December 7, 2016 - 15:51
HANNAH:
INTRO:
Exhibitions of African American art in American art museums have been curated through two guiding methodologies: the anthropological approach, which displays the difference of racial Blackness from the elevated White “norm,” and the corrective narrative, which aims to present the work of significant and overlooked African American artists to a mainstream audience. The former methodology reflects an institutional curiosity concerning the presence of racial otherness, commonly coupled with a desire to perpetuate the superiority of mainstream White culture through its contrast to a Black difference defined as inherently inferior. The latter methodology was formed out of the necessity to present the art of African Americans and correct for its historical absence and misrepresentation in mainstream art museums... Regardless of the intentions of the curators, exhibitions of art by African Americans are often perceived through a limiting “either/or” paradigm: through a lens of either anthropological study or aesthetic value. African American artists still face an art world in which the exhibition and reception of their work can depend upon proof of their value as artists despite their racial identity. (pp. 1-2)
--The Negro in Art Week: Exhibition of Primitive African Sculpture, Modern Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings, Applied Art, and Books--1927--Chicago Art Institute-- “first museum exhibition of art by African Americans”--Alain Locke and the Chicago Women’s Club
--supposed to show that African Americans were equal, but held in children’s museum
--claiming African heritage
--art for the exhibit had to conform to 19th-century European artistic tradition
-- “Yet, for critics, the Negro-ness of the artists (not the art, which was chosen for its Eurocentric conformity) proved overwhelming, prohibiting consideration of the art itself.” (7)
--similar to problems/questions we have encountered while discussing African art
--Are the solutions/answers different?
CHAP 1:
Unlike Negro artists working through the Harlem Renaissance, FAP, and 306 Group, Edmondson did not consider himself an artist and did not sculpt with aspirations for recognition by the art museum world. This did not deter Dahl-Wolfe or Barr, who saw him as ripe for picking out and up from his Negro community and recontextualizing as a spectacle from a perpetually unmodern Southern Negro America. Likewise, the aesthetic and social implications of organizing the first solo exhibition of work by a Negro at MoMA as modern primitivism did not dissuade Dahl-Wolfe and Barr. Instead, their concern was the appropriation of Edmondson’s art for the purpose of creating an ancestry for American modern art. When Edmondson’s use value as pre-modern specimen was over, his art was again placed on the margins, outside of modernism, and outside of the modern art museum. (p. 29)
--William Edmondson--b. 1874, rural Tennessee
--1933--began carving limestone for tombstone ornament--inspired by God
--displayed works in yard--1936, Louise Dahl-Wolfe photographed him and his sculptures-- “Her photographs construct a narrative of discovery for his work by depicting him and his sculptures as primitive.” (28)
--showed photos to Alfred Barr, director of MoMA, 1937--led to solo exhibition
--discussed throughout the nation--mostly announcements and not reviews
--MoMA criticized for having low standards, putting too much value on primitive art--European modernism even called into question
--criticized for linking contemporary African American artists to African “savages”
In his review, Locke uses the metaphor of military strategy to report on the advances of Negroes on the art front and prescribe what is needed to continue to gain and maintain ground in the war between Negro art and racial discrimination in the mainstream art world. The goal of the war for Locke is racial parity, and his strategy for winning through the arts is the exhibition of a Negro art that displays specific signifiers of Negro culture for a White audience. For Locke, successful Negro art depicts visual evidence of Negro life and ancestry. Locke’s Negro artist must be a native informant willing to educate the viewer through the visual manifestation of personal or cultural anthropology that can be legible as Negro. (37-38)
CHAP 2:
“In 1969, the Metropolitan Museum of Art put on Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968,
“sought to explore the cultural history of the predominantly Black community of Harlem, New York (figure 15).” (53)
Tail end of Civil Rights Movement & start of the Black Power Movement,
“Black culture emerged in the Met not as creative producer, but as ethnographic study.2”
Consistent theme of blackness as the sociological experiment/subject, not an aesthetic, self-actualizing authority
The decisions to display African American people through oversized photo-murals and to dismiss their input and artwork as unworthy of being in the museum made Harlem on My Mind a site for racial politics and debates about artistic quality and art versus culture in the United States” (53).
“Art” Included only photographs .. art world hadn’t even accepted photography as art
Exemplifies the tendency of white institutions to use photography as an “honest” interlocutor, but actually further disregards artistic agency and patronizes Harlem community as studied, stagnant objects
“the exhibition invigorated a movement of Black artists and museum professionals that changed the culture of the American art scene… their contribution became part of the Black Arts Movement, in which Black artists, poets, actors, and writers took hold of the creative history of Black Americans, connected with it, expanded it, and confronted mainstream America. The multifaceted response by Black visual arts communities to the failure of Harlem on My Mind represented a public criticism of art museums’ larger failure to recognize living cultures.” (54)
1968 was a booming year.. Lots of tension, MLK assisinated, murder of bobby hutton, Kennedy assass., etc. see pg. 55
Issues of control paralleled everywhere… Ocean Hill-Brownsville public school conflict
“Between 1967 and 1971, the primarily Black and Puerto Rican Ocean Hill–Brownsville community battled with the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and the New York City Board of Education to control the selection of public school faculty, administrators, and curriculum.” (55)
Similarly, the conflict regarding how to represent the people of Harlem spurred a struggle between those who controlled the Met and the Harlem art community.
Themes of authority, authorship→ black ppl representing themselves wasn’t considered
4 FACTORS for “Harlem on My Mind”
1.) “conceived as an intervention into the growing cultural gap between Blacks and Whites. Through the exhibition, the Met attempted to be an ambassador of racial harmony” (56).
Facilitator lol
2.) season of “radical chic”
Late 60s
Would invite leaders of radical social movements
Black panther part, la causa
Pg. 57
white guilt/suffering porn/but they got funding
BLACKNESS CENTERS WHITE MORALITY/PRESERVES WHITE ETHICAL ILLUSION
***Not only individual moral compass but also institutional legitimacy and ideological astuteness**** sanctity
3.) museum’s new leadership hoped to mix current cultural issues with the traditions of the prestigious institution.
4.) previous exhibit of Schoener’s @ Jewish Museum- Portal to America: The Lower East Side, 1870–1925
Essentially the model for Harlem on My Mind
Schoener is jewish
“dedicated to the first American neighborhood for millions of immigrants. Schoener was a trained art historian specializing in twentieth-century environmental criticism. He had not had the opportunity to study the history of Jewish Americans and found the chance to explore his own heritage appealing” (64).
“The exclusion of art was a critical difference between Portal to America and Harlem on My Mind. Both exhibitions were multimedia presentations of photographs, sounds, and slide projections, but Portal to America included forty-eight lithographs, paintings, drawings, and one sculpture by artists either from the Lower East Side or depicting notable neighborhood figures and scenes” (65)
Two major players/orchestrators
Allon Schoener, director of the Visual Arts Program of the New York State Council on the Arts and director of the Met Museum’s Exhibition Committee,
Thomas P. F. Hoving, recently hired director of the Met,
Came from working w/ liberal administration of republican major John V. Lindsay
Known for progressive/non traditional organizing
It’s the liberals we have to be weary of.. The kumbaya… hasn’t gone away, just reconfigured over time
“unrecognized by Hoving and Schoener, the need to go beyond the limits of humanism to understand the specific attributes of cultural struggle, values, and politics was most important for the cross-cultural success of Harlem on My Mind. Schoener organized a popular humanistic project instead of engaging in a reflective examination and understanding of the diversity of the community that he chose to represent.” (58)
Reductive always, white liberal desires for “solving the negro problem” in the name of humanism when there is no effort made to confront the complexities of this community
Layout:
Reminds me of NMAAHC 3rd floor (60s-70s) black power era.. Lots of color, multimedia, large sculpture like pillars w/ photos
Kitsch-y commodified, version of what white imagine harlem to be
Difference in the content.
CONTENTION/BLACKlash
Schoener included art in the Lower East Side exhibition… he stated that paintings would have “detracted from the kind of experience I wanted to create, and [I] decided to use only photographs in the Harlem exhibition.”31
Traditional arts made by black artists might have testified to artistic abilities
“Uninterested in this kind of sophisticated contribution, Schoener chose instead to construct an exhibition that would re-create the way that he experienced Harlem on his mind from his position of privilege. In fact, the difference between Schoener’s concept of Harlem and the way the people of Harlem wanted to be represented formed the great tension over Harlem on My Mind. “
white dude’s imagining of harlem… sounds like something else! Lol
Schoener selected a bunch of different research teams in an attempt to look inclusive but didn’t take ANY of what they said into consideration… one committee was comprised of 3 residents of harlem and the other was just black ppl who weren’t from harlem..
“Although the members of Schoener’s Harlem committees took their positions seriously, they were not allowed to have a say in the planning of the exhibition. Frustrated by their lack of influence, the research-advisory committee and the Harlem Cultural Council withdrew their support on November 22, 1968. The Harlem Cultural Council stated that there was a “breakdown in communication” between the council and the museum. Taylor openly complained, “The Met came to us with elaborate promises of community involvement in the show. But they haven’t really begun to consult us. We’re expected simply to be rubber stamps and window dressing.”35 (67)
Schoener even ADMITTED that his hiring of the advisory team was superficial and he never planned to actually include any of their suggestions…. The audacity lmao
Black expert props brought in to preserve white institutional sanctity but never actually integrated, issue w/ diversity work… dumb af and still centers whiteness/white politic, just uses melanin to cover their asses formally
Hoving fcked things up more by including Candice Van Ellison’s essay abt Harlem… talked abt anti-jewish sentiment amongst blacks.. Got in so much trouble, ppl saying it was anti-semetic and fucked up..
Played into black- jewish conflicts of the time…
“There was no other perspective from a historian, art historian, sociologist, or other scholar from Harlem who might have made a relevant contribution. The other texts in the catalogue were the preface, by Hoving, and the editor’s foreword, by Schoener.50” (70)
B.E.C.C → Benny Andrews formed Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (B.E.C.C.) in his studio on January 9, 1969,
“The B.E.C.C. wanted to articulate the significant difference they saw between the museum’s representations of Harlem and their own rejected efforts to include their perspectives through self-representation” (see 73)
Opening day: 10,000 ppl…. Desire for black ppl to see themselves in institutions even when it’s fucked up.. Unfortunate truth
“The Met’s approach to Harlem’s cultural offerings, like thrill-seekers slumming during the Harlem Renaissance, allowed White people to keep a privileged distance as outsiders looking in.” (78)
NEW BLACK SHOW: “What made the “new black show” new was its break from the past struggles and misrepresentation with White mainstream museums. The conceptualization of what Black shows could be was based on the kind of mistakes made with Harlem on My Mind and the response to cultural misrepresentation by the B.E.C.C., the first organization of its kind. The coalition’s protest, criticism, and determination to infiltrate mainstream art museums contributed powerfully to the Black Arts Movement, making it effective from multiple positions. Instead of positing a specific Black aesthetic, the B.E.C.C. pushed for the acknowledgment of Black artists, their visibility within White mainstream museums, and the accessibility of artwork by Black artists within Black communities.” (82)
“Harlem artists maintained that the inclusion of artwork could have provided museum visitors a richer and more accurate experience of Harlem. Instead of stating that he intentionally excluded artwork from the exhibition, Schoener considered his own vision of Harlem as a work of art. He explained, “For me, people create art; therefore, it was legitimate to create an exhibition in an art museum which dealt with people.” Affirming his earlier statement that the inclusion of artwork would have detracted from the experience he wanted to create, Schoener takes his place as the author who speaks the exhibition’s title. It is Harlem on Schoener’s mind that was displayed in the galleries. Though cultural context is an important element in representing art in an art museum, in this equation the art is excluded and the exhibition of people becomes the work of art. The ethnographic turn toward African American culture in the art museum comes into focus through this exhibition. Similarly, in the exhibition press release Hoving called the neighborhood of Harlem a work of art by making an analogy between Harlem on My Mind and other exhibitions that the museum would mount: “There is no difference between this show and one of Rembrandt or Degas. Through their works, these artists reveal their individual worlds to us. The Harlem community becomes the artist in this case, the canvas the total environment in which Harlem’s history was formed.” As if they were unable to represent themselves, Harlem residents were interpreted through the Met and packaged as a cultural object. By considering all people of Harlem as artists, and the geographic space of Harlem as an artwork, the exhibition prohibited any sense of diversity within the Harlem community. In this way, the question of artistic production from Harlem was precluded, overdetermined by the Met as place” (70-71).
------
“Schoener perceived Harlem as a cultural collective. This definition conflicted with the possibility of an art world as defined by Eurocentric standards. To recognize art made by Black people would have interfered with Schoener’s collective view by acknowledging living people and individual artists with original visions and expressions. In short, the Harlem individual as artist would have disturbed the symbolic value of Blackness needed to reinscribe the Met’s Whiteness. This investment in Whiteness defined the museum’s identity as privileged, racially pure, and therefore entitled to define what art could and could not be along aesthetic and cultural lines. Eliminating art from the Harlem community confirmed a hierarchy of cultural production in the art world. By omitting the art of Black Americans the Met defined their production as non-art. Racial difference was constructed in the galleries as ethnography and the people of Harlem as a collective cultural specimen. The chosen representations of Harlem presented the community as cultural capital, an objectified place, but not a living culture in itself” (71).
CHAP 3:
“Two Centuries of Black American Art” Organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 1976, Guest curated by Professor David C. Driskell while he was chairman of the Department of Art at Fisk University
“Two Centuries served as a corrective to the brazen devaluing of Black American struggle and creativity. Driskell argued for the inclusion of artwork by Black Americans in American art museums and art history” (88)
“Although Two Centuries was an exhibition of American art, critics shifted from their regular approaches to it because their understanding of racial Blackness disqualified the show as an art exhibition. The reviews reveal several troubling reactions that demonstrate the critics’ discomfort with the presence of Black artists in the museum and express their critical limitations concerning definitions of Black ability. One critic complained about reviewing the show because he believed it contained too much social history and therefore did not belong in a museum.2”
black ppl make it and then white critics say it’s too social!!! lmao!! white curators make it social only!!!
Theme of sociology and ethnography… white ppl depict blackness as overly-ethnographic but then use this as an excuse as to why they can’t engage w/ black art “no skill sets for sociology” BS
black ppl make it and then white critics say it’s too social!!! lmao!! white curators make it social only!!!
John james Audobon
Painter and naturalist, v famous, french plantation owner white father and black creole mother
Great great great grandson tried 2 sue driskell bc was afraid his pregnant wife would leave him for the fear of child looking black. LOL
Fragility of white institutional integrity
“Driskell challenged the racial category of Black itself. The exhibition included the work of the renowned painter and naturalist John James Audubon. Although considered a White man, Audubon was actually biracial, born to a Black Haitian mother and French planter father in 1785. The inclusion of Audubon as a Black artist was considered by some critics and members of the public as a case of mistaken identity. Others understood Driskell’s claim of Audubon as a desperate attempt to boost Black American self-esteem. By showing that some White artists are Black, or at least as Black as they are White, Driskell forced an important interruption in the mainstream art world, highlighting the history of racial interdependence and oppression in our national body—a body that is in fact, interracial” (89).
Stained… ur white art is black honey.. Shows the fragility and exclusivity of whiteness see pg 88/89
Speaks to theme of acknowledgment… black art world keeps waiting for white appreciation…
Push bck… seems like a disappointing politic...
This picks up w/ conclusion….
CONCLUSION:
“Ideally, the Black identity of an artist would not inhibit museum curators and collections committees from exhibiting or collecting a work of art. Nor would the visual representation of a Black person in an artwork limit interpretation. Some viewers, however, will see a work with a Black figure in it and close down the semiotic process of interpretation. For these viewers, the Black figure does not mean person, the figure means Black, which, for them, is not the same as person (read White), but lesser than. Therein lies the problem of interpretation: that the representation of a Black figure is the representation of a person is not part of the interpretive process. Indeed, Blackness only signifies a difference so great that it belies humanity within the racist imaginary” (157).
White world scheme can’t make room for black art, because black outsideness is what constitutes whiteness, moral/ethical/subjective bullseye again
Black as unhuman, black self-representation is assertion of subjectivity
Frank B. Wilderson
“the structure by which human beings are recognized by other human beings and incorporated into a community of human beings, is anti-slave. And slaveness is something that has consumed Blackness and Africanness, making it impossible to divide slavery from Blackness. Even if I say to myself, “I am not a Slave”, we don’t make our own way in the world. So we know every day, before walking out of the house—and I think the American Black knows it quicker, like say at age 3, the Caribbean and African Black might know it a little bit later on in life, like Fanon says, ‘I was 18 when I learned it’—that we cannot enter into a structure of recognition as a being, an incorporation into a community of beings, without recognition and incorporation being completely destroyed. We know that we are the antithesis of recognition and incorporation.” (8-9)
“And when we understand that recognition and incorporation are generically anti-Black, then we don’t typically pick up the gun and move against the system, even though that’s impossible. And I think that our language is symptomatic of that when we say that ‘I don’t like police brutality’. Because, here we are saying to the world, to our so-called ‘people of color allies’ and to the white progressives, ‘we’re not going to bring all the Black problems down on you today. If you could just help us with this little thing, I won’t tell you about the whole deal that is going on with us.” (9)
Questions we keep coming to in this course but not exploring further.. What does this kind of stance mean for us? Much of our work together is on “exhibiting africa” but what about our very real context here? Wilderson really making the claim that slaveness and social death are inextricable states
I want us to do this messy work.. pls
EPILOGUE:
January 2008: Harlem on My Mind was currently on view.
exhibition being remounted at South Carolina State University, the historically Black university in Orangeburg.
being installed in two parts over a six-month period
Ellen Zisholtz, recently hired director and assistant prof of visual and performing arts
“Opening events included a book signing of the new catalogue with Allon Schoener” (161) omg
“I was surprised and disappointed to see that there was no wall text that informed viewers about the embattled discourse surrounding the exhibition. The director’s statement didn’t tell of the opportunity available in the reinstallation to learn about the culture wars, Black artists, activism, institutional racism, and the art world. Walking through the exhibition, one could see no sign that its history had ever happened. Void of context, the show was a celebration of mid-century pictures of riots, Black protest, 1960s icons, and closely cropped portraits of Harlem residents. It was Schoener’s and Hoving’s Harlem after all. The Black voices of the exhibition were silenced again” (162).
“What was at stake in remounting this exhibition in 2008? Why is it important to insist on a White vision and authorship of Harlem even at this historically Black university?” (162)
The messiness of black reclamation still…
Not enough to just put name on it maybe?
Made it about jewish/black kumbaya, relationship, not abt struggle for black art visibility
Didn’t include any black activist conflict again...
“The recent exhibition emphasizes the serious responsibility of art historians, curators, cultural activists, and critics to be vigilant researchers, and continue to strive for comprehensive literacy in the critical study of Black visual culture and art history” (163).