Enfilade

Left: unidentified painter, John Potter and Family, Matunuck, Rhode Island, ca. 1740, oil on wood, 31 × 64 inches (Newport Historical Society). Right: Thomas W. Commeraw, Two-Gallon Jar, New York City, ca. 1793–1819, salt-glazed stoneware with cobalt decoration, 9 inches high (Private Collection).

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From the American Folk Art Museum in New York:

‘The Picture Is Still Out There’: Reframing Black Presence in the Collections of Early American Art and Material Culture
Elizabeth and Irwin Warren Folk Art Symposium
Online, 23 February 2024 and 8 March 2024

“ … Even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw, is still out there,” says one of Toni Morrison’s characters in her masterpiece Beloved. Reflecting on this process of Black ‘re-memory’, the symposium ‘The Picture Is Still Out There’: Reframing Black Presence in the Collections of Early American Art and Material Culture presents curatorial practices and scholarship that affirm African American presence in early American art and material culture. This two-day online symposium is organized in connection with the exhibition Unnamed Figures: Black Presence and Absence in the Early American North, on view at the American Folk Art Museum, from 15 November 2023 until 24 March 2024. Drawing inspiration from the research behind this exhibition, the symposium serves as a platform for a broader consideration of museum practices in relation to folk art, early American history, and issues of anti-Black racism.

Art scholars, museum curators, and public historians—including exhibition co-curators Emelie Gevalt, RL Watson and Sadé Ayorinde as well as Janine Boldt, Alexandra Chan, Anne Strachan Cross, Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Michael Hartman, Elizabeth S. Humphrey, Tiffany Momon, Marc Howard Ross, Jennifer Van Horn and Jill Vaum Rothschild—are invited to gather, share, and discuss their efforts in celebrating and reframing the early contributions of African American individuals to the field of art. Talks will consider early material culture from global and historically marginalized perspectives, acknowledging gaps in history, knowledge, and care. This virtual symposium will also present new methods of preserving, acquiring, and exhibiting that address colonialist and racist ideologies while rethinking accountability, transparency, and language choices in interpretation. This will be a unique opportunity to approach the colonial past and its continuities in museums and public institutions.

Learn more about our speakers by clicking here. A detailed schedule with speaker abstracts will be released in January. For questions, please email publicprograms@folkartmuseum.org.

f r i d a y ,  2 3  f e b r u a r y

11.00  Introductory Conversation
• Jennifer Van Horn, Associate Professor of Art History and History, University of Delaware
• Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Class of 1940 Bicentennial Term, Associate Professor of History of Art, University of Pennsylvania

1.30  Session 1
Moderator: Anne Strachan Cross, Assistant Teaching Professor of American Art, Pennsylvania State University
• Elizabeth S. Humphrey, former Curatorial Assistant and Manager of Student Programs, Bowdoin College Museum of Art; PhD Candidate at the University of Delaware
• Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College
• Janine Yorimoto Boldt, Associate Curator of American Art at The Chazen Museum of Art

Register here»

f r i d a y ,  8  m a r c h

11.00  Session 2
Moderator: Jill Vaum Rothschild, Luce Foundation Curatorial Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Alexandra Chan, archaeologist, member of the academic advisory board of the Royall House and Slave Quarters, a National Historic Landmark and museum in Medford, Massachusetts, and author of Slavery in the Age of Reason: Archaeology at a New England Farm (2015)
• Marc Howard Ross, William Rand Kenan, Jr., Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Bryn Mawr College, and author of Slavery in the North: Forgetting History and Recovering Memory (2018), which begins with a study of the President’s House/Slavery Memorial at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia
• Tiffany Momon, Assistant Professor of History and Mellon Fellow at Sewanee, University of the South, founder and co-Director of Black Craftsmanship Digital Archive

1.30  Closing Conversation
• Emelie Gevalt, Curatorial Chair for Collections and Curator of Folk Art, AFAM
• RL Watson, Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies, Lake Forest College
• Sadé Ayorinde, Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Register here»