Amanda Dotseth Named Director of SMU’s Meadows Museum
From the press release (10 February 2023) . . .
Amanda W. Dolseth (Photo by Tamytha Cameron).
SMU has named Amanda W. Dotseth Linda P. and William A. Custard Director of the Meadows Museum. Dotseth, who will be the first female director of the Meadows Museum, served as the director ad interim and curator of the Museum since the passing of its previous director, Mark A. Roglán, in 2021. Dotseth assumes the role on 1 March 2023.
“As a scholar, collaborator, and arts leader, Amanda Dotseth brings a unique understanding of the important mission and role of the Meadows Museum,” said SMU President R. Gerald Turner. “In addition, her many years as curator, then interim director has prepared her to position the Museum for the future while understanding its legacy.”
In her combined 19 years of experience with the Museum, Dotseth published extensively on Spanish art, contributed to and curated more than 30 exhibitions, and oversaw the acquisition of major additions to the Meadows collection. Notably, Dotseth was an instrumental participant in the early development of the historic partnership between the Meadows Museum and Madrid’s Museo Nacional del Prado in 2009, in which the Prado loaned three major paintings and exchanged curatorial fellows between the institutions. She played an integral role in the pioneering collaboration with Fundación ARCO in 2019 as well. By initiating and cultivating partnerships with international art institutions from the Rijksmuseum and National Gallery of Ireland to the Museo del Traje in Madrid and the Museo del Arte Abstracto Español (Fundación Juan March), Dotseth has expanded the reach and profile of the Meadows Museum and of SMU. Dotseth’s existing partnerships with academic and art institutions around the world, including the Spanish National Research Council, will be a tremendous asset for the Museum as she continues its mission to advance the knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the arts and culture of Spain in the US.
In addition to her nearly two decades with the Museum, Dotseth is also an alumna of SMU Meadows School of the Arts, receiving her master’s degree in art history from the University in 2006. She later completed her Ph.D. at the Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London) in medieval Spanish art in 2015.
“After an extensive international search, I am thrilled that the best person to serve as the next director of the Meadows Museum is an extremely accomplished member of the SMU Meadows community,” said Samuel S. Holland, Algur H. Meadows Dean for SMU Meadows School of the Arts. “I look forward to seeing the new directions in which Dr. Dotseth will take the Museum, through her collaborative and innovative leadership, and strong curatorial voice.”
“The Meadows Museum has been a part of my professional DNA for two decades; to now be at the helm of the institution as the Linda P. and William A. Custard Director during the next phase of the museum’s life is a great honor,” said Dotseth. “I look forward to building upon and expanding the Museum’s existing strengths as we reach out to the next generation of scholars, students, and museum-goers.”
The Meadows Museum is the leading U.S. institution focused on the study and presentation of the art of Spain. In 1962, Dallas businessman and philanthropist Algur H. Meadows donated his private collection of Spanish paintings, as well as funds to start a museum, to Southern Methodist University. The museum opened to the public in 1965, marking the first step in fulfilling Meadows’s vision to create “a small Prado for Texas.” Today, the Meadows is home to one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish art outside of Spain. The collection spans from the 10th to the 21st centuries and includes medieval objects, Renaissance and Baroque sculptures, and major paintings by Golden Age and modern masters.
Call for Articles | Spanish Royalty in Naples, 1598–1713
From ArtHist.net:
Spanish Royalty in Naples: Between Art and Architecture, 1598–1713
Edited by Laura García Sánchez
Proposals due by 28 February 2023; final papers due by 31 August 2023
The series Temi e frontiere della conoscenza e del progetto (Themes and Frontiers of Knowledge and Design), published by ‘La scuola di Pitagora’ and edited by prof. Ornella Zerlenga of the University of Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’ in Italy, is launching a call for papers for a forthcoming open access volume entitled Reali spagnoli a Napoli: fra arte e architettura (1598–1713), edited by Prof. Laura García Sánchez, lecturer at the Department of Art History of the University of Barcelona. The series, multidisciplinary in nature, includes volumes that propose a critical reflection on architecture, the city, the environment, and industrial design, investigating disciplinary sources and cultural trends with a focus on the themes of form, structure, innovation, representation, and communication.
The broad scope of the proposed theme allows for a transversal look at the figure of the Viceroy and his closest collaborators and relatives as authentic protagonists of an interesting historical and artistic period. During this period, Naples was not only one of the most prosperous cities in Italy but also one of the largest in Europe and an investment for the Spanish monarchs that dominated it. This unique metropolis had a Spanish presence that lasted four centuries. Traces can still be seen today in the layout of its streets, in some of the city’s most representative monuments as well as the habits and customs of the Neapolitans. This relationship gave rise to one of the city’s most mythical neighbourhoods, the Quartieri Spagnoli, which was founded in the 16th century to house the Spanish military garrisons during the period of the Aragonese’s struggle with the French who, like the Spanish, wanted to take control of the city. Once the war was over, a relatively quiet secular rule began during which Spanish proxies remodelled Naples. The chronology of the volume spans the long period between the reign of Philip III (1598) and the end of the War of the Spanish Succession (1713), a stage in which the figure of the Viceroy was decisive for many reasons in that he not only exercised the administrative and governing function as representative of the Spanish monarchy, but also played an important role in promoting the cultural activities of what was called the Spanish Siglo de Oro and which, in other words, represented the Baroque language par excellence.
In the territories of the Hispanic monarchy, the Viceroys, as alter egos of the king and therefore of noble lineage, travelled frequently. The office or ‘job’ usually lasted from three to six years. During this stay in Naples, the incumbent controlled not only the economic resources, which allowed him to build a residence and surround himself with the most famous artists, thus increasing the prestige of the crown. The Viceroys were not only faithful deliverers of the political power of the kings but also played the role of patrons of the arts, so much so that during the 17th century, it is possible to recognise a significant influence of Naples in Spain through their work. Many of the works that today are exhibited at the Prado Museum in Madrid were sent to Spain by the Viceroys as gifts for the king or, on specific commission, to decorate the royal palaces.
The role of the wives of viceroys is also interesting in this cultural exchange. Women did not possess property titles but did accompany their husbands, which, for example, was not possible for those governing Latin America. This made the role of the vicereine very active in the Kingdom of Naples. Their participation in public ceremonies aroused much interest, helping to consolidate Spanish power in the city.
Original and unpublished contributions are favoured with a focus on the relations between Naples and Spain during the period indicated; without excluding other topics, the following themes are proposed:
• The Viceroys’ journey to Naples: methods; route to Italy; length of stay in Naples; entourage (family, secretaries, servants); trousseaux; gifts to Neapolitan dignitaries.
• Contact with local artists: patronage networks.
• The Spanish influence on Neapolitan religion and beliefs.
• The Vicereine: the role of the wife between interests and influence on locals.
• The Viceroys’ collections: interests; preferences; influence on Spanish artists.
• Investments in public works to demonstrate Spanish power and the expansion of the Hispanic monarchy in Italy: the reform of urban spaces (creation of fountains; squares; etc.).
• The Viceroys and the stories of their return from Spain and vice versa.
• The return of the Viceroys to Spain: construction of palaces and convents; collection of works of art and books from the Kingdom of Naples.
• Founding of convents as family ‘pantheons’, to which the Viceroys donated many Italian works of art.
• Stories of travellers and travel descriptions.
• Representation of the Viceroys in art.
• The Viceroys as seen by the Neapolitan nobility and people.
• The Spanish influence on the architecture of the Kingdom of Naples.
To submit a proposal, please send the provisional title and an abstract of no more than 3,000 characters (including spaces). The material must be sent by 28 February 2023 to ornella.zerlenga@unicampania.it and laura.garcia@ub.edu. The authors of the selected abstracts will be contacted by 31 March 2023, after which the editorial guidelines for the text and images of the paper will be sent by email. Papers must be written between 15,000 and 30,000 characters (including spaces) by 31 August 2023 and sent to the above-mentioned email addresses.
Volumes published in this series will be pre-screened by at least two members of the Scientific Committee, who will assess whether the contribution responds to the research lines of the Series, whether it is based on an adequate bibliographical analysis related to the proposed theme, and whether it offers a careful examination of the sources and/or current trends with respect to the proposed theme. Once this preliminary assessment has been passed, the paper will be submitted to the international Double-blind Peer Review criterion and sent to two anonymous reviewers, at least one of whom must be external to the Scientific Committee. The reviewers, i.e., professors and researchers of recognised competence in the specific fields of study and belonging to various Italian and foreign universities and research institutes, constitute the Refereeing Committee. The list of anonymous reviewers and refereeing procedures is available to national and international scientific assessment bodies.
Texts in Italian, French, Spanish and English are accepted. Translation into English is also required for those submitted in Italian, French and Spanish.
Research Lunch | Anna Jamieson on Topographical Asylum Prints
From the Mellon Centre:
Anna Jamieson | Viewing Virtually and Learning to Look: The Topographical Asylum Print
Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, 17 March 2023, 1pm
T. H. Shepherd, St Luke’s Hospital, Cripplegate, London, 1815, engraving (London: Wellcome Collection).
By the final decades of the eighteenth century, asylums and hospitals had become mainstays of England’s philanthropic tourist circuit. Providing visitors with the opportunity to interact with human suffering, asylums were uniquely placed to encourage and facilitate the display of humanity deemed socially appropriate during this period.
For the educated elite engaged in philanthropic tourism, the asylum was often first encountered via the topographical print. Analysing a range of prints that depict asylum exteriors and their environs, this talk argues that these prints played an important role in shaping first impressions before a tour, guiding tourists in ways to look and behave in these unique and unsettling spaces. It demonstrates that viewing topographical prints prior to a visit evoked one’s social status, in that they characterised asylums as polite and esteemed destinations only accessible to the elite classes. At the same time, the talk suggests that topographical prints were designed to intrigue and titillate guests, with painters and printmakers employing unusual perspectives or fragmentary scenes to pique the interest of the visitor and provide a tantalising glimpse of life behind the asylum façade.
Book tickets here»
Anna Jamieson is an interdisciplinary art historian, a postdoctoral fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre, and an associate lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London. Anna specialises in visual and material cultures of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, with a particular interest in women’s mental illness; the cultural history of psychiatry; and dark tourism. She is currently writing her first monograph, The Gaze of the Sane: Asylum Tourism in England, 1770–1845. She is co-director of Birkbeck’s Centre for Museum Cultures and a member of the steering committee for Birkbeck’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Mental Health. Anna’s research has been published in Eighteenth-Century Studies and Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and her co-edited volume, Pockets, Pouches and Secret Drawers is forthcoming with Brill (2023). She is an associate editor for the medical humanities website The Polyphony and tweets at @annafranjam.
Research Lunch | Deepthi Bathala on Crop Trials and Tropicality in India
From the Mellon Centre:
Deepthi Bathala | Plantation Failures, Famine Crops, and Contesting Tropicality: Trials of the Calcutta Botanic Garden in the Early Nineteenth Century
Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, 10 March 2023, 1pm
“The Physical Geography of India and the Botanical Provinces 1855,” published in Joseph Dalton Hooker and Thomas Thomson, Flora Indica: Or Description of Indian Plants (1855; image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library).
In the late eighteenth century during a famine in British India, the Botanical Garden in Calcutta emerged as a response to the crisis. Envisioned as an institution of agricultural improvement, the garden sought to mobilise and introduce climatically suitable crops from various parts of the world for what was understood to be the tropical climate in India. In a quest to introduce famine crops such as wheat and potatoes from the Cape along with plantation crops like coffee, teak, and mulberry, horticulture, along with plantation trials, were administered at the same time both within and outside the garden compound. This paper discusses the plantation and horticultural trials of the Botanic Garden and their subsequent failures in the early nineteenth century to argue that these experiments were integral to contesting the preconceived tropicality of India. These failures determined not only the agricultural landscape of the country but also dictated the siting of other botanical gardens through the production of new climate knowledge in relation to the plants that grew, thrived, or failed. By using maps of the garden, rough sketches of early plantation grounds, and correspondence letters between officials of the garden and the company, the paper illustrates how the officials and affiliates of the garden produced an imaginary climate for British India contesting the tropicality of India while at the same time transforming its landscape in the early nineteenth century.
Book tickets here»
Deepthi Bathala is a PhD candidate in Architecture (History/Theory) at the University of Michigan. Her research interests include environmental histories of the built environment at the intersection of colonialism, climate knowledge, and horticulture. Her research is being supported by the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art, London; Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Virginia; Society of Architectural Historians; and the Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan. She has a MSArch in Architecture History and Theory from the University of Washington in Seattle, and a BArch from the College of Engineering Trivandrum, Kerala University in India.
New Book | Making Worlds: Global Invention in the Early Modern Period
From Toronto UP:
Angela Vanhaelen and Bronwen Wilson, eds., Making Worlds: Global Invention in the Early Modern Period (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022), 512 pages, ISBN: 978-1487544935, $95.
Taking into account the destructive powers of globalization, Making Worlds considers the interconnectedness of the world in the early modern period. This collection examines the interdisciplinary phenomenon of making worlds, with essays from scholars of history, literary studies, theatre and performance, art history, and anthropology. The volume advances questions about the history of globalization by focusing on how the expansion of global transit offered possibilities for interactions that included the testing of local identities through inventive experimentation with new and various forms of culture. Case studies show how the imposition of European economic, religious, political, and military models on other parts of the world unleashed unprecedented forces of invention as institutionalized powers came up against the creativity of peoples, cultural practices, materials, and techniques of making. In doing so, Making Worlds offers an important rethinking of how early globalization inconsistently generated ongoing dynamics of making, unmaking, and remaking worlds. The volume is part of the UCLA Clark Memorial Library Series.
C O N T E N T S
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction — Angela Vanhaelen and Bronwen Wilson
Part One: Material Flows
2 The Early Modern Fold: Pleated Media in Japan’s Encounter with Europe — Kristopher Kersey
3 From Textile to Text: Cloth, Slavery, and the Archive in the Dutch Atlantic —Carrie Anderson
4 Drawing Worlds in Smoke, Powder, and Fumes: Bodies and Trifles in Il Tabacco, the Courtly Ballet Staged in Turin (1650) — Elisa Antonietta Daniele
5 From Hot Reverence to Cold Sweat: Christian Art and Ambivalence in Early Modern Japan — Benjamin Schmidt
6 Eggs, Cheese, and (Francis) Bacon — Helen Smith
Part Two: In-Between Spaces
7 The Cabinet and the World: Non-European Objects in Early Modern European Collections — Daniela Bleichmar
8 Le Jeu du monde: Games, Maps, and World Conquest in Early Modern France — Ting Chang
9 The World Contained in an Imperial Ottoman Album — Emine Fetvaci
10 World Building, the Folger Folios, and the University of British Columbia — Patricia Badir
Part Three: Other Worlds
11 Ascetic Ecology: Landscape of a Desert Saint — Lyle Massey
12 The End of All: Worldliness, Piety, and the Social Life of Maps in the Post-Reformation English Household — Gavin Hollis
13 Enlightenment Cosmology: A Medialogical Interpretation — J.B. Shank
14 Masked Alliances: Global Politics and Economy in the Art and Performance Rituals of Mexico’s Indigenous People — John M.D. Pohl and Danny Zborover
15 Unease with the Exotic: Ambiguous Responses to Chinese Material Culture in the Dutch Republic — Thijs Weststeijn
Contributors
Index
Call for Papers | HECAA at 30
More information is available from the conference website:
HECAA at 30: Environments, Materials, and Futures in the Eighteenth Century
Boston, Cambridge, and Providence, 12–14 October 2023
Proposals due by 1 April 2023
The Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture are delighted to announce that the Call for Papers for HECAA@30: Environments, Materials, and Futures in the Eighteenth Century is now available. Please visit the conference website for a list of open sessions and details. Applications for participation are due to session chairs by 1 April 2023.
This in-person conference will take place in Boston, Cambridge, and Providence from 12–14 October 2023, with morning plenary sessions followed by gallery sessions, tours, and architectural site visits each afternoon.
On the land of the Massachusett and neighboring Wampanoag and Nipmuc peoples, Boston developed in the eighteenth century as a major colonized and colonizing site. Its status today as a cultural and intellectual hub is shaped by that context, making it a critical location to trace the cultural legacies of racism and social injustice between the eighteenth century and today. For whom is ‘eighteenth-century art and architecture’ a useful category? What eighteenth-century materials, spaces, and images offer tools or concepts for shaping our collective futures? In considering these questions, we aim to expand HECAA’s traditional focus on Western European art and architecture and specifically encourage proposals from scholars working on Asia, Africa and the African diaspora, Indigenous cultures, and the Islamic world.
We welcome proposals for contributions to panels, gallery sessions, roundtables, and workshops. Scholars at any career stage, and all geographic and material specializations, are encouraged to apply. We look forward to seeing you in Boston!
Image: Desk and Bookcase, mid 18th century. Puebla, Mexico (MFA Boston, Henry H. and Zoe Oliver Sherman Fund, 2015.3131).
Exhibition | Prussian Palaces, Colonial Histories
Opening this summer at Charlottenburg Palace:
Prussian Palaces, Colonial Histories: Biographies and Collections
Schlösser. Preußen. Kolonial. Biografien und Sammlungen
Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin, 4 July — 31 October 2023
Antoine Pesne, Portrait of Prince Frederick Ludwig or Prince Frederick William of Prussia in a Garden Cart with Friedrich Ludwig (?) (Berlin: Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten; photo by Jörg P. Anders).
The former palaces and gardens of the Hohenzollern dynasty make Germany’s colonial past visible and tangible today. Attesting to this history is an 18th-century portrait of a young Black boy, possibly Fredrick Ludwig (1708 – date of death unknown), whose father was brought to the Berlin royal court through the slave trade. Another example is provided by the glass beads produced on Peacock Island that were used to purchase slaves and colonial trading goods. With a special exhibition at Charlottenburg Palace, the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg (SPSG) is facing the colonial histories of its collections.
Colonial practises and structures can be traced throughout earlier centuries, before German colonialism of the 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as afterwards. In this light, the special exhibition is looking to explore the connection between Germany’s longer colonial history and how they persist today. Based on the scant information that has been preserved over time, the special exhibition attempts to reconstruct the biographies of people after they were forcibly brought to Berlin and Potsdam. These biographies highlight both the ways they were able to socially assimilate and how they resisted the conditions of their lives at court. In addition, the exhibition examines non-European works in the collections that have long been interpreted within strictly European frameworks. As a result, these works were culturally re-appropriated and alienated from their original uses.
The exhibition themes were developed together with various experts in a joint process over the course of five workshops. This special exhibition is part of the annual theme for 2023: “Elector—Emperor—Colonies.” Thus, the SPSG is taking an important step in its ongoing work on this theme that will continue beyond the coming year. This exhibition is supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media under a resolution passed by the German Parliament.
Carolin Alff, Susanne Evers, and Hatem Hegab, et al., Prussian Palaces, Colonial Histories: Places, Biographies, and Collections (Dresden: Sandstein Verlag, 2023), 168 pages, ISBN: 978-3954987375 (German edition) / ISBN: 978-3954987382 (English edition), €18.
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Note (added 7 September 2023) — The posting was updated to include information on the catalogue.
Exhibition | Enslavement: Voices from the Archives
From Lambeth Palace:
Enslavement: Voices from the Archives
Lambeth Palace Library, London, 12 January — 31 March 2023
This exhibition accompanies the Church Commissioners’ public report on historic links between Queen Anne’s Bounty (one of the predecessors of the Church Commissioners’ endowment) and transatlantic chattel slavery. [See the press release below.]
Petition from Esther Smith, an enslaved woman, to Archbishop Secker, 19 July 1760 (Lambeth Palace, MS 1123/2 item 177).
Letters, books, and documents from our collections are displayed to show some of the links between the Church of England and transatlantic slavery. Amongst these are rare documents from enslaved people, contrasting views on the rights of enslaved people from within the Church, and from missionaries working in the Caribbean and the Americas. These documents also present the arguments put forward using the Church’s teaching at the time both for and against the abolition of slavery.
The role of the Church of England in the transatlantic slavery economy was complex and varied. Missionaries sent to work in the Caribbean and the Americas documented the harsh conditions of daily life on the plantations. Enslaved people were not allowed basic Christian rights such as baptism and marriage in case these rights damaged the property and legal rights of the owners. Some voices were raised against enslavement including Revd Morgan Godwyn, an Anglican missionary to Virginia and Barbados. He wrote in 1680 appealing to the Archbishop of Canterbury to allow Anglican priests to baptise enslaved people.
As a result of the transatlantic slavery economy, enslavement, and disease, Indigenous populations were virtually wiped out. It is believed that of the 12 million Africans enslaved and transported to the Caribbean and Americas between 1500 and 1900, only around 10 million reached their destination. The effects and legacy of slavery are visible to this day.
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MS 1123/2 item 177 — Petition from Esther Smith, an enslaved woman, to Archbishop Secker, 19 July 1760, pictured above.
This petition was written on behalf of Esther Smith. She was born in New York and brought to England by one of her enslavers. The letter documents the number of times she had been bought and sold in her life. In this petition, she is asking to be baptised so that she could,
“[…] attend the Service of Almighty God on the Lordsday, as she always had been accustomed theretofore to do at every opportunity.”
Esther’s enslaver opposed her baptism. Further correspondence contained within the archives provides a raw account of Esther’s desperation and fears. She tried to obtain baptism at St Alphage’s church in Greenwich, London, and fought to avoid being sent to the West Indies, as confirmed by letters from the church’s vicar Revd Samuel Squire and a Methodist prison visitor Silas Told. Archbishop Secker eventually sought advice from Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, who confirmed that “a slave brought to England is still a slave” and baptism would not change this status. Whether Esther succeeded in her efforts remains unknown.
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From the press release (16 June 2022) . . .
Church Commissioners’ research identifies historic links to transatlantic chattel slavery
The Church Commissioners for England has learned from research it commissioned that Queen Anne’s Bounty, a predecessor fund of the Church Commissioners’ £10.1 billion endowment, had links with transatlantic chattel slavery. The Church Commissioners is deeply sorry for its predecessor fund’s links with transatlantic chattel slavery.
In the 18th century, Queen Anne’s Bounty invested significant amounts of its funds in the South Sea Company, a company that traded in enslaved people. It also received numerous benefactions, many of which are likely to have come from individuals linked to, or who profited from, transatlantic chattel slavery or the plantation economy.
The Church Commissioners in 2019 decided to conduct research into the source of its endowment fund to gain an improved understanding of its history. It worked with forensic accountants to review early ledgers and other original source documents from Queen Anne’s Bounty. That research is now complete, and a final report of the findings will be published later this year. The Church Commissioners is forming a group to consider the research and how to respond to these findings. Further information will be shared in due course. . . .
Exhibition | Crafting Freedom: Thomas W. Commeraw
Thomas W. Commeraw, Jug, detail, ca. 1797–1819, salt-glazed stoneware, cobalt oxide, 12 inches (30 cm) high
(New-York Historical Society, purchased from Elie Nadelman, 1937.820).
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From the press release (6 October 2022) for the exhibition:
Crafting Freedom: The Life and Legacy of Free Black Potter Thomas W. Commeraw
New-York Historical Society, 27 January — 28 May 2023
Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York, 24 June — 24 September 2023
Curated by Margi Hofer, Mark Shapiro, and Allison Robinson, with Leslie M. Harris
The New-York Historical Society presents Crafting Freedom: The Life and Legacy of Free Black Potter Thomas W. Commeraw, the first exhibition to bring overdue attention to Thomas W. Commeraw, a successful Black craftsman who was long assumed to be white. Formerly enslaved, Commeraw rose to prominence as a free Black entrepreneur, owning and operating a successful pottery in the city. Over a period of two decades, he amassed property, engaged in debates over state and national politics, and participated in New York City’s free Black community. The exhibition explores Commeraw’s multi-faceted history as a craftsman, business owner, family man, and citizen through approximately 40 pieces of stoneware produced by Commeraw and his competitors between the late 1790s and 1819, in the largest presentation of his work to date. Alongside these pieces are the primary documents that enabled historians to reconstruct the arc of his professional career and personal life, and through them convey a deeper understanding of free Black society in New York in the years between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.
Thomas W. Commeraw, Jug, ca. 1797–1819, salt-glazed stoneware, cobalt oxide, 12 inches (30 cm) high, (New-York Historical Society, purchased from Elie Nadelman, 1937.820).
“Crafting Freedom continues the tradition at New-York Historical of presenting groundbreaking exhibitions that reveal the complex dimensions of race in the early years of New York City and our nation,” said Dr. Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of New-York Historical. “Through this exhibition of Thomas W. Commeraw and his work, we gain an in-depth understanding of a Black artisan’s life in New York, while also seeing how our understanding of history continues to evolve to give us greater insight into issues that affect our society today. This exhibition will transform our visitors’ perspective on New York’s free Black community, challenging long-held myths about post-revolutionary race relations in northern states.”
“This exhibition illuminates the story of a man who was emancipated as a child, went on to own and operate his own business, and advocated for the rights of full citizenship for his fellow Black Americans,” said Margi Hofer, New-York Historical’s vice president and museum director, who co-curated the exhibition. “While Commeraw’s distinctive pottery has been admired and collected for over a century, his true story has been obscured for far too long. It is incredibly meaningful that we are able to bring to light a true portrait of the man, both as a citizen and as a craftsman.”
The New York City directories first list Thomas “Commerau” working as a potter in 1795, living near Pot Baker’s Hill in the vicinity of today’s City Hall. By 1797, he had established his own workshop at Corlears Hook on the East River. There, he produced vessels in the local tradition, often decorated with distinctive flourishes of swags, tassels, and bowknot motifs filled with vivid cobalt. Stoneware vessels were essential kitchenware in that era and stored everything from milk, butter, salted meat, and preserves, to molasses, cider, and beer. Commeraw also manufactured oyster jars for the city’s oystermen, who were predominantly from the free Black community. His crocks and jugs traveled on ships to ports along the eastern seaboard and as far afield as Guyana and Norway. Most of the Commeraw vessels that survive today are boldly stamped with his name and the location of his pottery at Manhattan’s Corlears Hook. In addition to signaling pride in his work, Commeraw’s prominent branding helped him attract and retain customers.
In addition to revealing Commeraw’s successes and struggles as a pottery owner in a city riven by racism, the exhibition explores his commitment to securing a better future for the Black community through his work with abolitionist, political, religious, and mutual aid organizations. In 1790, the majority of Black New Yorkers were enslaved. By 1810, 6 out of 7 were free. Businessmen like Commeraw faced daunting challenges, not just raising capital but building civic and religious organizations to support the Black community. Free Black men had voted in New York since the Revolution, but in 1811, the state legislature passed a law to suppress Black voters, requiring them to submit a Certificate of Freedom that included a sworn statement from a third party attesting to the voter’s free status and residency and to pay a filing fee. A highlight of the exhibition is the 1813 Certificate of Freedom held by New-York Historical’s Patricia D. Klingenstein Library that bears Commeraw’s confident signature as witness. It is the only confirmed manuscript in his hand. The exhibition also examines how Black New Yorkers responded to economic and political oppression by developing a lively cultural and artistic community.
The final chapter in Commeraw’s story concerns his effort to promote the emigration of Black settlers to Sierra Leone, as the prospect of full citizenship for Black New Yorkers dimmed. Commeraw traveled there with his extended family in 1820 on the first voyage of the American Colonization Society. He arrived full of optimism and plans to found a Black republic; instead, he experienced unimaginable hardship and tragedy. What began as a venture for political rights ended as a struggle for survival. Many of the settlers died of malaria, including Commeraw’s wife and niece. He returned to the U.S. in 1822 and died the following year in Baltimore. The exhibition closes with a coda that describes future generations of the Commeraw family carrying forward the potter’s entrepreneurial energy and political engagement.
Additionally, Queens-based ceramic artist and activist Sana Musasama has created a new work that reflects on Commeraw’s life as a New York potter, his transatlantic odyssey of two centuries ago, and her own artistic journey. Passages will be installed in New-York Historical’s grand lobby, the Robert H. and Clarice Smith Gallery, to introduce the exhibition and encourage visitors to contemplate how Commeraw’s story continues to resonate today.
Crafting Freedom is co-curated by New-York Historical’s Vice President and Museum Director Margi Hofer, potter and Commeraw researcher Mark Shapiro, and Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Women’s History and Public History Allison Robinson. Leslie M. Harris, professor of history and African American studies at Northwestern University, served as scholarly advisor. The exhibition next travels to the Fenimore Art Museum, where it will be on view from June 24 until September 24, 2023.
Major support for Crafting Freedom: The Life and Legacy of Free Black Potter Thomas W. Commeraw is provided by the Decorative Arts Trust and Emily and James Satloff.
Leslie Harris in Conversation with David Rubenstein, The Shadow of Slavery and the History of African Americans in New York City, from the Settling of New Amsterdam to the Civil War
New-York Historical Society, 10 April 2023
“Test of Patriotism,” Commercial Advertister (20 August 1814)
(Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New York Historical Society)
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A. Brandt Zipp, Commeraw’s Stoneware: The Life and Work of the First African-American Pottery Owner (Sparks, Maryland: Crocker Farm, 2022), 311 pages, ISBN: 979-8218002909, $95.
Presented here for the first time in two centuries is the lost story of New York City potter Thomas W. Commeraw, a key early African American figure whose identity slipped through the fingers of history. Rediscovered by the author in the first years of this century, Commeraw stands as one of the most fascinating of all historic American decorative artists: an abolitionist, activist, highly influential craftsman and, ultimately, the hopeful founder of a new African republic. Topics include: Commeraw’s fascinating life story, from childhood to death; a comprehensive discussion and illustration of Commeraw’s pottery, made from the mid-1790s to late 1810s; Commeraw’s abolitionism, political activism, and role as an important local free black figure; a thorough history of New York City stoneware; an in-depth breakdown of the work of other New York City stoneware manufacturers including Clarkson Crolius Sr., John Remmey III, and David Morgan; and Commeraw’s harrowing experiences on the west coast of Africa.
Brandt Zipp is a founding partner of Crocker Farm, Inc., the nation’s premier auction house specializing in historic American utilitarian ceramics. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, Brandt’s research regularly breaks important new ground, no greater example being his serendipitous discovery of Thomas Commeraw’s heritage. Commeraw’s Stoneware represents the culmination of almost two decades of research, writing, and lecturing.
Lecture Series | Catholic Chapels in N. England / Adam and Chippendale
Upcoming lectures from the York Georgian Society:
Jan Graffius | From Borneo to York: The 18th-Century Chapels at Stonyhurst and the Bar Convent
York Medical Society, Saturday, 11 February 2023, 2.30pm
Bar Convent Chapel, completed in 1769. Established in 1686, the Convent of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin at Micklegate Bar in York is the oldest surviving convent in England.
This talk will examine the history and contents of two extraordinary 18th-century chapels in the North of England. Both chapels were hidden from view, but both reflected very different aspects of English Catholicism. The 1713 Stonyhurst Shireburn inventory lists luxury artefacts from China along with those of the European baroque, salvaged medieval material culture, and the latest English Georgian fashions, all demonstrating a confident seigneurial Catholicism in a deeply rural setting. The flamboyant but hidden 1769 Bar Convent chapel of Mother Ann Aspinal and its associated 16th- and 17th-century relics and vestments speaks of a different community—religious sisters and recusant schoolgirls—navigating the political challenges associated with an all-female community in a volatile urban setting.
Jan Graffius is Curator of Collections and Historic Libraries at Stonyhurst College.
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Kerry Bristol | Robert Adam and Thomas Chippendale at Nostell: A Matter of Equals?
York Medical Society, Saturday, 11 March 2023, 2.30pm
Unknown British artist, A Cabinet Maker’s Office, ca. 1770, oil on canvas, 53 × 70 cm (London: V&A, P.1-1961).
Nostell, the ancestral home of the Winn family near Wakefield, has long been recognised as an important commission for both Robert Adam and Thomas Chippendale, one indicative of a close friendship between architect and patron and suggestive of a special relationship between the Otley-born cabinetmaker and a family who reputedly promoted his interests early in his career. Based on a fresh reading of the Nostell archive, this lecture will investigate the nature of the business relationship between Adam and Chippendale and query how and where they worked together at Nostell and when they worked independently of each other. Did the late 18th-century architect always have the upper hand, or could those who furnished a house exert more control?
Kerry Bristol is Senior Lecturer in the School of Fine Art at the University of Leeds.
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