Exhibition | New Nation, Many Hands
Unidentified maker, Powder Horn, 1802, Lisbon, Connecticut, cow horn, pine, and iron (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, James L. Goodwin Art Purchase Fund, 2023.22.1).
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Now on view at the Wadsworth Atheneum:
New Nation, Many Hands
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut, June 29–ongoing
Curated by Philippe Halbert
Political independence from Great Britain in 1783 transformed American society, and citizens celebrated the promise of their young republic through art. Acknowledging the complexities and contradictions of the era, New Nation, Many Hands presents a cross-section of objects from the permanent collection that shaped emerging American identities and the ongoing fight for freedom. Household goods, from ceramics and furniture to metalwork and textiles, combined practicality with patriotism in the early years of the United States. Some of the objects reflect changing fashions, distinct regional styles, and expanded trade networks. Others express pride in the new nation and hope for its future. All reveal stories of the people who created, used, cherished, and benefited from them during a formative moment in American history.
Exhibition | Porcelain from Versailles: Vases for a King & Queen
Five Lidded Vases, 1781, Sèvres porcelain manufactory; soft-paste porcelain. A set of vases des âges (‘vases of the ages’), this garniture of five vases, originally owned by King Louis XVI, includes three sizes referencing different stages of life: a large central vase with handles in the shape of bearded male heads, a pair of smaller vases with heads of young women, and a pair of still smaller vases with the heads of boys. The scenes painted on the fronts of the vases show episodes from The Adventures of Telemachus, one of the king’s favorite books. The Getty Museum owns three of the original five vases, while the two smallest now belong to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. More information is available here»
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Now on view at The Getty:
Porcelain from Versailles: Vases for a King & Queen
Getty Center, Los Angeles, 14 February 2023 — 3 March 2024
Lidded Vase, 1775–76, Sèvres porcelain manufactory; hard-paste porcelain with gilt-bronze mounts (National Museum of the Palaces of Versailles and Trianon). This is the center vase from a garniture of three vessels owned by Queen Marie-Antoinette.
This exhibition brings together two of the most extraordinary surviving sets of vases owned by King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette of France during the late 1700s. The vases are among the highest achievements of the Sèvres porcelain manufactory made before the French Revolution, becoming personal treasures of the royal family at the time. They were initially kept at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, the royal family’s primary residence, and are a testament to the exemplary skills of the artists who took part in their creation. This exhibition reunites all eight vases, which were separated during the Revolution, offering the rare opportunity to appreciate the craftsmanship and design of the ensembles.
The loan of the queen’s vases is part of an artistic exchange between the J. Paul Getty Museum and Versailles, where an important desk made for Louis XVI from the Museum’s collection is currently on long-term loan. This exhibition is presented in English and Spanish. Esta exhibición se presenta en inglés y en español.
Exhibition | The Petit Trianon during the Empire
Installation view of The Petit Trianon during the Empire, 2023
(Photo by Sebastien Giles)
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On view this summer at the Château de Versailles:
The Petit Trianon during the Empire
Petit Trianon, Château de Versailles, 13 May — 17 September 2023
Presented by the Palace of Versailles, The Petit Trianon during the Empire tells the story of the restoration undertaken to turn Trianon into a country residence for Napoleon and Marie-Louise. The exhibition explains the work ordered by the emperor to restore the houses in the Hamlet, the farm, and the orangery—work that had become essential after twenty years of neglect.
During the Empire, the Petit Trianon was chosen as a country residence by Napoleon Bonaparte and his wife, Marie-Louise of Habsburg. Two decades of neglect, however, had left the houses in the Hamlet, the farm, and the orangery in urgent need of restoration. The work was carried out between 1805 and 1811, overseen by the architect Guillaume Trepsat and his assistant, Alexandre Dufour.
Installation view of The Petit Trianon during the Empire, 2023 (Photo by Sebastien Giles).
The working dairy, the barn, and the farmer’s cottage were all demolished. The farm was converted into a guard house, while the rest of the structures were restored and the thatched rooves repaired. The external staircases were removed, apart from the spiral staircase on the Queen’s House, which was replaced by a straight, covered staircase. The houses in the Hamlet reverted to the same use as under the Ancien Régime, with all the furniture and wall hangings replaced by classical, Empire-style pieces made by the cabinet-makers Jacob-Desmalter and Marcion, and the bronze-worker Galle.
Napoleon and Marie-Louise hosted several parties at the theatre and in the French Garden between 2 and 11 August 1810, and again, the following year, on 25 August, in the English Garden and the restored Hamlet, to celebrate the birth of their son. These parties harked back to the wonderful celebrations organised by Marie-Antoinette. The restoration work meant the heritage of the Petit Trianon was both protected and revived.
The Petit Trianon with the French Pavilion in the foreground at the left (Photo: Thomas Garnier).
During the French Revolution, from 1792, the Petit Trianon and the Queen’s Hamlet were emptied of their inhabitants and all their contents. The furniture, artworks, and everyday household items, such as mattresses, sheets, and cookware, as well as the fish in the lakes, were all auctioned off. The palace was rented to a restaurateur, while the garden became a public recreation area. The French Pavilion was turned into a café, the farm was rented to and worked by a farmer, and another restaurateur moved into the Queen’s House in the Hamlet.
By the beginning of the 19th century, the Hamlet was overgrown and decrepit. The roofs of several of the houses had collapsed and the external staircases were rotten. Two of the agricultural buildings—the barn and the working dairy—lay in ruins and the farm had been partially destroyed by fire. Sketches made by the English traveller and draughtsman John Claude Nattes in 1802 illustrate this state of neglect.
Exhibition | 1923 —The Domaine de Sceaux: Origins of a Renaissance
From Silvana Editoriale:
1923 — The Domaine de Sceaux: Origins of a Renaissance
Musée du Domaine départemental de Sceaux, 10 March — 9 July 2023
The Domaine de Sceaux was acquired in 1923 by the Hauts-de-Seine department, leading to the estate’s restoration and its opening to the public. This exhibition (installed in the former stables) brings together archival documents, posters, photographs, drawings, and paintings to tell the story of the place during this last eventful century. The exhibition traces the history of the estate from its first major transformation to the 1950s.
L’histoire du Domaine de Sceaux entre 1850 et 1950 reste peu connue du grand public. Après la Révolution, la propriété traversa plusieurs phases de déclin et de renouveau. Les aménagements d’aujourd’hui s’inspirent donc à la fois du parc ancien et des ouvrages classés du XVIIe s., et ils intègrent aussi le décor du XIXe s., introduit par les ducs de Trévise. Si vous êtes familier des lieux ou en quête d’histoire sur le Grand Paris, vous ressentirez d’autant plus cette métamorphose : celle d’un somptueux château à la campagne devenu un site muséal préservé et ouvert à tous.
Site historique et patrimonial majeur de la région parisienne, le Domaine départemental de Sceaux fut créé en 1670 par Jean-Baptiste Colbert, qui y appela les plus grands artistes de son temps, d’André Le Nôtre à Charles Le Brun, de Jules Hardouin-Mansart à Antoine Coysevox. Passé entre les mains du marquis de Seignelay, fils du ministre de Louis XIV, puis entre celles du duc et de la duchesse du Maine, du duc de Penthièvre et enfin du duc et de la duchesse de Trévise, cet ensemble remarquable, bientôt menacé par l’extension galopante de la banlieue, était appelé à une disparition quasi certaine lorsqu’en 1923, à la suggestion du maire de Sceaux, il fut acquis in extremis par le département de la Seine à la princesse de Cystria, née Trévise, dernière propriétaire. 2023 marque ainsi le centenaire du passage de ce domaine exceptionnel du statut de propriété privée à celui de bien public, devenu en 1970 l’un des fleurons du département des Hauts-de-Seine qui en assure depuis l’entretien et la valorisation. L’exposition revient sur le contexte, sur les raisons et sur les conditions de cette acquisition qui permit l’heureuse renaissance du domaine de Sceaux.
David Baurain and Céline Barbin, eds., 1923 — Le Domaine de Sceaux: Aux origines d’une renaissance (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2023), 208 pages, ISBN: 978-8836654239, €30.
Exhibition | Black Founders: The Forten Family of Philadelphia
Now on view at the Museum of The American Revolution:
Black Founders: The Forten Family of Philadelphia
Museum of The American Revolution, Philadelphia, 11 February — 26 November 2023
When James Forten (1766–1842) walked the streets of Philadelphia as a young man in the 1770s, he was surrounded by the sights and sounds of transformation. He heard the words of the Declaration of Independence read aloud for the first time in 1776 before setting sail to fight for independence in 1781. Born a free person of African descent, Forten built upon his coming-of-age in a revolutionary city and his wartime experience to forge himself into a changemaker in Philadelphia and the young United States, becoming a successful businessman, philanthropist, and stalwart abolitionist.
In our new special exhibition Black Founders: The Forten Family of Philadelphia, the Museum introduces visitors to Forten and his descendants as they navigated the American Revolution and cross-racial relationships in Philadelphia to become leaders in the abolition movement in the lead-up to the Civil War and the women’s suffrage movement. Using objects, documents, and immersive environments, Black Founders: The Forten Family of Philadelphia explores the Forten family’s roles in the Revolutionary War, business in Philadelphia, and abolition and voting rights from 1776 to 1876.
The exhibition features more than 100 historical artifacts, works of art, and documents from 38 different lenders, including both institutions and private collectors, as well as the Museum’s own collection. Rare historical objects on loan from descendants of the Forten family are on view for the very first time in a public exhibit.
The unique journey and exceptional story of this family of Revolutionaries explores the legacy of the American Revolution, the history of the American experiment of liberty, equality, and self-government, and the ongoing work to improve the nation’s dedication to the principle that “all men are created equal.”
Black Founders: The Forten Family of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Museum of the American Revolution, 2023), ISBN: 978-1933153445, $38.
Exhibition | Dutch and Flemish Paintings from Woburn Abbey
Aelbert Cuyp, A Landscape near Calcar with the Artist Sketching, ca. 1652
(Woburn Abbey Collection)
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The collection of Netherlandish works at Woburn Abbey was assembled primarily in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. From the press release for the exhibition:
Mastering the Market: Dutch and Flemish Paintings from Woburn Abbey
The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, 17 June — 24 September 2023
Curated by University of Birmingham MA students alongside experts from the Barber and Woburn Abbey
This summer, the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, presents a dazzling selection of Dutch and Flemish 17th-century masterpieces from Woburn Abbey, the ancestral home of the Dukes of Bedford. Featuring a dozen Old Master paintings, the exhibition Mastering the Market: Dutch and Flemish Paintings from Woburn Abbey is one of the largest and most significant group of such works from this important ducal collection to be exhibited in a public gallery since the 1950s.
Focused on the themes of patronage and collecting, Mastering the Market is curated by four Art History and Curating MA students from the University of Birmingham, with guidance and supervision from experts at both the Barber Institute and Woburn Abbey. Other aspects of the innovative and dynamic 17th-century Dutch art market will also be explored—from the unique character of artistic culture in the newly independent Dutch Republic, through art dealership and attribution, to the demand for and development of new genres. The burgeoning wealth and rise of the merchant classes in the Netherlands in the 17th century sparked huge demand for portrait commissions, also examined here through fresh interpretations of the works from Woburn Abbey.
Assembled principally by the 4th, 5th, and 6th Dukes of Bedford between the 1730s and 1830s, the Woburn Abbey collection of Dutch and Flemish paintings is one of the finest in private hands in the UK. Works include superb portraits and head studies by Rembrandt Van Rijn, Frans Hals, and Anthony Van Dyck, exquisite landscapes and seascapes by Aelbert Cuyp and Jan van de Cappelle, and lively subject pictures by Jan Steen and David Teniers. The exceptional opportunity to see these paintings together in a public gallery has arisen due to the extensive and ongoing refurbishment of the Abbey.
Key loans include Rembrandt’s Portrait of a Bearded Old Man, 1643, Hals’s Portrait of a Man, c. 1635–38, Van Dyck’s Portrait of a Married Couple, identified as Daniel Mytens and his Wife, c. 1632–34, Cuyp’s A Landscape near Calcar with the Artist Sketching, c. 1652, Steen’s Twelfth Night or ‘Le Roi Boit’, 1670–71, and Van de Cappelle’s A Dutch Harbour with Numerous Fishing Boats, c. 1652–54.
Complementing the Woburn masterpieces is a small selection of the outstanding Dutch and Flemish paintings in the Barber’s own permanent collection, notably Jan Steen’s The Wrath of Ahasuerus, c. 1668–70, Van Dyck’s Ecce Homo, c.1625–26, and Portrait of François Langlois, early 1630s (jointly owned with the National Gallery, London), plus Hals’s Portrait of a Man Holding a Skull, c. 1611–12.
Robert Wenley, Barber Institute Deputy Director, Research and Collections, says: “The exhibition will present the public with the rare opportunity to view these works up close in a gallery setting and facilitate an appreciation of the ways in which patronage and collecting reflected and contributed to a dynamic period of European history. Our talented young team of student curators will also explore the tastes and achievements of the successive Dukes of Bedford as collectors of Dutch and Flemish paintings in the decades following their first purchases on the art market of works from these schools in the early 18th century.”
Professor Jennifer Powell, Director of the Barber Institute, says: “We are delighted to present works from this important collection in Birmingham. The Barber is proud to support this unique opportunity for students of the University of Birmingham to co-curate an exhibition of such exceptional quality in its main gallery programme.”
Matthew Hirst, Curator of the Woburn Abbey Collection, says: “We are delighted to have the opportunity to present these masterpieces from Woburn Abbey alongside other works by the same masters from the Barber’s own choice collection. This opportunity to compare these works and consider the phenomenon of the Dutch and Flemish market is only possible due to the input of the students at this unique time whilst Woburn Abbey is closed to undergo a generational refurbishment project.”
Woburn Abbey houses an outstanding collection of works of art brought together by the family over nearly 500 years. During the closure, there is an active loans programme to share some of these treasures so they can be enjoyed in different contexts. Woburn has partnered with a number of prestigious venues since 2020, including Royal Museums Greenwich, the Holburne Museum, Worcester City Art Gallery, and Gainsborough’s House. Many of the important works of art from the collection have been exhibited in new ways due to these partnerships. Full restoration and renewal of the roof at Woburn Abbey has led to a prolonged closure period. This has enabled these partnerships to continue and expand offering more opportunities to share Woburn’s impressive art collection with a wider audience.
Exhibition | Sensing Naples
Pierre-Jacques Volaire, An Eruption of Vesuvius by Moonlight, 1774, oil on canvas, 130 × 260 cm (Compton Verney; photo by John Hammond). As noted at ArtUK, this is the largest of Volaire’s many views of the volcano.
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With scents in the gallery, readers may recall The Essence of a Painting: An Olfactory Exhibition on view last summer at the Prado. From Madrid to Compton Verney:
Sensing Naples
Compton Verney, Warwickshire, 1 April — 31 December 2023
Come and be transported to Naples—where the scent of orange blossom drifts on the air and the spectacle of Vesuvius smoulders in the distance. Bringing to life the smells, sounds, sights, tastes, and sensations of visiting this vibrant Italian city, Sensing Naples will see the exquisite historic works in our Naples Collection rehung and reimagined. Interactive elements and new wall texts will foreground exciting new research into objects in the collection undertaken in collaboration with the University of Oxford and the Centre for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities, Naples.
Installation view of Sensing Naples at Compton Verney, 2023.
The display features new interactive elements, including samples of music from the period and six bespoke fragrances, which are paired with specific paintings. Developed in collaboration with a specialist fragrance house, the scents have been designed to highlight elements within the paintings and to evoke the experience of visiting the city of Naples in the period 1600–1800. Some are pleasant, others not so: they include the smells of the Bay of Naples, perfumed gloves, a fish market, tobacco smoke, a floral still life, and an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. You will also find a new, interactive play table modelled on an erupting Vesuvius, a permanent fixture in the galleries aimed at engaging our youngest visitors.
Additional works on display include examples of souvenirs made from the lava of Vesuvius and brought back to Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as two new commissions produced by artists working today.
Aaron McPeake, Commissioned work for the exhibition, three bronze bells suspended from the ceiling above a lava rock. More information is available here.
The new artworks respond to the theme of the senses and also to works in the historic collection, and have been commissioned in partnership with disability arts platform Unlimited. DYSPLA, a neuro-divergent led award-winning arts studio, have created a work that speaks to Lorenzo Vaccaro’s marble busts of The Four Continents, through four new performative digital sculptures. Accessed via a QR code, these holographic sculptures invite you to engage with your own physicality through touch. The senses of sight, hearing, and touch are further addressed in the second new artwork, which takes the form of three bronze bells suspended above a piece of Vesuvius lava rock. The bells, which can be gently rung, were created for Compton Verney by Aaron McPeake, an artist whose practice explores his own experience of sight loss later in life.
Exhibition | Giacomo Ceruti: A Compassionate Eye
From The Getty:
Giacomo Ceruti: A Compassionate Eye
Brescia Musei Foundation, 14 February — 11 June 2023
The Getty Center, Los Angeles, 18 July — 29 October 2023
In a group of remarkably haunting paintings by the Italian 18th-century artist Giacomo Ceruti, beggars, vagrants, and impoverished workers are portrayed in mesmerizing realism, emanating a sense of dignity and emotional depth. Why were these subjects painted? Where and how were these works displayed, and for whom? At a time when severe inequalities continue to mark even the wealthiest societies, Ceruti’s work testifies to the enduring power of art to reflect our shared humanity.
Organized with Fondazione Brescia Musei.
From The Getty Shop:
Davide Gasparotto, ed., with contributions by Roberta D’Adda, Francesco Frangi, Alessandro Morandotti, and Lorenzo Coccoli, Giacomo Ceruti: A Compassionate Eye (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2023), 128 pages, ISBN: 978-1606068366, $28.
The northern Italian artist Giacomo Ceruti (1698–1767) was born in Milan and active in Brescia and Bergamo. For his distinctive, large-scale paintings of low-income tradespeople and individuals experiencing homelessness, whom he portrayed with dignity and sympathy, Ceruti came to be known as Il Pitocchetto (the little beggar). Accompanying the first US exhibition to focus solely on Ceruti, this publication explores relationships between art, patronage, and economic inequality in early modern Europe, considering why these paintings were commissioned and by whom, where such works were exhibited, and what they signified to contemporary audiences. Essays and a generous plate section contextualize and closely examine Ceruti’s pictures of laborers and the unhoused, whom he presented as protagonists with distinct stories rather than as generic types. Topics include depictions of marginalized subjects in the history of early modern European art, the career of the artist and his significance in the history of European painting, and period discourses around poverty and social support. A detailed exhibition checklist, along with provenance, exhibition history, and a bibliography, provides information critical for the further understanding of Ceruti’s oeuvre.
Davide Gasparotto is senior curator of paintings and chair of curatorial affairs at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
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Note (added 6 August 2023) — The posting was updated to include the Brescia venue, where the exhibition was entitled Miseria & Nobiltà: Giacomo Ceruti nell’Europa del Settecento.
Exhibition | Object Lessons in American Art
Renee Cox, The Signing, 2018, inkjet print, 122 × 213 cm
(Princeton University Art Museum)
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From Princeton University Art Museum:
Object Lessons in American Art: Selections from the Princeton University Art Museum
Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, 4 February — 14 May 14 2023
Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut, 3 June — 10 September 2023
Speed Art Museum, Louisville, 29 September 2023 — 7 January 2024
Curated by Karl Kusserow
Henry Inman, O-Chee-Na-Shink-Ka a, 1832–33, oil on canvas, 78 × 645 cm (Promised gift from a Private Collection, member of Class of 1982).
Object Lessons in American Art features four centuries of works from the Princeton University Art Museum that collectively explore American history, culture, and society. Inspired by the concept of the object lesson—the study of a material thing to communicate a larger idea—the exhibition brings groups of objects together to ask fundamental questions about artistic significance, materials, and how meaning changes across time and contexts. With a focus on race, gender, and the environment, these pairings demonstrate the value of juxtaposing diverse objects to generate new understanding. Object Lessons presents Euro-American, Native American, and African American art from contemporary perspectives, illustrating how fresh investigations can inform and enrich its meaning, affording new insights into the American past and present. Curated by Karl Kusserow, John Wilmerding Curator of American Art.
Karl Kusserow, ed., with contributions by: Horace Ballard , Kirsten Pai Buick , Ellery Foutch , Karl Kusserow , Jeffrey Richmond-Moll, and Rebecca Zorach, Object Lessons in American Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023), 200 pages, ISBN: 978-0691978857, £35 / $40.
Object Lessons in American Art explores a diverse gathering of Euro-American, Native American, and African American art from a range of contemporary perspectives, illustrating how innovative analysis of historical art can inform, enhance, and afford new relevance to artifacts of the American past. The book is grounded in the understanding that the meanings of objects change over time, in different contexts, and as a consequence of the ways in which they are considered. Inspired by the concept of the object lesson, the study of a material thing or group of things in juxtaposition to convey embodied and underlying ideas, Object Lessons in American Art examines a broad range of art from Princeton University’s venerable collections as well as contemporary works that imaginatively appropriate and reframe their subjects and style, situating them within current social, cultural, and artistic debates on race, gender, the environment, and more.
C O N T E N T S
Foreword
Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction — Lenticular: Subject and Object in American Art — Karl Kusserow
• ‘Race’ as Object Lesson: Objects of Rebellion — Kirsten Pai Buick
• Looking Back and Looking Forward: A Feminist Lens on a Collection of American Art — Ellery E. Foutch
• Oblique Assemblies: Toward Queer Ecologies in American Art — Horace D. Ballard
• Intimations of Ecology: Varieties of Environmental Experience in American Art — Karl Kusserow
• Material Echoes, Traumatic Histories, and Liquid Transformations: The Romance of the Sea in American Art — Rebecca Zorach
• Learning from Object Lessons: Toward a Curatorial Pedagogy of Unfixing and Defamiliarizing the Past — Jeffrey Richmond-Moll
Contributors
Index
Photography Credits
Exhibition | Peter Brathwaite: Rediscovering Black Portraiture
Left: Peter Brathwaite’s restaged version of The Virgin of Guadalupe. Right: Unknown painter, The Virgin of Guadalupe, oil painting, 1745 (London: Wellcome Collection), cropped from original and colour saturated.
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From the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery:
Peter Brathwaite: Rediscovering Black Portraiture
King’s College London, Strand Campus, October 2021 — February 2022
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, 14 April — 3 September 2023
During the first lockdown in 2020, with all his performances cancelled, baritone, artist, broadcaster, and writer Peter Brathwaite began researching and reimagining more than 100 artworks. These artworks featured portraits of Black sitters, as part of the online #GettyMuseumChallenge to use household objects to restage famous paintings. He called the photographic series Rediscovering Black Portraiture. Alongside this project he also intensified his research into his dual heritage Barbadian roots, uncovering a wealth of detail about his enslaved and enslaver ancestors and their history, including an uprising of enslaved people in 1816 and songs of resistance they sang. Three years on, with a London exhibition behind him and a book out with Getty Publications, Peter Brathwaite brings his whole practice to the history of Georgian House Museum and the collections of Bristol Museum & Art Gallery. New interventions and sound installations reveal the Black presence hidden at the heart of our spaces and objects. The exhibition opened to coincide with the anniversary of the Barbados insurrection, 14 April 1816.
Left: Marie-Victoire Lemoine, Portrait of a Youth in Embroidered Vest, 1785, oil on canvas, 68 × 50 cm (Jacksonville, Florida: Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens). Right: Peter Brathwaite’s restaged version of a Youth in Embroidered Vest.
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From The Getty:
Peter Brathwaite, with contributions by Cheryl Finley, Temi Odumosu, and Mark Sealy, Rediscovering Black Portraiture (Los Angeles, Getty Publications, 2023), 168 pages, ISBN: 978-1606068168, $40.
Join Peter Brathwaite on an extraordinary journey through representations of Black subjects in Western art, from medieval Europe through the present day. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Peter Brathwaite has thoughtfully researched and reimagined more than one hundred artworks featuring portraits of Black sitters—all posted to social media with the caption “Rediscovering #blackportraiture through #gettymuseumchallenge.”
Rediscovering Black Portraiture collects more than fifty of Brathwaite’s most intriguing re-creations. Introduced by the author and framed by contributions from experts in art history and visual culture, this fascinating book offers a nuanced look at the complexities and challenges of building identity within the African diaspora and how such forces have informed Black portraits over time. Artworks featured include The Adoration of the Magi by Georges Trubert, Portrait of an Unknown Man by Jan Mostaert, Rice n Peas by Sonia Boyce, Barack Obama by Kehinde Wiley, and many more. This volume also invites readers behind the scenes, offering a glimpse of the elegant artifice of Brathwaite’s props, setup, and process. An urgent and compelling exploration of embodiment, representation, and agency, Rediscovering Black Portraiture serves to remind us that Black subjects have been portrayed in art for nearly a millennium and that their stories demand to be told.
Peter Brathwaite is an acclaimed baritone who performs in operas and concerts throughout Europe. He is a presenter on BBC Radio 3 and has been shortlisted for a Royal Philharmonic Society Award. Cheryl Finley is inaugural distinguished visiting director of the Atlanta University Center Art History and Curatorial Studies Collective and the author of Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon (2018). Temi Odumosu is an art historian, curator, and assistant professor at University of Washington Information School and the author of Africans in English Caricature 1769–1819: Black Jokes, White Humour (2017). Mark Sealy is director of Autograph and professor of photography, race, and human rights at University of the Arts London. His numerous publications include Different (2001), coauthored with Stuart Hall; Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time (2019); and Photography: Race, Rights, and Representation (2022).
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