longer with us. I am humbled to have been a small part of his world for a brief time. He made a contribution.
Dereck Stafford Mangus reading list on Artblog
Dereck Mangus’s Honorable Mention award piece, 2019 Artblog Art Writing Challenge
Dereck Mangus’s AI and technology article
See more stories and tributes to Dereck Stafford Mangus by his colleagues, friends and family, at B’More Art.
