Exhibition | Panorama: London’s Lost View
Pierre Prévost, A Panoramic View of London from the Tower of St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster, detail, ca. 1815
(Museum of London)
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From Time Out London:
Panorama: London’s Lost View
Museum of London, Smithfield, 15 March — 30 September 2019
In 1815, French artist Pierre Prévost climbed the tower of St Margaret’s Church in Westminster and started sketching. His specialty was panoramas—epically long landscape paintings, displayed in a rotunda to show a 360-degree view—and this time he was painting London. Prevost’s 100-foot panorama of the capital was exhibited in Paris, and then lost. But the 20-foot painting he made as a dry run survived. It was bought last year by the Museum of London for £250,000 and is on public display from March to September 2019. Prévost’s painting will be mounted flat on the floor, letting visitors walk its length to check out the skyline of Regency London. You’ll see the old Palace of Westminster (destroyed in a fire 19 years later), the original Westminster Bridge, St Paul’s, horse-drawn carriages in Parliament Square, and even cows grazing in St James’s Park.
The catalogue entry from the Sotheby’s Sale (4 July 2018) is available here»
The press release for the acquisition (11 July 2018) is available here»
The press release for the exhibition is available here»
Exhibition | Slavery, Culture, and Collecting
From the Museum of London:
Slavery, Culture, and Collecting
Museum of London Docklands, 15 September 2018 — 15 September 2019
The latest display in the London, Sugar and Slavery gallery at the Museum of London Docklands highlights the connection to slavery of some of Britain’s oldest cultural organisations. Slavery, Culture, and Collecting follows slave owner and art collector George Hibbert (1757–1837), a prominent member of a large subsection of British society which derived its wealth directly from the slave economy. These figures were often active philanthropists, and are commemorated in memorials for their associations with charitable causes, while their connections to slavery are invisible even today. Hibbert was instrumental in building the West India Docks which now house the Museum of London Docklands. This connection positions the museum as an important place to think about the relationship between slavery and cultural heritage.
The wealth generated by slavery was used to create cultural institutions such as museums, universities, art galleries and charities. Advocates of slavery would then use culture in their arguments for the continuing use of enslaved labour, on the grounds that Africans needed the ‘civilising influence’ of Europe. The display contains a short film, as well as objects from the collection to encourage further debate around this challenging issue.
Slavery, Culture, and Collecting is delivered with the support of the Antislavery Usable Past project at the University of Nottingham.
More information about the display is available here»
Lecture | Charles Peterson on Africana Identity in Curatorial Spaces
From the Bard Graduate Center:
Charles F. Peterson, The Colored Museum: Notes on Africana Identity, Power, and Culture in Curatorial Spaces
Bard Graduate Center, New York, 9 April 2019
Charles F. Peterson will present at the Museum Conversations Seminar on Tuesday, April 9, at 6 pm. His talk is entitled “The Colored Museum: Notes on Africana Identity, Power, and Culture in Curatorial Spaces.” Peterson will examine the use of the museum space in the 2018 film Black Panther (Dir. Ryan Coogler), the 2018 documentary on author Toni Morrison’s 2006 curation in The Louvre, The Foreigner’s Home (Dirs. Rian Brown, Jonathan Demme, and Geoff Pingree), and that same year’s music video release by Beyoncé and Jay-Z, “Apeshit.” These performances will be read as (African) Diasporic and intertextual interventions in hegemonic curatorial spaces, revealing the seen and unseen, hidden and obvious messages of identity, power, and culture therein.
Charles F. Peterson, a native of Gary, Indiana, earned a BA in Philosophy from Morehouse College (1992). He earned his MA and PhD in Philosophy, Interpretation and Culture from Binghamton University (1995, 2000). He has taught at Florida International University, Temple University, and The College of Wooster, and is presently Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Oberlin College. He is a co-editor of De-Colonizing the Academy: African Diaspora Studies (African World Press, 2003), and author of DuBois, Fanon, Cabral: The Margins of Elite Anti-Colonial Leadership (Lexington Books, 2007). He has published in the fields of Africana Philosophy, Africana Political Theory, and Aesthetics. He teaches courses in Africana Philosophy, Africana American Politics, Black Nationalism, and Marxism.
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