African Americans: Seeing and Seen, 1766 - 1916
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Sheldon Orrin Parsons (1866-1943) Portrait of an Adolescent, circa 1890 oil on canvas, 18 x 14” Courtesy of Paul Worman Fine Art, New York |
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April 8, 2010 - May 30, 2010
Reception Saturday, May 8, 2010, 5:30 - 7:30 pm
About the Exhibit
The Danforth Museum of Art is pleased to present African Americans: Seeing and Seen, 1766 – 1916, an incisive overview of images of African Americans as both artists and subjects. Bitter brutality and cruel caricature alternate with respectful and positive portraiture—portrayals that offer telling insights into the complex history of African Americans in American society.
Tess Sol Schwab, Assistant Director at Babcock Galleries in New York and curator of this exhibition, points out that African American history “…can be catalogued by the racist and derogatory images across the centuries that have mirrored popular views while at the same time shaping and reinforcing them. Yet, sensitive portrayals of blacks by whites also exist alongside them, as well as inspiring and successful careers by African American artists.” Noting the contradiction in a country’s founding ideal of “all men are created equal” being penned by a man who owned two hundred slaves, Seeing and Seen attempts to reveal the many layers that emerged from this complicated beginning.
A portrait of George Washington and his family by Edward Savage omits one name from the caption, the black figure in the corner behind Martha Washington’s red velvet chair (1798). Examples of the “Darktown Comics” series by Thomas Worth present even less flattering caricatures one hundred years later. Compare these to the ambiguous intentions of Eastman Johnson’s soft-toned depiction of a slave yard in Negro Life at the South (1859), or Louis Schultze’s shadowy and sympathetic The Christening (1800s). Look into the thoughtful eyes of Lucretia Cordelia DeGrasse, a portrait (after 1852) painted by Edward Mitchell Bannister, then look further through Bannister’s eyes in Doryman (c. 1880).
Exhibition Catalog for African Americans: Seeing and Seen, 1766 - 1916, is available for sale in the Shop at the Danforth. This limited edition catalog is 48 pages with 31 full color reproductions and is priced at $25. See excerpts below.
Seeing and Seen: A Matter of Then and Now
Foreword by John Driscoll
The words, sounds and images of a nation’s visionaries manifest meaning through the thoughts and actions of readers, listeners and viewers. Visionaries inspire collective memory which can have presence across generations, cultures and geography. Collective memory, which tends toward the fractious and fractured, of what is honored and protected defines the friable yet essential constants of humanity. In African Americans: Seeing and Seen, 1766–1916 Tess Sol Schwab cogently coalesces a range of iconic and vernacular images that have contributed to the formation of our nation’s collective memory, our somewhat schizophrenic national vision of freedom and Rights. Insight to our chaotic past informs the amorphous and intricate cortex of memory with important messages for today. Seeking an understanding of the past offers an opportunity to assess those among us who would proclaim themselves visionaries.
Essay by Tess Sol Schwab
The history of the United States is riddled with contradictions, strife and revolution. America was founded not only on the principle “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” but also on the blood, sweat and tears of slaves, whose presence proceeded the formation of the nation (Fig. 1). Thomas Jefferson, who penned those immortal words, himself, embodied the inconsistencies of the era by owning nearly two hundred slaves. Like Jefferson, the nation would espouse freedom, but practice slavery. In the midst of the revolution, as the colonists battled against Britain for independence, many Americans noted the inherent contradictions. Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John Adams in 1774 that, “It always seemed a most iniquitous scheme to me to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.”1 Ironically, the first casualty of the American Revolution would be that of a black man—Crispus Attucks in the Boston Massacre. This compromise of morality continued throughout the founding of the United States, as an overwhelming majority of presidents—twelve of the first eighteen— owned slaves.2 Even after the Civil War, which resulted in roughly 600,000 casualties and the death of a president, racism and the marginalization of African Americans and other minorities continued, as epitomized by the formation of the Ku Klux Klan. Yet through it all, overcoming immense adversity, African Americans have emerged as a core component of United States history, culminating with the 2008 election of Barack Obama as President. This contradictory, confusing and inspiring cultural journey has had many markers—not the least of which are works of art: expressions from the heart, soul and conscience of our greatest geniuses, and alternately expressions from the shadowy depths of a cruel, ignorant and debased consciousness.
Exhibition Catalog is for sale in the Shop at the Danforth courtesy of Babcock Galleries.
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