PRESENTING KARA WALKER’S ART: CASE STUDIES OF THE STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM

AND THE WALKER ART CENTER

By

Takenya A LaViscount

Submitted to the

Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences

o f American University

in Partial Fulfillment o f

the Requirements for the Degree of

Masters of Arts

In

Arts Management

Chair: Brett Ashley Crawfoi

Helen Li

Zpe Charttoi

fthe College o f Arts and Sciences

Date

2006

American University

Washington, DC 20016 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY V)H

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Copyright 2006 by LaViscount, Takenya A.

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By

Takenya A LaViscount

2006

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PRESENTING KARA WALKER’S ART: CASE STUDIES OF THE STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM

AND THE WALKER ART CENTER

BY

Takenya A LaViscount

ABSTRACT

Recognizing the controversial subject matter conveyed by Kara Walker’s artwork,

this thesis examines the differences in the framing of Walker’s work when presented by

museums devoted to art created by artists of African descent versus mainstream art

museums. Specifically, this thesis compares the presentation of Walker’s art to the public

by the Studio Museum in Harlem (SMH) and the Walker Art Center (WAC). SMH is an

accredited art museum that focuses on the presentation of art created by people of African

descent. WAC is a multidisciplinary contemporary art museum that presents art across

the spectrum of race, ethnicity, age and discipline. In addition to comparing these two art

institutions, this thesis also offers suggestions for how to present Walker’s controversial

art and create an environment that encourages dialogue about artistic intent, identity and

audience reception.

ii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to my thesis committee, which is

composed of a diverse group of remarkable women, each with her own unique talents. I

am in awe of Brett Ashley Crawford’s extensive knowledge of the performing and visual

arts sector. I am truly grateful for her guidance, encouraging words and warm persona

through out this endeavor. I admire Helen Langa’s knowledge of art history and her

feedback has been invaluable. I am also impressed by Zoe Charlton, a professor and artist

whose knowledge of both creating and critiquing art has been extremely helpful. It has

been such a pleasure working with these three creative intellectuals. Their input has been

crucial for the completion of my thesis. I would also like to thank all of the busy art

museum professionals who offered their help and took the time to participate in an

interview: Yasmil Raymond, Lynn Dierks, Barry Gaither, Shanta Scott and Lizzatta

LeFalle-Collins. Last but certainly not least, I am grateful for the love and support my

friends and family have given me. Without my parents and friends, who have always

encouraged me to pursue my dreams, I would not have been able to complete this project.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

iii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT...... ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...... iii

LIST OF LLUSTRATIONS...... v

Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION...... 1

2. SUBVERSIVE MAMMIES AND JEZEBELS...... 19

3. THE STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM’S PRESENTATION OF KARA WALKER’S ART...... 50

4. THE WALKER ART CENTER’S PRESENTATION OF KARA WALKER’S ART...... 65

5. CONCLUSION ...... 88

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 97

iv

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure Page

1. United Colors of Benetton, Breast Feeding, 1989...... 25

2. Kara Walker, Untitled (Destroying the Terror), 1994...... 31

3. Kara Walker. John Brown. 1996...... 33

4. Thomas Satterwhite Noble, John Brown’s Blessings, 1867 ...... 35

5. Kara Walker, The End of the Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven, 1995...... 42

6. Kara Walker, The End of the Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau ofEva in Heaven, 1995 (detail)...... 45

7. Kara Walker, The End of the Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau ofEva in Heaven, 1995 (detail)...... 47

8. Kara Walker, Endless Conundrum, An African Anonymous Adventuress, 2001...... 77

9. Kara Walker,Endless Conundrum, An African Anonymous Adventuress, 2001 (detail)...... 79

v

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

The actual struggle was then, as it is now, about hegemonic control of black representation. Black authority was and still is characterized by knowledge of vernacular (i.e “authenticity”) and adherence to a moral code that is organized around a proprietary relationship to the black body and, by extension, its image.

CoCo Fusco, The Bodies That Were Not Ours and Other Writings

Kara Walker, born in 1969, is a black female artist. Walker creates paper

silhouettes that portray slavery-era, Jim Crow-era, and minstrel stereotypes used to

categorize black people. Walker’s artistic creations also include paintings, drawings,

animated films and performance art that depict similar racially-charged subject matter

and commentary about United States history. Her illustrated stereotypes include

“mammies”, “jezebels”, “uncle toms”, “mandingos”, and “pickaninnies” among others.

Walker’s artwork illustrates violent, sexuality explicit, blunt subject matter that forces the

spectator to contemplate slavery’s crude and brutal past. Her art includes obscene

Victorian melodramas with fictional black and white characters engaged in such taboo

acts as bestiality, sodomy, incest, fetishism, and the excretion of bodily fluids. Irony,

humor and masochism merge to reveal the intricate effects of race and sex-based

oppression on our psyche.

1

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A spectator of Walker’s postmodern aesthetic has to ponder the ways in which

modem day perceptions mould our understanding of the past and how the past has shaped

our present identity. When exhibited in museums and galleries Walker’s silhouette

installations are intentionally overwhelmingly large. Usually, her large-scale paper

silhouettes are placed directly onto the wall. The spectator is placed in a position where

s/he comes in contact with his or her own horrific shadow. Walker asserts that these

fictive stereotypes lurk in our subconscious and manipulate our perceptions of racial

identity, gender identity, and history.1

Walker is a controversial figure. The contention that revolves around Walker is

the result of where Walker’s artwork is displayed, her reliance on derogatory

iconography, her risky verbal statements regarding race and gender identity, and the high

market value of her art work. Recognizing the controversial subject matter conveyed by

Walker’s artwork, a question arises — are there differences in the framing of Walker’s

work when presented by museums devoted to art created by artists of African descent

versus mainstream art museums? This study provides a comparison of two art museums

and their presentation of Walker’s art to the public; The Studio Museum in Harlem

(SMH), and the Walker Art Center (WAC). SMH is an art museum, located in New York

City, which focuses on the presentation of art created by people of African descent. WAC

is a multidisciplinary contemporary art museum, located in Minneapolis, which does not

focus on the presentation of art created by a particular racial / ethnic group. In 2003,

SMH provided a solo exhibition for Walker entitled Kara Walker: Excavated from the

Heart o f a Black Negress. In 2005 WAC included Walker’s art within Quartet, a group

1 Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Seeing the Unspeakable: The Art o f Kara Walker (London: Duke University Press, 2004), 39-40, 43.

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exhibition that also included artwork created by Matthew Barney, Robert Gober and

Sherrie Levine. An examination of these two exhibitions reveals that SMH and WAC had

different approaches to the presentation of Walker’s controversial artwork.

Walker received her B.F.A from Atlanta College of Art and her M.F.A in painting

and printmaking from the Rhode Island School of design. She began exhibiting her

artwork in 1991 and her career has continued to flourish. A recipient of prominent grants

and awards, Walker became the youngest visual artist to date to receive the MacArthur

Foundation “Genius Grant,” at age twenty-eight. In 1997 her art was featured in the

Whitney Biennial. Walker’s highly successful career includes numerous solo exhibitions

at prestigious museums and art galleries in the United States and abroad. Walker’s art has

been featured at the Guggenheim Museum, the Modem Museum of Art (MoMA), the San

Francisco Museum of Modem Art (SFMoMA), the Drawing Center in ,

the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, the Hayward Gallery, the Barbican

Art Gallery, and the Hammer Museum of Art, among other renowned art

institutions. Walker received the “Lucelia Artist Award”, a Smithsonian Institution grant

in the amount of $25,000 in 2004.4 As of 2005, Walker’s artwork has been exhibited in

over fifty museums. Walker is a professor at Columbia University in New York City.

Walker represents a generational shift in the way black artists have traditionally

addressed racial and gender oppression. She is part of a postmodern generation of black

artists that are not afraid to draw upon satirical racial and gender-based imagery in order

2 Juliette Bowles, "Extreme Times Call for Extreme Eleroes," The International Review o f A frican American Art 14, no. 3 (1997): 3. 3 Kristina Podesva and Alison Pruchansky, "Exhibition History," Karain Walker, Narratives o f a Negress, ed. Ian Berry, Darby English, and Mark Reinhardt (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003), 185-189. 4 Blake Gopnik, "Kara Walker Wins Smithsonian Artist Award,”The Washington Post, 15 April 2004, C05.

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to illustrate the culture and history of the United States. Walker is not alone in her

reliance upon minstrel show caricatures. Her artwork has been compared to other black

postmodern artists that have implemented minstrelsy into his or her artistic creations,

such as Michael Ray Charles and Ellen Gallagher.5 Walker, however, has received the

most attention and institutional support when compared to her contemporaries. In

comparison, other black postmodern artists have not been exhibited in as many museums

and galleries as Walker and have not received the prestigious grants and awards that

Walker has received. The market value of Walker’s art is significantly higher than her

contemporaries. While Walker’s large artworks have sold for as much as $225,000, the

price of Charles’ artworks have ranged between $10,000 to $40,000.6

Importantly, Walker’s celebrity status within the mainstream art establishment,

which she cultivated at a young age, is a subject of serious concern among some black

artists that fought hard to have their art recognized, appreciated and displayed by the

mainstream art establishment during the 1960s and the 1970s. Artist activist groups such

as Spiral, the Artworkers Coalition, the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, and Where

We At, a black feminist art group formed by artist Faith Ringgold, publicly called

attention to institutionalized racism and sexism within the mainstream art community.

Unlike Walker, most of the artists that were members of these activist groups blatantly

illustrated Afro-centric and / or black feminist themes within their artwork.7 Some

members of these activist art groups have been astonished and offended by the wide

5 Bowles, 3-7. 6 Shawn-Marie Garrett, "Return of the Repressed,"Theater 32, no. 2 (2002): 29.; Eileen Kinsella, "The Rise of African American Art "ARTnews 102, no. 8 (2003): 123. 7 Curtia Lynne James, “Contemporary African American Art in New York Galleries and Museums: Patterns of Exclusion and Inclusion in the 1990s” (Masters of Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2001), 29-30, 32-34.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. spread praise Walker’s art has received from the mainstream art establishment. Among a

generation of black artists that were involved in major political and artistic movements

(the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, the Black Power Movement, the

Civil Rights Movement, the Feminist Movement) her work has been seen as disgracefully

g confirming ugly stereotypes that support white supremacy.

The presentation of Walker’s art highlights important conundrums within the

visual arts sector. The controversy that has erupted highlights the power struggle within

the arts sector regarding who has control over the display of the black body and how the

black body is displayed. The exhibition of Walker’s art highlights issues of racial

exclusion and inclusion and makes obvious the ways in which programming, staff

diversity, funding, marketing, and audience development are intimately bound together,

affecting each element of an art institution. The controversial content displayed in

Walker’s art has instigated a dialogue about which black artists receive exhibit

opportunities from art museums within the United States, why certain groups of black

artists have been left behind to dwell in obscurity, and who has the institutional power to

choose which black artists will be exhibited in museums. Arts administrators encounter

all of these multifaceted subjects when Walker’s art is displayed.

Betye Saar, a black artist known for her involvement in the Black Arts Movement

is one of Walker’s most vocal and public denouncers. Her statements about the display of

Walker’s art echo the concerns of some black artists from her generation. When

8 Bowles, 4-5,12-13; Eungie Joo, “Crisis to Collapse: The Racialized Subject in Contemporary American Art.” (Dissertation, University of California, 2002), 122-126; Karen C.C. Dalton, "The Past Is Prologue but Is Parody and Pastiche Progress? A Conversation.,"The International Review of African American Art 14, no. 3 (1997): 17-29.

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discussing the mainstream art sector’s acceptance of postmodern black art that

incorporates minstrelsy Saar has exclaimed:

How do young persons just a few years out of school get a show at a major museum? The whole arts establishment picked their work up and put it at the head of the class. This is the danger, not the artists themselves. This is like closet racism. It relieves them of the responsibility to show other artists.9

Saar has tried to lessen the amount of institutional support Walker has received. In fact,

she attempted to deny Walker the MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in the form of a

letter campaign. Saar mailed two hundred letters of protest to artists and scholars. These

letters included a reproduction of Walker’s large silhouette installation The End of the

Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven. Saar never made the

effort to contact Walker directly.10

Barry Gaither, the Director of The Museum of the National Center of Afro

American Artists (NCAAA) located in Boston, has chosen not to display Walker’s art at

the institution. Gaither is strongly against censorship and does agree that Walker should

have the freedom to express herself; however, he is bothered by the mainstream art

sectors acceptance of stereotypical imagery. During an interview Gaither explained that

he considers Walker to be a “.. .remarkably talented artist with tremendous technical

dexterity” but when he addressed the content portrayed in Walkers art, the art sectors

response to her work and the African American audience, and Gaither also asked the

question:

Why should African Americans who have only rarely found themselves celebrated in major white museums revel in seeing on the walls of those institutions images of themselves eating excrement? 11

9 Betye Saar quoted in Bowles, 4. 10 Eungie Joo, “Crisis to Collapse: The Racialized Subject in Contemporary American Art.” (Dissertation, University o f California, 2002), 112-116, 128. 11 Takenya LaViscount, "Email Interview with Barry Gaither," (Washington DC: 2006).

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Gaither refers to the mainstream art museum sector by describing these

institutions as “white museums.” His usage of the label “white museums” highlights the

pertinent issue of staff diversity within the mainstream art museum sector and the

audience that attends institutions of this nature. Tuliza Fleming is an African American

curator at the Dayton Art Institute (DAI). Her article “The ‘Museum Baby’ Grows Up:

Being a Curator of Color in a Monochromatic Art Museum World,” discusses the lack of

racial diversity within the mainstream art museum sector. Fleming expresses her concern

that she might be the only African American chief curator who oversees an American art

department within a mainstream art museum. According to Fleming, she is one out of

only eleven African American curators that are working at mainstream art museums in

the United States. While the subject of diversity has been discussed within the museum

community for over thirty years, very little progress has been made in increasing the

racial diversity of staff who work for mainstream museums and the audience that these

institutions attract. Fleming explains:

Art museums do not attract an audience representative of minority groups. This is especially pertinent when you consider that the nation’s largest, most esteemed, and most influential museums generally are located in urban areas with large minority populations... .U.S art museums must look beyond merely attracting a large number of visitors and more critically at what art and culture really means - to us and to our communities.... Understanding these communities - their differences and their similarities - and their connections to our national art museums is key to improving the visitor and educational experience for all Americans.12

Lonnie Bunch, the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American

History and Culture agrees with Fleming’s assessments - if museums are going to attract

12 Tuliza Fleming, "The "Museum Baby" Grows Up: Being a Curator in a Monochromatic Art Museum World," American Association of Museums: Museum News 84, no. 4 (2005): 34.

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a diverse audience, they must first diversify their staff, board and volunteers, generating

an environment that reflects multiple perspectives about art and culture.13

Yasmil Raymond, a curator at the Walker Art Center (WAC) who worked on the

presentation of Walker’s art in Quartet , has an assessment of the mainstream art sector

that differs from some art administrators and artists who are worried about the inclusion

of art created by black artists. When asked during an interview about the concerns that

Betye Saar and Howardina Pindell have publicly expressed regarding the display of

Walker’s art, Raymond responded by stating “There is a fine line between censorship and

concern.” She continued to explain that Pindell’s and Saar’s comments cross this line and

that their complaints urge museums to censor Walker’s artistic vision. According to

Raymond, over the past ten years the inclusion of art created black artists has increased

dramatically within the art museum sector. Raymond does not believe that art museums

with a poor history of exhibiting art created by black artists should avoid displaying

Walker’s art and in her opinion, the mainstream acceptance of Walker’s art has improved

the careers of other black artists, heightening their exposure to the public.14

Raymond is correct in asserting that Pindell and Saar are very uncomfortable with

the content illustrated in Walker’s art, however, other aspects of her statement are at odds

with differing comments that have been made by other museum professionals who are

apprehensive about the mainstream art community’s embrace of Walker’s art. Kinshasha

Holmen Conwill, the former director of The Studio Museum in Harlem has exclaimed

that “Only a couple of black artists are let into the doors of the museums and galleries.”15

Museums such as the National Gallery of Art, located in Washington DC, support

13 Lonnie Bunch quoted in Fleming, 35. 14 Takenya LaViscount, "Phone Interview with Yasmil Raymond," (Washington DC: 2006). 15 Kinshasha Holman Conwill quoted in Garrett: 29.

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ConwilPs claim. The National Gallery of Art waited until 2003 to present their first solo

exhibition for a black artist.16 Raymond describes the mainstream acceptance of Walker’s

art as a reality that has helped to boost the careers of a diverse group of black artists; but

Corinne Jennings, the director of Kenkeleba Gallery in New York City, believes

otherwise. According to Jennings “In some ways the contemporary art scene is worse

because people who use derogatory images, often originally created by white artists, can

find quick support.”17

While the content portrayed in Walker’s artwork has generated a lot of ardent

discussion within the arts sector, her blunt commentary about her own internalized

oppression during interviews has also created an intellectual and artistic divide within the

black arts community and the contemporary art community at large. Her public

statements regarding contemporary race and gender identity are shocking and can come

across as careless. It can appear as if Walker is publicly performing a character in one of

her antebellum melodramas pictured on museum and gallery walls. Walker has explained

that her artistic creations represent her “inner plantation.” She has publicly admitted to a

personal identification with the slave mistresses that are depicted in her artwork and has

connected her own experiences of racial and gender-based abuse to the images portrayed

in her work.18 According to an interview in Flash Art, Walker received threatening letters

from the Ku Klux Klan when she was engaged in interracial relationships while living in

Atlanta. Walker explains:

I figured out I was a milestone in people’s sexual experience - to have made it with a black woman was one of those things to check off on your list of personal

16 Blake Gopnik, "Romare Bearden, Rain or Shine,"Washington Post 23 Sept 2003, C05. 17 Corinne Jennings quoted in Kinsella: 123. 18 Lisa E Farrington,Creating Their Own Image: The History o f African-American Women Artists (New York Oxford University Press, 2005), 227-228.

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sexual accomplishments. That already has a slightly masochistic effect: to have just been the body for somebody’s life story. I guess that’s when I decided to offer up my side-long glances: to be a slave just a little bit....So I used this mythic, fictional, kind of slave character to justify myself, or reinvent myself in some other situations.19

Statements of this nature have been used to justify the arguments of Betty Saar,

Howardina Pindell, and bell hooks. These three respected cultural scholars and artists

have accused Walker of selling out to racist fantasy.

In addition to the complexities that arise from Walker’s public persona, other

multifaceted concerns have emerged regarding the role of Walker’s art within the art

market. The high market value of her artwork and the race of the group that typically

purchases Walker’s artwork is a subject of distress among a significant number of

scholars. People of African descent usually do not buy Walker’s artwork. As a rule

Caucasian spectators purchase her work. The price of her artwork can be compared to the

high market value of historically racist artifacts depicting minstrel show imagery from the

nineteenth and early twentieth century. Critics have expressed serious concern about the

commodification of black stereotypes.71

In 1999 Walker’s installation,A Means to an End... A Shadow Drama in Five

Acts, was pulled at the last minuet from the Detroit Institute of the Arts. The museum

director was concerned about audience reception. 77 Scholars, critics and artists have

questioned the reception of Walker’s art depending on the audience viewing it. Walker’s

art may not have the same effect on most black spectators compared to a lot of white

19 Jerry Saltz, "III Will and Desire,"Flash Art 29, no. 191 (1996): 86. 20 Joo, 119-120; Michael Corris and Robert Hobbs, "Reading Black through White in the Work of Kara Walker,"Art History 26, no. 3 (2003): 426. 21 Glenda Rossana Carpio, “Critical Memory in the Fiction of Slavery” (Dissertation, University of California, 2002), 141-143. 22 Carpio, 135.

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spectators. This becomes painfully obvious when black patrons can not be found for

Walker’s artwork. Depending on the individual and their understanding of the

complexities of race, they may not understand that Walker encourages the spectator to

critically examine their understanding of race-based identity shaped by the past and the

present simultaneously.

Thus, with these varying concerns regarding the presentation of Walker’s art, one

begins to wonder if the meaning of her artwork is altered when she is displayed in a

museum that focuses solely on art created by black people versus mainstream art

museums that have only recently started to display art created by black people and are

lacking black art within their permanent collections? During the last thirty years the

number of racial or ethnic identity based museums has grown dramatically. The America

Association of Museums estimates that in the United States, twenty six percent of

museums that were scheduled to open between 1998 and 2000 were museums that

specialized in the cultural and historical interpretation and presentation of specific ethnic

or racial groups. According to Latina cultural theorist Karen Davalos, mainstream

museums have consistently failed to adequately integrate objects created by people of

color within their exhibitions and collections. In her article “Exhibiting Mestizaje: The

Poetics and Experience of the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum” Davalos explains:

The public [mainstream] museum does not collect our histories and experiences, particularly not our art. It does not categorize our cultural products as ‘American’ but marginalizes them, even placing them in the hallways and other makeshift galleries.24

23 Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Carl Grodach, "National Narratives in Maritime and Ethnic Museums. Displaying and Celebrating The "Other": A Study of the Mission, Scope, and Roles of Ethnic Museums in Los Angeles " The Public Historian 26, no. 4 (2004): 53-54. 24 Karen Davalos quoted in Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Carl Grodach, 54.

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Most leading contemporary art museums have just begun to increase the number of

exhibitions that showcase African American art. For example, in 2001, Walker received a

solo exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City; yet,

according to research completed by Howardena Pindell and Curtia Lynne James, the

Guggenheim failed to provide any solo exhibitions for African American artists

throughout the 1980s and the 1990s.25

Significantly, mainstream contemporary art museums have enthusiastically

showcased Walker’s art to the public, museums that specialize in the display and

interpretation of black art and culture have avoided the inclusion of Walker’s art within

their exhibitions. The disparity between the percentage of mainstream art museums that

have exhibited Walker’s art compared to the number of identity-based museums that have

shown her work is striking. In 2003, SMH became the first museum that focuses on the

display of art created by people pf African descent to exhibit Walker’s art. 0 f \From 2005

through 2006, the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), located in San Francisco,

premiered Linkages and Themes in the African Diaspora: Selections from the Eileen

Harris Norton and Peter Norton Contemporary Art Collections, a group exhibition that

included Walker’s art. With the exception of the SMH and the MoAD, there have not

been any other black art or black historical museums that have featured Walker’s work to

date. Lowery Stokes Sims, the director of the SMH, has explained the exhibition choices

the museum staff has made by stating “Anything can be shown in a museum. The

25 James, 51. 26 Shaw, 123. 27 The Museum of the African Diaspora,Past Exhibitions [Website] (2006, accessed 6 May 2006); available from http://www.moadsf.org/exhibits/past/linkages/index.html.

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question is how the museum wants to position itself in the larger art world. We want to

7o enlarge the discourse on African-American artists.”

The role of identity-based museums within the United States has been a topic of

debate as the percentage of museums that can be placed within this category continue to

rise. Advocates of identity-based museums have argued that museums of this nature have

the potential to serve as an intermediary between the racial/ethnic group that the museum

represents and other racial/ ethnic groups, forging a crucial dialogue on issues of identity

and experience within the United States. Opponents have warned that identity-based

museums have the dangerous potential to increase fragmentation among racial and ethnic

groups within the US. 29

Often, identity-based museums are expected to fulfill certain obligations that are

not necessarily associated with mainstream museums. A significant number of identity-

based museums have mission statements that encompass social, political and community

engagement goals that extend beyond the presentation of culturally significant objects.

While renowned mainstream institutions are expected to showcase exhibitions of the

utmost quality, identity-based museums can be expected to produce supreme exhibitions

that also participate in the communal uplift of the identity group that is featured within

the museum.30

It is not uncommon for racial/ethnic-based museums to reside within the

community the museum represents. Racial/ethnic museums are frequently considered to

be “advocates for ethnic communities, often becoming directly involved in community

28 Rhonda Roumani and Columbia University,Portrait o f a Museum (2002, accessed 1 June 2005); available from http://www.jm.columbia.edu/studentwork/race/2002/art-rhonda.shtml. 29 Loukaitou-Sideris and Grodach: 51-54. 30 Ibid, 55.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 11 ( development, political action, and protest.” Similar to Walker, SMH is rebellious in

nature and the institution breaks with tradition. According to Sims, “The Studio Museum

is a museum within a community, but it is not a community museum.” The gentrification

of Harlem continues at a speedy pace. There are members of the African American and

artistic community that are concerned about the museum’s role within this urban reality.

Even though the number of art galleries in Harlem has increased dramatically, there are

members of the local community that share Kira Lynn Harris’s concern. Harris, a former

artist in resident at SMH explains “The last thing people want to see is that Harlem is

becoming like Greenwich Village where people talk about black history, but there are no

1 1 black people to be found. The way gentrification goes that’s a totally a possibility.”

Black artists and museums that concentrate on the history and culture of people of

African descent face similar expectations from a significantly large segment of the black

community. Both black artists and black museums are expected to contribute to black

communal empowerment. In order to combat derogatory, hegemonic definitions of

blackness promoted by mainstream society within the United States, black cultural

leaders such as W.E.B Du Bois and Alain Locke publicly asserted that art created by

black artists should instill black communal pride. Locke’s legendary text, The New

Negro: Voices o f the Harlem Renaissance, published in 1925, urged all black artists to

create art that would celebrate positivistic forms of black identity while simultaneously

proving the fallacy of painful, racist stereotypes that proliferated within our nation’s

cultural landscape. At present, derogatory images of people of African descent are still

shown by mainstream media. Due to this reality, a significant portion of the black

31 Ibid, 55. 32 Lowery Stokes Sims and Kira Lynn Harris are quoted in Roumani, 4.

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community that has lived through the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Empowerment

Movement, the Feminist Movement, and even younger members of the black community

continue to expect that black artists will promote racial empowerment. Walker’s art

clearly breaks with this tradition. Her blatant disregard for communal expectation maybe

one of the main reasons that black museums have avoided including Walker’s art within

^•3 their exhibitions.

Importantly, SMH’s display of Walker’s art calls attention to the lack of risk a

significant number of other black museums are willing to take. SMH and MoAD are the

only black museums that have displayed Walker’s art. Although Walker’s art is

controversial, black museums are one of the safest environments to discuss Walker’s art.

According to historian Faith Davis Ruffins, black museums were originally utilized as a

communal space where different ideologies about race could be debated. When Walker’s

artwork is not displayed within black cultural institutions, museum administrators are

omitting a generation of postmodern black artists that incorporate minstrelsy into their

artwork. Black museums that refuse to present Walker’s art have failed to include the

diversity of thought and experience that exists within the black artistic community.

SMH and WAC are both institutions that are willing to take programmatic risks.

WAC has developed a reputation as one of the most cutting edge contemporary art

museums within the US. The museum does not shy away from the presentation of the

avant-garde. The staffs dedication to the presentation of progressive art has led them to

turn down significant sums of state funding in order to avoid any incidents reminiscent of

the “culture wars” and the NEA controversies during the late 1980s and early 1990s.34

33 Shaw, 27-29, 103-123. 34 Hugh Eakin, "Crowds? No, Thanks. Same for Grants," , 20 March 2005, 30.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Within Quartet, WAC presented Walker along with three other artists that the

museum has acquired for their collection. The timing of Quartet was important. Quartet

was featured as one of the main exhibitions displayed for the premiere of the WAC’s new

architectural addition in the spring of 2005. Unlike SMH, WAC did not situate Walker’s

art within a black aesthetic. Instead, her art was displayed with art work created by three

contemporary Caucasian artists that have explored a range of topics including sexuality,

fantasy, mythology, and appropriation. The exhibition marks the fourth time that Walker

has been presented at the WAC. Quartet featured her new artistic experimentation. While

museum attendees could view Walker’s legendary silhouettes placed directly on the wall

in the form of a mural, they were also exposed to a new animated film created by the

artist and a selection of her drawings. 35

A comparison of the SMH, and WAC will illustrate the different techniques that

art museums have used in order to handle the presentation of extremely sensitive and

complex artistic subject matter. The fact Walker has received numerous solo exhibitions

denotes that Walker is a highly sought after artist with an accomplished career. However,

a group exhibition that can allow the viewer to situate Walker’s art within a broader

dialogue about art work created by black artists may be one of the best options for art

museums that do not have a substantial history of presenting black artists. While

mainstream contemporary art museums should not be discouraged from presenting

Walker’s art, the following thesis aims to offer suggestions for creating an environment

that encourages dialogue about artistic intent, identity and audience reception.

35 Walker Art Center, Walker Art Center Current Exhibitions [Website] (2005, accessed 5 June 2005); available from http://visualarts.walkerart.org/detail.wac7icUl 525&title=Current%2...

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In order to accomplish this study, I have analyzed the language used by museum

professionals, art critics and the press to describe Walker and her art in the two separate

exhibitions. I have critiqued the public framing of Walkers’ art and analyzed the

marketing materials that were used to publicize her exhibitions at each museum

compared. I have also analyzed the educational materials that were available for

exhibition attendees including exhibition wall text, catalogues, the museum’s website and

other technological devices that were offered to the viewer. In addition to the objective

analysis of public materials, I have interviewed relevant museum professionals. Published

interviews of noteworthy museum professionals have been used in the place of in-person

interviews when a face to face interview was not possible due to the demanding

schedules of museum professionals.

To aid my analysis I have included theories proposed by art scholars, art critics,

and museum professionals, particularly with respect to an aesthetic critique of Walker’s

art. Furthermore, I have also included an analysis of how art museums have addressed

identity politics, the inclusion and exclusion of black art within the museum sector, and

sources that discuss black feminist art. To further the investigation of my question, I have

also reviewed books and periodicals that provide theoretical discussions about some of

the unique problems museums that focus solely on the presentation of art created by

people of African descent have faced. Finally, I studied sources that discuss the history of

the creation of museums that focus solely on the presentation of black art, history and

culture.

Chapter two provides an analysis of Walker’s art. Within this chapter I explain the

way in which Walker’s art moves beyond the act of simply mimicking stereotypes.

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Instead, Walker’s subversive illustrations scrutinize racial and gender stereotypes and

expose the influence stereotypes have on our ways of seeing the “other.” In chapter three

I will impart a description of the way in which SMH has presented Walker’s art and in

chapter four I will critique of the presentation of Walker’s art at WAC. Chapters three

and four are devoted to each museum, the different techniques that each museum has

used in order to frame Walker’s artistic vision for the public, and the messages that the

museum staff sought to convey to the public by presenting her work. Each chapter

provides background information about the creation of each museum and the changes

each museum has undergone as time has progressed. After each museum has been

analyzed separately, the conclusion of this thesis will compare the presentation of Kara

Walker’s art at SMH and WAC and will also offer suggestions for how contemporary art

museums can improve the presentation of Walker’s art.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 2

SUBVERSIVE MAMMIES AND JEZEBELS

The stereotype erases a group’s varied human relationships and desires and thus erases the actual complex social and psychological relationships that turn groups of people into reifications or fetishes. The stereotype condenses the resulting distortions into a kind of objectivity, or object form, that manages what can’t be managed otherwise.” Avery F Gordon, "More on Positive and Negative Images: The Case of Kara Walker, Artist," in Keeping Good Time: Reflections on Knowledge, Power, and People

Kara Walker’s art displays a brutal rehashing of both historical and present-day

race and gender relations. Her art provides a harsh depiction of past and present race and

gender identity. Walker’s artistic works have taken many forms including her legendary

silhouette installations, drawings, paintings and collage. She does not limit herself to

static forms. Walker has used animation and performance art as a medium to visualize the

way in which Americans have consciously or unconsciously interwoven racial and

gendered stereotypes into their skewed understanding of the “other.”

In Walker’s art, no one is left unscathed. White men, white women, black men

and black women all receive Walker’s criticism. In her seductive illustrations truth and

fiction, past and present merge as the viewer is pulled into a visually stunning nightmare.

19

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Importantly, Walker incorporates an honest look at herself and her own insecurities

about her racial and gender identity. Her personal memories involving racially charged

conflicts and the traumas that have resulted from these occurrences infuse her work.

Walker’s artistic testimonials do more than simply mimic slavery stereotypes and

minstrel shows. Her artwork maintains a subversive stance. Walker moves beyond the act

of reproducing race and gender stereotypes - she interrogates many race and gender

constructs that have saturated both United States and international culture.

Motherhood, black femininity and sexuality are themes that Walker frequently

explores within her artwork. Walker’s artistic creations often display the full spectrum of

slavery and minstrelsy stereotypes including “sambos,” “pickaninnies,” “mandingos” and

other designations that were used to describe people of African descent. Through her

depiction of the “mammy” and the “jezebel” stereotype, however, Walker is able to

analyze how her own sense of self is connected to a complex history of race and gender

oppression in the United States. Not surprisingly, the messages conveyed through the

illustration of the “mammy” and “jezebel” are her most subversive. The inclusion of

these two characters allows Walker to illustrate the ways in which slavery and minstrel

show stereotypes have had an adverse effect on our understanding of black femininity

and sexuality.

Feminist and African American Studies scholar Patricia Hill Collins provides an

analysis of the historical and contemporary stereotypes that have been used to control

black women and skew our perception of black female sexuality within the United States.

In her text Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of

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Empowerment Collins explains that the sexual objectification of the black body during

the transatlantic slave trade made it blatantly clear that people of African descent had no

claim over their own physicality. During this time the black body was considered to be

oversexed by nature. Historically, racist and sexist Western mythology has symbolically

associated the black body with erotic taboos and sexual indecency.

In her text, Collins explains that the “mammy” stereotype and the “jezebel”

stereotype are interrelated. Whereas the “mammy” stereotype was defined as a woman of

African descent that did not fit narrow, Eurocentric beauty standards and was therefore

devoid of any sexual impulses, the “jezebel” stereotype assumed that young black women

have animalistic, overblown sexual instincts. Collins argues that black women were

placed in one of the two categories. Both categories served the purpose of justifying the

sexual abuse and economic exploitation of the black body. The “jezebel” stereotype was

used to justify the rape of numerous women of African descent during slavery and the

“mammy” stereotype was an economically efficient model that rationalized black female

domestic servitude.

During the slave trade and minstrel era a “mammy” was depicted as a sexually

undesirable black female servant, firmly associated with domestic activities within the

homes of established Caucasians. In Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representation,

African and African American art history professor Michael D. Harris explains that

according to American hegemonic thought:

36 Patricia Hill Collins, "Mammies, Matriarchs, and Other Controlling Images," Blackin Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 2000), 12-1A. 37 Ibid., 74, 81-82, 84.

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the mammy was the ultimate servant; the most common image of a mammy was the opposite of idealized white womanhood, which itself was a male fantasy. She was large, dark-skinned, usually smiling, and covered from neck to ankle with clothing. She wore a bandanna and an apron, both of which signified that she was a worker doing cleaning, laundry, or cooking. And she was a myth.

The “mammy” figure has been depicted as a black female wet nurse, raising the children

of the white family she works for and happily establishing harmony in a white household

through her domestic labor. Her physical appearance, which was the opposite of the

dominant white definition of female beauty, raised white women above black women in

the United States social hierarchy. The “mammy” myth also provided an anti­

miscegenation message. Her image masked any desire that white men could have felt

toward black women because it was assumed that a white male would never find a

woman of this nature physically attractive. Mythically, the “mammy” was a soothing

presence instead of a potential hazard within a white, patriarchal family. 39

Geographically, the Southern area of the United Sates has a well-documented

history of publicly celebrating “mammies.” In 1910 the Black Mammy Memorial

Institute was established in Atlanta. The Institute provided training for young black

women in the cultivation of domestic skills. In 1923 the Daughters of the Confederate

lobbied Congress to approve a site in the Capitol for the placement of a “mammy” bronze

monument.40 Moreover, the “mammy” stereotype has factored into the subconscious,

moving beyond the confines of the Southern culture. Aunt Jemima is an example of a

recognizable “mammy” that most people in the United States have been exposed to

38 Michael D Harris, "Aunt Jemima, the Fantasy Black Mammy/Servant,"Colored in Pictures: Race and Visual Representation (North Carolina: The University North o f North Carolina Press, 2003), 92-93. 39 Ibid., 101. 40 Ibid., 92.

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through popular culture and commerce. Aunt Jemima was also referred to as

“handkerchief head.” She was often illustrated with a handkerchief, a symbol

communicating domestic service, which covered her hair and made her look sexually

undesirable.41 Aunt Jemima was a popular minstrel show character and in 1889, Chris L.

Rutt and Charles G. Underwood used this character to promote their instant pancake mix.

She quickly became a well-known, financially successful trademark for their pancake

mix company. In 1926, Rutt and Underwood sold their product and trademark to Quaker

Oats 42 Aunt Jemima’s name and image is still associated with the company’s instant

pancakes.43 Hattie McDaniel, an African American actress, won an Oscar for her

portrayal of a “mammy” in the iconic film Gone With the Wind.44

The “mammy” stereotype is still imbedded in the our subconscious.

Contemporary images of “mammies” may not look like an exact replica of the minstrel

show character created in 1889; however, current depictions of the “mammy” stereotype

do communicate the same message. Although Quaker Oats products no longer show Aunt

Jemima with a handkerchief on her head, the company still relies on the image of a black

woman as a happy, non-threatening, asexual, domestic servant in order to sell their

pancake products. Furthermore, the “mammy” stereotype has also become a global icon.

41 Donald Bogle, "Black Beginnings: From Uncle Tom's Cabin to the Birth of a Nation " in Representing Blackness: Issues in Film and Video, ed. Valerie Smith (New Jersey: Rutgers University, 1997), 18. 42 The Museum o f Public Relations, The Advertiser's Holy Trinity: Aunt Jemima, Rastus, and Uncle Ben [Webpage] ( 2006, accessed 25 March); available from http://www.prmuseum.com/kendrix/trinity.html.; The Quaker Oats Company,Aunt Jemima [Webpage] (2006, accessed 25 March); available from http:// www.auntj emima. com/. 43 The Quaker Oats Company, (accessed). 44 Harris, 94.

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Trans-national corporations and the pervasive distribution of United States culture

have smoothly disseminated slavery’s stereotypes, including the “mammy”. In 1989,

Benetton, a popular clothing franchise, released a controversial print advertisement

entitled Breast Feeding. Breast Feeding displayed a black woman nursing a white baby.

The advertisement presented historical “mammy” motifs, including an emphasis on the

black model’s dark skin, which was juxtaposed against a pale, white baby. The only

section of the black woman’s body that is included in the ad is her chest. The black

woman is wearing a Benetton sweater left open in order to expose her breasts, one of

which is covered by the baby she is nursing. The advertisement did not include the full

body of the black model. Within Benetton’s ad, the black female breast becomes a

symbol that represents white sustenance by a black other. Breast Feeding implies that the

black woman’s body is not her own, but a vehicle for white nurturance. In their text The

Black Female Body: A Photographic History, art historian and African American studies

scholar Deborah Willis and artist Carla Williams discuss the Benetton ad controversy.

Willis and Williams explain that:

Although the ad campaign was conceived to foster the notion of racial harmony, the image of a black woman as nursemaid to a white child stirred up painful memories for many viewers and positioned the black female body once again in the role of nurturing mother to white people. Benetton ad campaigns have frequently used the opposition between black and white skin to sell their products. This iconic and ironic image openly and unabashedly evokes the historical mammy.45

45 Deborah Willis and Carla Williams, "The Cultural Body,"The in Black Female Body, a Photographic History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002), 133.

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Figure. 1. United Colors of Benetton, Breast Feeding, 1989. Illustration courtesy of Benetton Group. Reprinted from, Press Area Image Gallery - Institutional Campaigns [Website] (United Colors of Benetton, 8 May 2005, accessed 3 June 2006); available from http://press.benettongroup.com/ben en/image gallery/campaigns/?branch id=1109.

Benetton received complaints from African Americans, however, the

advertisement also garnered international acclaim. Breast Feeding received awards in

Italy, Austria, Denmark, France, and Holland. Significantly, out of all of Benetton’s

advertisements, Breast Feeding has received the most awards.46 Thus, it seems, the image

of the “mammy” continues to be a source of comfort in certain sectors of the United

States and abroad.

The “jezebel” stereotype is the opposite of the “mammy” stereotype. A “jezebel”

was considered to be a sexually aggressive black woman who would encourage white

men to engage in interracial sexual activity.47 Sexual relationships between white men

and black women were a societal taboo, so while the “mammy” was considered to be a

household comfort within a patriarchal, white family, the “jezebel” was deemed a societal

threat. As Harris explains:

46 Ibid, 134. 47 Michael D Harris, "Jezebel, Olympia, and the Sexualized Woman,"Colored in Pictures: Race and Visual Representation (North Carolina: The University North o f North Carolina Press, 2003), 135.

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the notion of the sexualized black woman had no place in polite society, especially as symbolized in visual expression. The renegade sexual liaisons of white males with slave women presented moral, ethical, and legal conundrums and contradictions for a social order dependent on the exploitation of black social inferiority and the containment of sex within marriage. These conflicts were unresolvable though well understood by all.

The “jezebel” stereotype allowed antebellum society to place blame on black women for

any interracial sexual activity that occurred outside of the confines of white marriage.

The “mammy” stereotype and the “jezebel” stereotype were both used to communicate an

anti-miscegenation message in the United States.

The image of the “mammy,” the “jezebel” and other slavery-era, minstrel show

stereotypes traveled around the world. Black collectables, also known as black

memorabilia, were objects created directly after Reconstruction that depicted slavery-era

and minstrel show stereotypes. Tens of thousands of these objects circulated within the

United States, Europe and Asia from the 1880s though the 1950s. Cookie jars, salt and

pepper shakers, post cards, and even toys for children reflected slavery-era, minstrel

show stereotypes. These objects, offered to the buying public as nonnative, supposedly

desirable collectables, perpetuated the idea that black people were inferiors, “others,”

distinctly different from white people.49 Walker and other African American scholars and

artists have developed collections of these objects for their own historical analysis. These

memorabilia and the racist stereotypes on which they are based have influenced Walker’s

artistic creations.50

48 Ibid, 137. 49 Kenneth W Goings, Mammy and Unice Mose (Indianapolis: Indian University Press, 1994), xiii-xxiv, 48. 50 Liz Armstrong, "Kara Walker " inNo Place (Like Home), ed. Kathleen Mclean (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1997), 102.

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In Walker’s artwork the past and the present blur together, asserting that these old

stereotypes are the root of contemporary stereotypes about black female sexuality. Her

images also present an unsettling combination of personal narrative and United States

history. Walker’s move from California to Atlanta, Georgia at the age of thirteen had a

traumatic effect on her understanding of how gender and racial identity is perceived.51

Walker explained during an interview at the Museum of Modem Art (MoMA):

In Georgia I became black in more senses than just the kind of multicultural acceptance that I grew up with in California. Blackness became a very loaded subject, a very loaded thing to be — all about forbidden passions and desires, and all about a history that’s still living, very present.. .the shame of the South and the shame of the South’s past; its legacy and contemporary troubles.52

Walker further explained that she was considered to be a “jezebel” while living in an area

where the Ku Klux Klan had meetings on a regular basis.53 According to an interview in

Flash Art, Walker received threatening letters from the Ku Klux Klan when she was

engaged in interracial relationships while living in Atlanta.54 Walker’s existence and

sense of self were altered by her experiences in Atlanta.

The climate of racial intolerance and hatred in Atlanta had a destabilizing effect

on Walker’s psychological development into young womanhood. According to African

American Studies scholar Manning Marable, the development of a stereotype involves

the formation of a label, image or set of characteristics that disregard a group’s unique

51 Corns and Hobbs, 435. 52 Museum o f Modem Art, Conversations with Contemporary Artists: Kara Walker [Webpage] (1999, accessed 28 December 2005); available from http://www.moma.org/onlineprojects/conversations/kw_f.html. 53 Ibid; Corris and Hobbs, 435. 54 Saltz, 86.

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culture and history - negating the possibility of self-definition.55 Walker has publicly

explained her own battles with internalized oppression while citing the power of

stereotypes. In order to cope with the pain of being castigated as an eroticized “other,”

Walker believes that she began to play into these assumptions about her sexual identity.56

Walker explains:

I figured out I was a milestone in people’s sexual experience - to have made it with a black woman was one of those things to check off on your list of personal sexual accomplishments. That already has a slightly masochistic effect: to have just been the body for somebody’s life story. I guess that’s when I decided to offer up my side-long glances: to be a slave just a little bit....So I used this mythic, fictional, kind of slave character to justify myself, or reinvent myself in some rn other situations.

Walker’s experiences in Atlanta echo Marable’s assertion. More than a century after the

slave trade ended and through the Jim Crow era, black women are still placed within

co derogatory social categories.

Walker both embraced and challenged the pervasive effects of slavery’s history

through her work. The lengthy titles for her artworks are references to published slave

narratives reflecting Walker’s feelings of being sent back in time while living in Atlanta.

She also incorporates her personalized experience of slave-era attitudes by signing her

name using various pseudonyms that she has created for herself. For an installation

displayed at Wooster Gardens, Kara Walker signed her work “Miss K Walker, a Free

Negress of Noteworthy Talent.”59 For the Negress Notes, a series of Walker’s drawings

55 Corris and Hobbs, 428. 56 Museum of Modem Art, (accessed). 57. Saltz, 86. 58 Collins, 69-84; Paula Giddings,When and Where I Enter: The Impact o f Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: Bantam Books, 1984), 31. 59 Saltz, 82.

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displayed at the San Francisco Museum of Modem Art (SFMoMA), Walker signed her

name as “Missus K.E.B Walker.” Walker was bom into a middle-class family. Her alter-

ego names fuse her own identity with those of black middle-class women writers from

the past, who published their work under names such as Mrs. A.E. Johnson and Mrs. N.F

Mossell.60 Through her artwork Walker maintains a complex analysis of her own

internalized oppression. Her personal testimonials are placed within the context of United

States history. Atlanta’s hostile racial climate proved to Walker that time does not move

in a linear direction.

Race is not defined by color within Walker’s artwork. Usually, in Walker’s

silhouette installations all of the characters, regardless of their race, are illustrated using

black paper cut-outs placed on white backgrounds. Often, Walker uses a similar

technique for her animated silhouette films, drawings and paintings. The majority of

Walker’s drawings include figures that are black outlines on white paper, and in Walker’s

paintings, each character has been painted using the same paint color.61 Instead of relying

on skin color as a signifier for racial identity, the spectator is forced to assign racial

meaning to each character through their understanding of racial stereotypes. Signifiers

such as exaggerated protruding lips, thick hair that sticks up on a character’s head and a

character’s posture denote his or her race and gender. Walker depicts race and gender

through the illustration of differences in facial features and body types as defined by

60 Shaw, 51-52. 61 Walker has created a few works of art that illustrate characters with different skin colors. The overwhelming majority of her art does not depict characters with different skin colors. Most scholarly publications that include a critique of Walker’s art do not provide an analysis of her work that includes illustrations of characters with different skin colors. Additional scholarship providing a discussion o f this unique category of Walker’s art would be beneficial for art historians and art administrators.

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racist eighteenth and nineteenth-century biological theory and minstrel stereotypes.

Ultimately, Walker’s work forces the spectator to explore various fictional elements and

contradictions inherent in the unstable category of race. One of these contradictions is the

fact that we depend on physical signifiers in order to designate an individual’s or group’s

race. This dependence is in direct conflict with highly regarded contemporary racial

theories that define race as a social construction. The end result is that as viewers we are

forced to renegotiate stereotypes to some degree in order to understand Walker’s art.

Walker’s silhouettes have received substantial attention for their visually complex

symbols and laden images. Her paintings and drawings are just as complex, yet they have

received less commentary from art critics and scholars. Though not as formally seductive

as her silhouettes, Walker’s drawing Untitled (Destroying the Terror) (figure 2), created

in 1994, is a semiotically dense work of art.Untitled (Destroying the Terror), owned by

the Walker Art Center, features a nude, fanatical slave mother about to murder her child.

The drawing depicts a naked, androgynous child. The child’s leg is pushing off of the

mother in an effort to escape a deadly fate.

The slave mother illustrated in Walker’s drawing is not depicted in a sympathetic

manner. Her exaggerated protruding lips, which occupy most of the woman’s face, are in

accordance with minstrelsy imagery. The slave woman’s nudity in the drawing implies

her sexual availability. One possible reading of Untitled (Destroying the Terror) is that

the child, produced from a sexual encounter involving a slave woman and a slave owner,

is the “terror.” Walker portrays a crazed, sexually charged woman unfit to raise children.

The image highlights the stereotype of the “jezebel” as an aggressive threat to social

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stability. Untitled (Destroying the Terror) illustrates one of the main messages

communicated through the perpetuation of the “jezebel” stereotype; slave trade and post­

slavery era anti-miscegenation rhetoric.

.{a -//fVp.

Figure. 2. Kara Walker, Untitled (Destroying the Terror), 1994. Illustration courtesy of Brent Sikkema Gallery, New York City. Reprinted from, [Website] (Walker Art Center, Collections, accessed 18 November 2005); available from http://collections. walkerart .org/ item/obi ect/7655.

The child also represents the horrors of life in bondage. Clearly, the mother would

prefer that the child die rather than live as a slave. Walker’s artistic production has been

influenced by Toni Morrison’s novels. There are many parallels between Morrison’s

novel, Beloved and Walker’s Untitled (Destroying the Terror). Beloved is the story of

Sethe, a woman who has lived through the horrors of slavery and has killed her daughter

62 Edna Moshenson, "The Emancipation Approximation," inKara Walker: Deutshe Bank Collection, ed. Adriane Grigoteit and Friedhelm Hutte (Frankfurt am Main: Deutsche Bank Art, 2003), 55.

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in order to spare her daughter a life of extreme suffering. After Sethe has escaped to the

North, and slavery has become illegal, Sethe is haunted by the ghost of her murdered

daughter. Morrison interwove numerous slave narratives within her text. The characters

and the overall plot of Beloved contain historical references to the former lives of slaves.

The character of Sethe is based on the experiences of Margaret Gamer, a slave woman of

African descent who, in 1856, tried to escape a life in bondage by running away from the

plantation with her children. The state authorities captured Gamer before she reached

freedom. Gamer chose to kill one of her daughters with a butcher knife when she realized

she had lost all hope of freedom. According to the Kentucky press Gamer professed that

given a chance she would kill all of her children in order to spare them from a life of

bondage.64 Untitled (Destroying the Terror) therefore plausibly illustrates the anguish

and grief felt by countless slave women in the past. Like the character of Sethe, Walker’s

spectators are subjected to the nightmarish experience of being haunted by slaveries

past.65

Walker’s John Brown (figure 3), a painting created in 1996, highlights the artist’s

tendency to actively question and investigate racial folklore that still lingers in the United

States cultural landscape. John Brown was a radical white abolitionist, convicted of

treason and conspiracy to incite a slave rebellion. He was publicly executed in 1859.

63 Shaw, 46; I have provided a brief plot summary of Toni Morrison’s novel,Beloved ; Toni Morrison, Beloved (New York: Penguin Group, 1987). 64 Gerda Lemer, "The Case o f Margaret Gamer," Blackin Women in White America: A Documentary History, ed. Gerda Lemer (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), 60-63. 65 Shaw, 27.

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Walker’sJohn Brown portrays a revisionist interpretation of Brown’s legendary last

moments before his public execution.66

>

Figure. 3. Kara Walker. John Brown. 1996. Watercolor and gouache on paper, 65 x 51 in. Illustration courtesy of Brent Sikkema Gallery, New York City. Reprinted from, Ian Berry and others, eds., Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003), 21.

66 Ibid, 169.

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In 1859, news stories published in periodicals recounted Brown affectionately

kissing a young slave boy held by a slave woman as he was led by law officials towards

his public hanging. Poems and folk songs were written during this era that described this

same scene and lamented John Brown’s publicly expressed fondness for the slave child

and mother, who said their goodbyes during his last day alive. Brown became an folk

hero. Beloved by abolitionists, his legacy was also carried on by African American male

scholars including Fredrick Douglass, George Washington Williams, and W.E.B Du

Bois. Douglass helped establish the John Brown professorship in 1881. Both Williams

and Du Bois wrote scholarly publications that celebrated Brown’s actions.67

Within John Brown Walker incorporates art historical references to both black

white artists. The legendary scene that occurred before Brown’s execution has been

portrayed by male artists including Thomas Satterwhite Noble, Thomas Hovenden, and

Jacob Lawrence.68 In both Noble’s 1867 painting (figure 4) and in Hovenden’s 1884

painting, the slave woman and child are strategically placed below John Brown. John

Brown is depicted as a physically strong, confident patriarch. The humble slave woman

kneels before him and raises her child towards the heroic abolitionist. Behind the

kneeling slave woman, there appears to be a “mammy” who embraces two white

children. Noble’s painting presents a social, racial and gendered hierarchy, where black

women are dependent upon and serve a powerful, white male.

67 Ibid, 69-71. 68 Ibid, 68.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure. 4. Thomas Satterwhite Noble, John Brown’s Blessings, 1867. Oil on canvas. Illustration courtesy of the New York Historical Society, New York City. Reprinted from, Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Seeing the Unspeakable: The Art of Kara Walker (London: Duke University Press, 2004), 81.

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Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, an art historian and African American studies scholar,

provides a critique of Walker’s John Brown in her text Seeing the Unspeakable: The Art

of Kara Walker. Shaw argues that Walker’s John Brown contrasts sharply with previous

depictions of the abolitionist that Thomas Satterwhite Noble, Thomas Hovenden, and

Jacob Lawrence created. Painted with wispy, graceful brush strokes, Walker’s John

Brown depicts a disgruntled, elderly, physically out of shape white abolitionist. Shaw

states that Brown turns his head away from a young slave boy who is sucking on Brown's

nipple. Closer inspection might lead a viewer to think that he is instead biting Brown’s

hand.69 At the same time, Shaw sees the disinterested slave mother as paying little

attention to her son or to Brown since her eyes gaze past them. Walker’s John Brown

subverts the artworks that previously depicted the iconic abolitionist. Although Walker’s

artwork has been criticized by some feminists, John Brown provides interesting

commentary about past and present patriarchal ideology, race and gender identity, hinting

at a black feminist, artistic framework.

Walker’s John Brown does not communicate that the abolitionist movement was

an insignificant moment in America’s history. Instead, her art critiques patriarchal

assumptions and United States mythology that are imbedded in previous recollections of

Brown. Walker’s depiction of the child and his ambiguous but clearly adversarial

relationship to Brown provides a fascinating illustration of the relationship between black

men and white men in their struggle for power. Shaw explains that Walker’s

69 On page 72 inSeeing the Unspeakable: the Art of Kara Walker, Shaw admits that Walker’sJohn Brown is “hard to read” due to the way in which she painted the illustrations. Contrary to Shaw’s analysis, the young boy in John Brown may not be sucking on Brown’s nipple. Instead, it appears the child may be biting another section of Brown’s body, such as his hand. Walker’s work is ambiguous and there are always multiple and different plausible readings of her illustrations.

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subversion lies in the child’s attempt to draw sustenance not from its black mother, but instead from the power of martyred masculine whiteness that Brown’s body represents in American visual culture. The tortured expression on Brown’s face and the horribly stretched skin of his breast implies that the slave child is sucking at the teat of a white patriarchy that is painfully dry. 70

She sees the slave child as aggressively trying to obtain or attack white patriarchal power,

rendering his mother useless since, in this historical scenario, black women lack any

institutional power. Brown’s facial expression denotes his frustration towards a black

woman who does not humble herself before him and a slave child trying to drain him of

societal power.

While Walker critiques white patriarchy within John Brown, she also provides

commentary about iconic black male artists and black masculinity. Shaw notes that

William H. Johnson’s and Jacob Lawrence’s depictions of Brown conveniently left out

the slave woman who was always included in older depictions of Brown created by white

male artists.71 What Shaw does not communicate in her text is that Walker’s John Brown

can also open up a discussion of the limitations for black women that existed within

Black Nationalism and Black Empowerment rhetoric, often communicated through the

artwork created by black male artists, such as Jacob Lawrence, who sought to uplift the

black community through art and present complimentary images of black people to white

society.

Shaw also does not provide a detailed analysis concerning the illustration of the

African American boy in Walker’sJohn Brown. The child’s facial expression denotes

that he is both afraid of Brown and afraid that his mother may lose her grip and let him

70 Ibid, 72-73. 71 Ibid, 98-101.

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fall out of her arms. His outstretched hand, aimed at his mother conveys the child’s fear

that his mother will abandon him.

The boy’s worried facial expression provides another visual critique of the

conflict-ridden relationship between black women and black men, and black men and

white men, in their struggle for empowerment. The boy becomes a vehicle for Walker’s

critique of patriarchal cycles of violence. The black male child appears to both fear white

male patriarchy, but he also aims to acquire the power that white men have as patriarchs

through his emotional relationship to Brown’s body. Black men have reason to fear white

patriarchy. Within the United States black men have been victims of violent crime

resulting from white supremacy and white male fear of the “other”. However, black

women have been oppressed by black men who internalize a patriarchal model of

masculinity. According to Collins, both white and black histories are connected through

shared instances of sexism and violent abuse of power. Collins explains:

Examining these interdependent group histories often reveals painful contradictions.. ..claims by some African American men that racial oppression is more fundamental then gender oppression sound hollow in a context of shirked responsibility for their violence against African American women....moral positions as survivors of one expression of systemic violence become eroded in the absence of accepting responsibility for other expressions of systemic violence.72

In John Brown, Walker illustrates a cycle of oppression. Positions of power shift and the

boy is placed in a precarious position where he symbolizes both the oppressed and the

oppressor. The slave mother appears to ignore her child because his attachment to a

72 Patricia Hill Collins, "U.S. Black Feminism in Transnational Context " Blackin Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge. 2000), 247.

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patriarchal construction of masculinity will turn her child into a man who oppresses black

women.

One of the most striking elements of Walker’s art is that no one is able to escape

scrutiny. Her visual assessment of gender identity within the black community and the

white community is frank. John Brown critiques a conservative form of Black

Nationalism, which left out the perspectives of black women and relied on a patriarchal

notion of masculinity. The slave woman depicted in John Brown is an ambivalent figure.

She does not bow down in servitude. However, she does not actively protest her lowly

position. The slave woman in John Brown is not heroic, but in contrast to Lawrence’s

representation, she is also not rendered invisible.

Walker’s silhouette installations also provide commentary about our

understanding of race and gender identity through her incorporation of historical analysis.

Silhouettes were a craft that white women often produced and were considered to be a

form of inexpensive portraiture during the nineteenth century. While contemporary

popular culture has used the silhouette as a symbol that communicates nostalgia for the

past, the problematic history of the silhouette is usually hidden from the modern-day

viewer. Silhouettes often drew 0 1 1 nineteen-century biological race theories. Johan Casper

Lavater used the silhouette as a tool to support his beliefs in the pseudo-science of

physiognomy. He theorized that the physical appearance of a group of people determines

their character and identity. Phrenologists, those who studied the shape and size of human

skull to determine identity, character, and mental ability, relied on the theory that race is

biological. They made frequent use of the silhouette, as did Lavater, to rationalize their

beliefs about the superiority of the white race over people of African decent. Walker’s

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use of this nineteenth-century representational practice exposes the racist implications of

silhouette. In Walker’s artwork the silhouette is transformed into a harsh visual reminder

of nineteenth-century bigotry and privilege. 73

Her silhouette installations, created during the 1990s, were a direct reference to

the racial identifications of her audience - Walker addresses both black and white

viewers. Both groups are deliberately made to feel uncomfortable by her artwork. These

two racial groups are placed in a position where each individual comes in contact with his

or her own shadow. The effective use of black silhouettes on a white background

emphasizes the shadowy nature of Walker’s characters. These life-size, black silhouettes

take on the form of ancestral ghosts.74

Walker’s phantasmagoric silhouette installation The End of the Uncle Tom and

the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven (figure 5) was displayed at The Whitney

Biennial in 1997, and at the San Francisco Museum of Modem Art (SFMoMA) in 1998.75

The piece is one of her most well-known silhouette installations. Artist Betye Saar

included a photographic reproduction of The End of the Uncle Tom and the Grand

Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven in a letter campaign to protest the MacArthur

7 f\ Foundations’ financial support of Walker. This installation also contains on-going

themes that are frequently depicted within the full body of Walker’s artwork.

The End of the Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven

contains four sets of images linked to create a unified whole. The characters depicted in

The End of the Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven maintain

73 Carpio 128-130; Corris and Hobbs, 438-439; Shaw 20-22. 74 Carpio, 122-123; Shaw, 39-40, 43. 75 Shaw, 38. 76 Joo, 112-114.

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a haunting life-size stature when displayed in a museum. The spectator is transferred to a

violent time period where the body is exploited for profit and abuse of power is a socially

accepted daily occurrence. These images do not need to be read in chronological order.

Walker communicates her gothic tale regardless of the order in which the spectator

notices the images. For clarity here, a description from left to right is provided.

The story begins with a human pyramid composed of three “mammies.” Two of

them eagerly suckle at each other’s breasts. A young “pickaninnie” is located on the knee

of the “mammy” that is positioned on the bottom of the slave pyramid. The “pickaninnie”

stretches in vain hoping to receive its mother’s milk. The second set of images contains

three “pickaninnies” and a young “mistress” holding an ax backward towards herself.

The first “pickaninnie” in this set holds a tambourine and does a “sambo” dance to his

music while excreting on the ground. His excrement forms a path towards another

“pickaninnie” staring at his “mistress.” Behind the young “mistress,” a young “negress”

waits for the opportunity to stab her “mistress” with a crude, homemade weapon.

The third set illustrates an unsettling scene. This scenario depicts an old slave

“master” with one leg. He maintains his balance by stabbing his sword into a baby

“pickaninnie” with no regret. The “master’s” attention is not directed toward the almost

dead child who is allowing him to stay balanced. Instead he is focused on the act of

sodomy he commits with a young “jezebel.” She turns to watch him with delight. The

“jezebel’s” facial expression communicates that she is actually intrigued by the grotesque

abuse of power. Her gleeful stare painfully communicates the “jezebel” stereotype that is

based upon the colonial identification of black women as oversexed animals.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. , 1995. Cut Paper and and Paper Cut , 1995. (London: Duke University Press, 2004), 2-3. 2004), Press, University Duke (London:

Seeing the Unspeakable: Art The oKara f Walker The EndThe o the f Uncle Tom and the GrandAllegorical Tableau oEva Heavenin f Figure. 5. Kara Walker, Walker, Kara 5. Figure. adhesive on wall, 15 x 35 ft. (dimensions variable). Illustration Courtesy of Brent Sikkema Gallery, New York City. Reprinted from from Reprinted City. York New Gallery, Sikkema Brent of Courtesy Illustration variable). (dimensions ft. x 35 wall, 15 on adhesive Shaw, Bois Du Gwendolyn

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The fourth and final scene depicts a pleading Uncle Tom with a baby

“pickaninnie” attached to his anus by an umbilical cord. His trousers, which have

partially fallen down, expose his anus. A strict “mistress” scolds him with an accusatory

finger. The “mistress” is split in half and has her foot on a female “pickaninnie” head.

Smaller scale icons that represent America’s southern region during the time of

slavery are above these four scenes and thus, visually “in the background.” The

plantation looms above the first two groupings. A small slave lodge, where one slave

watches another run to the outhouse, is located far “behind” the next two scenes. The

placement of the plantation and the slave lodge gives Walker’s images a three-

dimensional effect. It looks as if we could walk to the plantation or the slave lodge

ourselves. Silhouettes of grass and trees are incorporated into the installation in order to

emphasize the southern, rural environment.

Walker collapses the self/other dichotomy within her silhouette installations.

Hegemonic, socially proscribed race and gender constructs within the United States are

defined by binaries. As Collins explains:

binary thinking shapes understandings of human difference. In such thinking, difference is defined in oppositional terms. One part is not simply different from its counterpart; it is inherently opposed to its “other.” Whites, blacks, males and females, thought and feeling are not complementary counterparts - they are fundamentally different entities related only through their definition as opposites.77

The theory that black people embodied every characteristic that white citizens did not

was perpetuated during colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade. This widely held

assumption defined race whenever Africans were present. Walker exposes this theory as

77 Collins, 70

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a work of pure fiction. Both racial groups engage in savage acts that degrade them to an

animalistic state of being. According to The End of the Uncle Tom and the Grand

Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven, the transatlantic slave trade degraded both racial

groups into a sub-human state.

The title of the piece is a direct reference to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s

Cabin. The End of the Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven is

Walker’s interpretation of Stowe’s novel, an interpretation which is devoid of the pious

sentimentality typical of Stowe’s narrative. In Walker’s interpretation the young

“mistress” with the ax is Evangeline St.Clair, a character in Stowe’s novel. Walker refers

to her in the title of her piece as “Eva”. Evangeline St.Clair is a young, white girl known

for her hair and her sweetness. Her hair becomes an idealized emblem that the slaves in

the novel collect. In Stowe’s novel, gentle Uncle Tom loves mistress Evangeline and

carries around a lock of her hair after she has passed on.78 The “mammy” pyramid

depicted in The End of the Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in

Heaven illustrates Walker’s distinctive blend of literary textual references, mythology,

reality, and rebellion through iconic racial symbols. The image provides a direct

reference to Stowe’s text, as there is a nursemaid with the name “Mammy” in Uncle

Tom’s Cabin.

In the “mammy” pyramid the breast becomes a symbol communicating the

exploitation and abuse of the black female body during slavery. The monetary value

placed on the female slave body was dependent on the physical labor black women were

78 Joo, 102-105.

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forced to endure and was also dependent on their reproductive capacities. Slave women

were frequently called upon to fulfill the duties of a wet nurse by providing milk to the

children of their “mistresses.” Slave children were often denied the milk that was

biologically produced for them.79 The little “pickaninnie” baby stretching in vain for its

mother’s milk represents the numerous slave children that were denied maternal care.

Figure. 6. Kara Walker, The End of the Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven, 1995. Cut paper and adhesive on wall, 15 x 35 ft. (detail).

The milk exchanged in the “mammy” pyramid can be compared to the other

bodily fluids that Walker’s characters release. The release of bodily fluids represents the

urgent need for Walker’s characters to get their own voice out. During an interview,

Walker explained that her excretion visuals allude to “...finding one’s voice in the wrong

79 Shaw., 44-47.

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end; searching for ones voice and having it come out the wrong way.”80 Walker’s images

visualize Marable’s assertion that stereotypes negate the possibility of self-actualization.

Breast milk and feces have oppositional meanings in Walker‘s work. While the

illustration of feces denotes the loss of an individuals’ subjectivity due to the

internalization of a stereotype, breast milk represents a nutritive, self-sustaining

O | substance. If the release of bodily fluids in Walker’s art signifies the release of self

expression, the young baby on the bottom of the “mammy” pyramid strains in vain to

receive a form of black identity that is not relegated by a slavery stereotype.

The “mammy” pyramid both confirms and transcends the traditional “mammy”

stereotype. Walker’s “mammies” do replicate aspects of the minstrel “mammy”

caricature. “Mammies” were expected to neglect their own slave children, which is

exactly what the three women in Walker’s piece are doing. Even though there is a hungry

child below them, Walker’s “mammies” are consumed by their own need to receive milk

from each other. However, the “mammies” in Walker’s installation are also erotic. Her

subversive illustration of three black women with their dresses pulled down and their

attention keenly focused on each other’s bodies alters the traditional stereotype of the

“mammy.” During the slavery era and within the confines of minstrelsy, “mammies”

were defined as physically unappealing women, devoid of any sensuality. A “mammy’s”

sole purpose for existence was to serve the needs of her mistress’s child.82 In The End of

the Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven , the three

“mammy’s” exist solely to fulfill the pleasures and needs of each other, not the needs of

80 Kara Walker quoted in Saltz, 84. 81 Corris and Hobbs, 426. 82 Collins, 72-74.

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the white establishment that has claimed ownership of their bodies. Although Walker’s

“mammies” ignore the hungry child below them, these “mammies” are also engaged in

an act of defiance against the slavery establishment by their insistence to serve each

other. Their own bodies are carnally reclaimed for themselves, even against the wishes of

the hungry child that yearns for their sustenance.83

Figure. 7. Kara Walker, The End of the Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven, 1995. Cut paper and adhesive on wall, 15 x 35 ft. (detail).

A comparison of the “mammy” pyramid to the image of the young “jezebel” that

is sexually intertwined with her slave owner highlights the way in which the “mammy”

and the “jezebel” stereotype are connected. Both images contain illustrations of suffering,

neglected black children. Both illustrations also visualize old myths about black female

sexuality.

83 Shaw, 47.

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The meaning of a sign is not stagnant. A visual sign from the nineteenth century

can communicate a different message during the twenty-first century. Signs are

dependent on the meaning assigned to them by the spectator as embedded in his or her OA society. During slavery and the minstrel show period these images communicated a

very specific meaning. These stereotypes had the intentional purpose of communicating

the supposed inferiority of black people. Minstrel shows blatantly degraded black people

through painful humor while raising the white population to the realm of the “civilized.”

However, Walker’s subversive depictions of slavery and minstrel show stereotypes do

more then simply mimic derogatory symbols from the past. Her works of art transcend

the original meaning and purpose of minstrel show imagery. Walker’s art forces the

viewer to contemplate the density of race and gender relations, race and gender-based

experience, and the contradictions inherent in these social categories during the past and

the present.

The display of Walker’s art in museums has generated heated debate within the

art sector. Untitled (Destroying the Terror), John Brown and The End of the Uncle Tom

and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven display themes Walker continues to

repeat as she creates artwork revolving around the helixes of historical and contemporary

myth and reality. Confusingly ambiguous, but visually stunning, Walker’s art employs

the stereotype as a vehicle that can be used to address painfully complex issues of

identity and experience. Walker, however, is an exceptionally controversial figure. The

contention that revolves around Walker is the result of where Walker’s artwork is

84 Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson, "Semiotics and Art History,"Art Bulletin 73, no. 2 (1991): 175,179.

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displayed, her reliance on derogatory iconography, and her blunt verbal statements

regarding race and gender identity.

In 1999 Walker’s installation,A Means to an End... A Shadow Drama in Five

Acts, was pulled at the last minute from the Detroit Institute of the Arts. The museum

DC t t t director was concerned about audience reception. Other scholars, critics and artists have

questioned the museum attendees’ reception of Walker’s art. Depending on the individual

and their understanding of the complexities of race and gender, they may not understand

that Walker encourages the spectator to critically examine their understanding of race and

gender-based identity shaped by the past and the present simultaneously. The display of

Walker’s art is a complex act for museum professionals because her art contains such

sensitive subject matter pertaining to identity illustrated through nebulous imagery.

American museum professionals have struggled to figure out the best way to include art

that explores the experiences of marginalized groups.

85 Carpio, 135.

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THE STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM’S PRESENTATION OF KARA

WALKER’S ART

What often gets forgotten is that the museum may be at its safest when it exhibits “dangerous” art precisely because it insists on participating in rather than avoiding current debates occurring outside the museum. An exhibition can be a forum in which difficult issues are addressed without the expectation that all questions can be resolved or that closure is the desired result.

Reesa Greenberg, "Playing It Safe? The Display of Transgressive Art in the Museum," in Mirroring Evil. Nazi Imagery/Moral Ambiguity/ Contemporary Art

In 2003 the Studio Museum in Harlem (SMH) exhibited Kara Walker: Excavated

from the Heart of a Black Negress, a solo exhibition that displayed Kara Walker’s art.

SMH was the first black museum to exhibit Kara Walker’s art.86 To fully understand how

Walker’s art was presented by SMH, we must understand the museum itself, the way in

which the staff at SMH communicated the meanings embedded in Walker’s art, and the

audience’s reception. The following chapter will begin with a brief description of SMH’s

exhibition history. This chapter will also include an analysis of the educational tools that

accompanied the presentation of Walker’s art. Finally, the critical reception of the

exhibition will be analyzed to determine the reception of Walker’s artwork when it was

presented at SMH.

86 Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw,Seeing the Unspeakable : The Art o f Kara Walker (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 123. 50

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SMH has positioned itself as an alternative to the well-established, mainstream art

museums in New York City. When the museum first opened its doors to the public in

1968, it offered a space where black artists could exhibit their work when most

mainstream art museums excluded their art. There are many museums in the United

States devoted to the display and collection of black history and culture; however, up

until the year 2000, SMH was the only accredited museum in the United States that

specialized in the display of art created by black people. 87 The staff who work for SMH

have made a concerted effort to recruit black professionals for leadership positions when

most mainstream art museums lacked any people of color within their leadership ranks.

Importantly, SMH has taken significant chances, exhibiting controversial artists that other

black museums have shied away from. To wit, the museum’s mission is:

The Studio Museum in Harlem is the nexus for black artists locally, nationally, and internationally and for work that has been inspired and influenced by black culture. It is a site for the dynamic exchange of ideas about art and society. 8

The museum contains a permanent collection of over 1,600 paintings, sculptures,

watercolors, drawings, pastels, prints, photographs, mixed media works, and installations

OQ created by people of African descent. SHM has also provided crucial institutional

support for black artists through their artists-in-residence program. As of 2002, the

museum’s artists-in-residence program has supported the careers of over ninety black

artists.90 Black artists have publicly expressed their gratitude for the museum’s support.

87 Holland Cotter, "Shaking up a Harlem Museum,"New York Times, 28 Feb 2000, E l. 88 The Studio Museum in Harlem,The Studio Museum in Harlem Press Room [Webpage] (2003, accessed 19 April 2006); available from http://www.studiomuseum.org/mission.html 89 Ibid. 90 Soraya Murray, "Studio Museum in Harlem,"International Review of African American Art 18, no. 4 (2002): 34.

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According to artist Faith Ringgold, an exhibition at SMH is the “ultimate right of passage

for black artists in America and probably the world.”91

SMH was established during a period of political and cultural transition within the

Untied States. Black museums created during this time period were the product of the

Civil Rights Movement and the Black Empowerment Movement. The black museum

boom began during the 1950s. Between 1950 and 1980 over ninety museums that focused

on the presentation of black culture and history opened their doors to the public in the

United States and in . Often, museums of this nature were established by

community activists, artists and teachers that had played an active role in the Civil Rights

Q9 Movement and/or the Black Empowerment Movement.

In her article, “Mythos, Memory and History”, historian Faith Davis Ruffins

explains that black museums provided a space for the debate of alternative discourses.

Beginning in the late 1960s and lasting into the 1970s, a significant number of black

activist groups began to experience ideological fragmentation. Within Civil Rights and

Black Empowerment organizations internal debates occurred concerning issues such as

gender inequality and what acts constituted effective political action. Ruffins asserts that

differing political and social philosophies within the black community created stimulating

intellectual environments where opposing ideologies from different members of the black

community were shared within museums and cultural centers. Ruffins states:

Criticism was to be encouraged, not feared. As former political activists moved into the cultural centers and museums in the 1970s and 1980s, they brought these

91 Sheila Rule, "Museum as Cultural Anchor: The Studio Museum at 25,"New York Times, 23 Nov 1993, C13. 92 Fath Davis Ruffins, "Mythos, Memory, and History: African American Preservation Efforts, 1820-1990," in Museums and Communities : The Politics of Public Culture, ed. Ivan Karp, Christine Mullen Kreamer, and Steven D Lavine (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 557-563.

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values of criticism to their new world. Together with all of their inherent differences, the years of the modem civil rights movement (1950-1965) and the years of the Black Power movement (1965-1975) might be called the Black Consciousness Era. The Black museum was bom out of this enormously complex welter of cultural expression, debate, and critique.93

These varied forms of thought were expressed in institutions that were considered

to be tools for communal uplift, empowerment and social change. According to Ruffins,

black museums were concerned about the needs of their community well before

mainstream museums began to explore the ways in which the voice of the local

community could be heard.94

In 1968 SMH became the first public art institution in Harlem. The museum

opened with a small, full-time staff of four people who operated the organization from

one floor in a building that was shared with a clothing sweatshop. The museum also

opened without a permanent art collection.95 The staff at SMH began collecting art for the

institution’s permanent collection in 1975.96 The origins of most mainstream art museums

differ greatly from the development of black museums. Typically, mainstream art

museums are established with a permanent art collection and have available economic

resources. Most black museums began as grassroots organizations and lacked a

permanent collection, ownership of a building, and the funding necessary for economic

93 Ibid, 557. 94 Ibid, 570. 95 Grace Glueck, "Harlem Initiates First Art Museum,"New York Times, 25 Sep 1968, 40. Grace Glueck, "A Very Own Thing in Harlem,"New York Times, 15 Sep 1968, D34. 96 In 2005 the Studio Museum featured an exhibition entitledCollection in Context: Selections from the Permanent Collection. The Studio Museum in Harlem, Past Exhibitions [Webpage] (2006, accessed 4 June 2006); available from http://www.studiomuseum.org/exhibitions_past.html.

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Q7 stability. In this respect, the staff who worked for SMH encountered the same obstacles

that other black museum professionals faced during the 60s, 70s and 80s.

Unlike a lot of black museums, most of SMH’s founders were not artists and

activists. The museum was founded by a racially mixed group of individuals from the

for-profit business sector, the political arena and the visual arts field. The museum’s

founders included Frank Donnelly, a social worker, and Carter Burden, a lawyer. The

museum’s first vice president was Eleanor Holmes Norton, a lawyer and political activist.

Members of SMH’s board included Thomas Hoving, who during this time was the

director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Bates Lowery, a former director of the

Museum of Modem Art (MoMA).98

SMH’s institutional identity has fluctuated as staff members have exited and new

members have joined the institution. One of the museum’s main goals has been to

showcase contemporary art created by people of African descent that well-established art

institutions in New York have chosen to not to exhibit or collect. This goal has remained

the same; however, in the past the museum’s board and staff have publicly disagreed over

the types of art that should be presented by SMH and over the primary audience that

should be targeted through the museum’s exhibitions. During the SMH’s first years of

operation, some of the museum’s tmstees were concerned about creating an institution

that was akin to MoMA. Some of SMH’s trustees believed that Harlem did not need an

African American MoMA. Instead, they argued, Harlem needed an art institution that

provided a venue for local African American artists to showcase their work. 99 At present,

97 Ruffins, 567. 98 Grace Glueck, "Less Downtown Uptown." New York Times. 20 Jul 1969, D20. "Ibid.

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SMH has managed to maintain a balance, supporting both local African American artists

and artists of African decent from abroad.

Thelma Golden is currently the chief curator at SMH. Beginning in the 1990s

Thelma Golden’s exhibitions have explored the interconnectedness of identity politics

and art among a generation of postmodern artists of color. Though not always well-

received by art critics, Golden’s exhibitions have instigated debate within the art sector

about the relationship between art, identity, and racial inclusion within museums. For

example, Golden’s Black Romantic exhibition, showcased at SMH in 2002, provided a

curatorial analysis concerning why certain forms of popular art are not exhibited within

museums. Most of the artists included in the exhibition were untrained artists.100 The

inclusion of Black Romantic within a museum exploded the high art/low art and trained

artist/outsider artist dichotomies.101 Golden’s presentation of Walker’s art was part of an

on-going conversation that SMH initiated with art administrators. Yasmil Raymond, a

curator at the Walker Art Center, admits that Golden and SMH have instigated significant

changes within the visual arts sector by creating an increase in the number of black artists

who receive exhibitions for their artwork. Raymond also asserts that Golden has fortified

Walker’s career by exposing her art to the public. 109

It makes sense that Golden would be attracted Walker’s art considering the

subject matter of her previous exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and

at SMH. From 1991 through 1998 Golden worked for the Whitney where she developed

a reputation as a curator who sought to provide exhibition opportunities for young black

100 Roumani and University, (accessed). 101 Andrew Ross, "Golden Moment," ArtForum 40, no. 8 (2002): 27-28. 102 LaViscount, "Phone Interview with Yasmil Raymond."

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artists.103 Some of Golden’s exhibitions have instigated distress within certain factions of

the black artistic community. The Black Male exhibition, curated by Golden, focused on

the depiction of black men in visual culture. The exhibition traveled to other mainstream

contemporary art museums. The audience reception that resulted from The Black Male

can be compared to controversy that surrounds the display of Walker’s art. Similar to

Walker’s art, The Black Male exhibit contained visually graphic explorations of

sexuality, violence, racial and gender stereotypes. As artist and scholar Coco Fusco

explains:

...when The Black Male, exhibition was mounted in Los Angeles in 1994, one of the sorest points of contention about the show was over what was perceived as a preponderance of images of nude black men. This, according to several local black artists and activists, necessarily objectified and eroticized black masculinity, thus demeaning black men in general.104

This adverse response to The Black Male can be compared to complaints Walker has

received from some black artists who insist that Walker’s sexually charged images of

black women reinstate harmful, colonialist beliefs about black female sexual objectivity.

Despite the backlash against The Black Male, Golden did not shy away from

controversial art created by black artists.105

SMH decreased the likelihood that a spectator of Walker’s art would mistakenly

assume that Walker is simply reproducing stereotypes without critiquing them. The

museum made Walker’s art appear less ambiguous. SMH’s communication tools

103 Ian Parker, "Golden Touch," The New Yorker 77, no. 43 (2002): 44. 104 Coco Fusco, "The Bodies That Were Not Ours," in The Bodies That Were Not Ours and Other Writings (New York: Routledge, 2001), 5. 105 In 2002, a year before the Kara Walker exhibition opened at SMH, Golden interviewed Walker and published the discussion. Thelma Golden, "A Dialogue with Kara Walker," inKara Walker: Pictures from Another Time, ed. Annette Dixon (Michigan: University of Michigan Museum of Art, 2002), 43-49.

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provided a discussion of Walker’s racial and gendered subjectivity. The museum also

addressed the process that the exhibition attendee should undergo when viewing her art -

assessing their own ways of seeing the “other” and their own internalization of

stereotypes. Within the museum Walker was not presented as an authority figure on the

subject of black artistic production or black identity. Instead, Walker’s art was

contextualized within a black, postmodern framework. SMH clearly linked Walker’s art

to other black, postmodern artists who have used their art to explore similar subject

matter concerning racial and gender identity. The museum’s coherent presentation of

Walker’s art may be due to the fact that the staff at SMH is accustomed to presenting art

created by black artists that is infused with identity politics. The staff at SMH has

presented a diversity of art created by black artists, and they are well versed in the

multitude of forms and themes that black artists have used both historically and presently.

Walker’s 2003 solo exhibition at SMH contained a segment of the traveling

exhibition Narratives of a Negress, originally organized by The Tang Teaching Museum

and the Williams College Museum of Art. SMH presented a segment of a Walker

installation entitled Kara Walker: Excavated from the Heart o f a Black Negress. The

installation excerpt was specifically designed for SMH’s main, temporary gallery space.

The exhibition also featured American Primitives, which included a series of 3 x 5-inch

index cards containing statements written by Walker that accompanied twenty-one paint

and collage artworks on boards of variable dimensions. The exhibition was accompanied

by two educational tools; Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress, an in-depth, 208-page

catalogue, which was used for every venue on the exhibition tour, and exhibition wall

text written by art historian Darby English.

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Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress spans Walker’s career and provides a

discussion about her process, the thematic content of her art, and the controversy that

exists over the display of her art. The catalogue also contains numerous reproductions of

her drawings, paintings, silhouette installations, and index card art. The in-depth

catalogue clearly matched English’s exhibition wall text displayed in Walker’s solo

exhibit at SMH. Some of the essays in the catalogue compare Walker’s artwork to other

black artists who have approached similar subject matter. Walker has been influenced by

Adrian Piper’s artwork.106 “The Art of Racial Profiling,” an essay written by Mark

Reinhart, connects both Walker’s writings and the performative aspects of her art to

Adrian Piper’s work. Michelle Wallace contextualizes Walker’s art by linking her art to

other postmodern artists including Robert Colescott, Michael Ray Charles, Kerry James

Marshall and playwright Suzan-Lori Parks.107 Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress

provides a clear context for the display of Walker’s art by connecting her art to other

postmodern black artists while carefully explaining the intricacies of the controversy that

has ensued over the display of Walker’s art.

Walker’s typed statements on index cards shown alongside her drawings can be

compared to personal journal entries. 108 Included on the cards are short comments

describing events and individuals that have influenced the production of Walker’s

artwork. The index cards also contain observations and revelations about her own

identity. The index cards parallel Walker’s silhouette installations in form and content.

106 Mark Reinhardt, "The Art of Racial Profiling " inKara Walker: Narratives o f a Negress, ed. Ian Berry et al. (Massachusetts: MIT Press 2003), 122. 107 Michelle Wallace, "The Enigma of the Negress Kara Walker,"Kara in Walker: Narratives o f a Negress, ed. Ian Berry et al. (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003), 177. 108 Ian Berry, "Preface to Artists Writings," inKara Walker: Narratives o f a Negress ed. Ian Berry et al. (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003), 6.

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These minimalist artworks juxtapose black and white colors. The exhibition catalogue

provides a brief description of the artistic process Walker underwent in order to create her

index card artwork. After typing her prose Walker re-read the cards and taped the cards

together organizing them in groups. She edited some of the cards with black tape and / or

pencil. The index cards provide insight about the content displayed in Walker’s art.

The display of Walker’s index cards complemented the other educational tools

that SMH provided for the exhibition attendees, which made Walker’s personal narratives

within her art explicit. The content provided on the index cards contained both quotes

from other people and Walker’s own prose. One of the note cards contained a quote from

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, an autobiographical slave narrative written by

Harriet Jacobs. Jacob’s statements communicate her regret at being exposed to abuse of

power and unethical behavior at young age. Walker’s statements merge her thoughts

about interracial relationships and her own identity, with an analysis of contemporary and

historical stereotypical assumptions about the black community, white society, and

gender identity. Following the pattern of her other art forms, historical references,

criticism of both blacks and whites, men and women, contemporary and historical

mythology are woven together to form an intricate discussion about Walker’s own

experiences.109 Walker’s index cards make her silhouette installation, paint and collage

artworks seem a little less ambiguous. They provide the viewer with an explanation of the

images she creates, and explain the way in which Walker inserts her own persona and life

experiences into her artwork. The index card art helps the viewer decipher the content

109 Kara Walker: Narratives o f a Negress, the catalogue that accompanied the Studio Museum’s exhibition of Walker’s art, features reproductions o f some of Walker’s index card art.

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shown through Walker’s other art forms by making her subjectivity blatant. Mark

Reinhardt, a political science and American studies professor explains that “Words allow

her [Walker] to be more explicit in connecting the matter of race and desire to problems

of consumption, commodification, and (self-) objectification.”110

Walker has been influenced by both black and non-black artists. She is also part

of a community of post-modern black artists that incorporate stereotypical iconography

within their art. The wall text displayed for Walker’s exhibit, written by art historian

Darby English, acknowledged the fact that Walker has been influenced by the work of

Andy Warhol.111 English’s wall text also situated Walker’s art within a black art

historical continuum. English’s statements provide the exhibition attendee with a brief list

of other black artists that have explored some of the same topics that Walker includes in

her art. The other artists English referred to are Robert Colescott, Adrian Piper, Carrie

Mae Weems, and Fred Wilson. Interestingly, SMH has displayed the artwork that some

of these artists have created. 112

By reading English’s concise wall text it is made clear that Walker’s use of

stereotypical iconography does not confirm racist and sexist mythology. According the

explanation provided on the exhibition wall text:

Because their identities may already populate our minds, encounters with Walker’s images can reveal the subtlety and strength with which the language of racism and sexism maintain their grip on our looking and thinking practices. The seductiveness of Walker’s art lures us into an exploration of real social problems

110 Reinhardt, 125. 111 During an interview published inArtforum, Walker explained to art critic Bob Nickas that Warhol’s critique o f American capitalism and has had an impact on her artistic creations. Bob Nickas and Kara Walker, "Death and Dying,"ArtForum 43, no. 2 (2004): 154. 112 i.e.: In 2004 the Studio Museum presented a solo exhibition for Fred Wilson entitled Fred Wilson: Objects and Installations: 1979-2000. [Website] (The Studio Museum in Harlem, 2006, accessed 4 June 2006); available from http://www.studiomuseum.org/exhibitions_past.html.

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- among them, the supposed equivalence of appearance and identity- at which we could all stand to look harder.1 3

English’s statements clearly explain to the viewer that Walker expects the museum

attendee to analyze their own presumptions about race and gender identity.

SMH approached the controversy that surrounds the display of Walker’s art in a

gentle manner by choosing not to castigate Walker’s critics while at the same time

supporting the display of Walker’s artwork. English’s wall text approaches the

controversy by simply explaining “Some critics charged Walker with impropriety, while

others praised her skills and inventiveness. But all agreed that her art pushed hot buttons

and did so beautifully.”114 The museum has displayed the art work of Walker’s most

vehement critics, including Howardena Pindell and Betty Saar.115 SMH continues to

display the artistic diversity has been present among generations of black artists. Within

the museum modes of artistic expression, such as Walker’s postmodern art or

abstractionist art created by Pindell, are not ranked for artistic quality or thematic

validity. Instead, each form of artistic expression created by black artists is displayed for

their unique and differing contributions.

It seems that SMH’s presentation of Walker’s art and the educational tools that

the museum provided for the exhibition attendee had the desired effect. The New York

Amsterdam News provided a glowing review of the Walker exhibition at SMH. Krishan

113 The Studio Museum’s exhibition wall text is available on their website. The Studio Museum in Harlem, Exhibition Wall Text [Website] (2003, accessed 8 April 2006); available from http://www.studiomuseum.org/pr/kwalker_wall.html. 114 Ibid. 115 From April 5 through July 2 2006 the Studio Museum presented Howardena Pindell’s artwork in a group show entitled Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction, 1964-1980. In 1985 Betty Saar’s work was displayed in a group show entitledTradition and Conflict. Harlem,Past Exhibitions (accessed).

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Trotman, the author of the review, clearly understood that through Walker’s interrogation

United State’s history Walker expected the exhibition attendee to examine their own

internalization of racial and gender stereotypes. In the review of the exhibition, Trotman

conveyed that Walker’s self-scrutiny illustrated in her art, communicates the problematic

legacy of slavery-era and post slavery-era stereotypes.116 Trotman’s analysis of the

exhibition suggests that SMH’s presentation successfully imparted the difficult messages

embedded in Walker’s nebulous artwork to the viewer.

Even a negative review of Kara Walker: Excavated from the Heart of a Black

Negress conveys the meticulousness of SMH’s presentation. Artnet, an on-line art

magazine that provides reviews of exhibitions, included a negative review written by

Donald Kuspit, a professor of art history and philosophy. Kuspit’s negative review

contained complaints about the content illustrated in Walker’s art. His review did not

include complaints about SMH’s presentation of Walker’s art. Rather, Kuspit’s review

asserted that while Walker’s art is formally impressive, her analysis of racial and gender

stereotypes are outdated. Kuspit made his conservative view point clear by including

statements in his review such as:

The place of blacks in American society has changed for the better - Colin Powell, Condolezza [sic] Rice and the heads of Coca Cola and AOL suggest as much (they seem more than established tokens) .. .Walker’s work is certainly high drama, weirdly tragicomic, with a deft narrative twist, but it has less to do with social reality than black rage, resentment and bitterness. The mural suggests a futile attempt - or is it a deliberate refusal? to - come to terms with past history, suggesting that there is a regressive dimension to the sense of being a victim.117

116 Krishan Trotman, "Kara Walker Electrifies the Studio Museum in Harlem,"New York Amsterdam News 94, no. 30 (2003): 17. 117 Artnet and Donald Kuspit,Kara Walker's Cakewalk [Website] (2004 2003, accessed 5/19/2006); available from http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/kuspit/kuspitl 1-4-03.asp.

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Kuspit’s perception of contemporary racial and gender relations differs greatly

from Walker’s. Kuspit understands that Walker uses her art to explore the way in which

stereotypes have adversely effected her conception of black, female subjectivity. He is

well aware of Walker’s intent that the viewer should undergo a process of self

examination and that she is part of a community of postmodern black artists that discuss

similar themes through the creation of their art. Kuspit simply believes that the

stereotypes Walker portrays are no longer a hindrance for African American’s and that

art, which incorporates identity politics, obsessively perpetuates a victim •mentality. ♦ 118

SMH can not be expected to convince every individual who believes racism and sexism

are no longer a problem to accept Walker’s ideologies about identity; however, SMH did

fulfill their mission by conveying the themes present in Walker’s laden images.

In her essay, “The Display of the Transgressive: Art in the Museum,” Reesa

Greenberg, an art historian and a museum consultant, discusses controversial

contemporary art exhibitions. Within the article Greenberg explains that “.. .safety zones

within the contemporary art world depend on context. What is safe in one sphere is not

necessarily safe in another.”119 Greenberg’s assertion definitely applies to the

presentation of Kara Walker’s art. The staff at SMH has spent years honing their skills

for the presentation of art created by a diversity of black artists. Due to the thematic

complexity of Walker’s art it makes logical sense that her art should be shown at an

institution that has a strong history of showcasing different forms of black art, which

have communicated a variety of racial and gender ideologies. While SMH is safe

118 Ibid. 119 Reesa Greenberg, "Playing It Safe? The Display of Transgressive Art in the Museum,"Min-oring in Evil. Nazi Imagery/Moral Ambiguity/ Contemporaiy Art (New York The Jewish Museum and Rutgers University Press, 2002), 88.

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institution for the display of Walker’s art, mainstream art museums are not safe

institutions for the display of Walker’s art due to their legacy of excluding art created by

black artists. Museums that do not have an extensive history of presenting and collecting

art created by black artists encounter significantly different obstacles when compared to

museums such as SMH.

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THE WALKER ART CENTER’S PRESENTATION

OF KARA WALKER’S ART

The elevation of occasional stars from the periphery gave the illusion of a larger mainstream embrace, but this was deceptive. The art world, market-driven and self- protectively conservative, operates on a token system and always has. It chooses a black, Latino, or Asian artist and assiduously promotes each one. Recycled in A-list shows and handed endless prizes, these artists come to represent all the other “others” not present.

Holland Cotter, "Beyond Multiculturalism, Freedom?" New York Times, 29 July 2001

In 2005 the Walker Art Center (WAC) displayed Quartet , a group exhibition that

featured the work of four artists; Kara Walker, Matthew Barney, Robert Gober, and

Sherrie Levine. In Quartet, Walker was not placed within a black art historical

continuum. Instead, WAC placed Walker’s art within a group exhibition where Walker

was the only black artist. Interestingly, for a group exhibition, in which Walker was the

only black artist, little was made of her subjectivity as a black female. This chapter will

analyze WAC’s presentation of Walker’s art through an examination of WAC’s

exhibition history, the marketing and educational tools WAC provided for the museum

attendee, the language used by WAC’s curators to describe Walker’s art, information

provided from an interview of a WAC curator, and an analysis of the critical reviews of

Quartet.

65

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An analysis of these elements provides opportunities to gain insight about the way in

which WAC presented Walker’s art to the public, how the curatorial staff at WAC

interprets Walker’s art, and the possible messages that Quartet could have conveyed to

the exhibition attendee.

A museum attendee with little knowledge of postmodern art and the history of

black expression could have mistakenly assumed that Walker was the first and the only

black artist who has visually interrogated racial and gender stereotypes through the use of

irony and minstrelsy. The institution’s lack of reference to other postmodern black artists

in their communication tools and within the exhibition space created an environment

where the ambiguous images displayed in Walker’s artwork were hard to decipher.

WAC’s dismissal of previous generations of black artists coincided with the institution’s

focus on the controversy that has surrounded the display of Walker’s art.

WAC, established in Minneapolis in 1927, is one of the most renowned

i y r \ multidisciplinary arts institutions in the United States. WAC owns an expansive

collection of more than 9,600 objects. The art institution recently expanded their space to

121 include eleven exhibition galleries and a state of the art theater. Their mission

statement is:

The Walker Art Center, a catalyst for the creative expression of artists and the active engagement of audiences, examines the questions that shape and inspire us as individuals, cultures, and communities.122

120 Walker Art Center,About the Walker Art Center [Website] (2006, accessed 10 June 2006); available from http://info.walkerart.org/about/history.wac 121 Walker Art Center, Walker Art Center Collection Exhibitions [Website] (2005, accessed 5 June 2005); available from http://calendar.walkerart.org/canopy.wac?id=1520. 122 Walker Art Center,About the Walker Art Center [Website] (2006, accessed 10 June 2006); available from http://info.walkerart.org/about/history.wac

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WAC has maintained a long-term relationship with Walker. She has been

presented at the museum in four group exhibitions including, No Place (Like Home)

displayed in 1997,Art in Our Time: 1950 to the Present shown in 1999,Black History

Month, which was also exhibited in 1999, and Quartet, WAC’s most recent presentation

of Walker’s art. WAC will present Walker’s art for the fifth time by providing a solo

exhibition for her in 2007.123

In Black History Month, Walker’s art was presented within a multidisciplinary

group exhibition that featured performance and visual art from WAC’s collection created

by black artists.124 TheBlack History Month exhibit was the first and only time Walker’s

art was featured in an all black artistic presentation at WAC that focused on the race. The

pros and cons of showcasing group exhibitions that are centered on the race / ethnicity of

the artists displayed has been debated within the United States. Art critics, scholars and

artists have expressed concern about group exhibitions that focus solely on art created by

black artists. In 1969, the Black Emergency Coalition, a black arts activist group,

advocated for an increase in solo exhibitions for black artists.125 David Driskell, an art

professor and an avid collector of art created by black artists, warns that these exhibitions

have to potential classify exceptional art created by black artists as great black art instead

of simply labeling the work great art. June Kelly, an art dealer, echoes Driskell’s

sentiment by stating “There are African American artists who should be right beside

Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.” “

123 LaViscount, "Phone Interview with Yasmil Raymond." 124 Walker Art Center, Walker Art Center Archives [Website] (1999, accessed 4 July 2006); available from http://www.walkerart.Org/archive/E/AB735D1724C47F9D6168.htm. 125 Grace Glueck, "Into the Mainstream, Everybody,"New York Times, 15 June 1969, D24. 126 June Kelly quoted in Kinsella: 119.

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Driskell and other arts administrators also understand that the display of black

group exhibitions may be necessary for institutions that have just begun to incorporate

black art within their exhibitions and collections. Historically, art museums in the United

States have had a poor record of including black art within their exhibitions and

collections. Some arts administrators consider the display of black group exhibitions to

be a necessary act, making the public more aware that a diversity of black art does indeed

exist.127 Art critic Holland Cotter asserts that ethnic or racially based exhibitions

continue to be the main resource used to expose the public to minority artists. According

to Cotter:

The count of black, Latino, and Asian American artists in the mainstream is higher than it was a decade ago, but it is still not high, as the average tour of Chelsea or Williamsburg, Brooklyn will confirm. For minority artists, identity- specific exhibitions, whatever their drawbacks, remain the primary means of visibility.128

Yasmil Raymond, one of the curators that worked on the display of Walker’s art

in Quartet , would disagree with Cotter. During a 2006 interview Raymond asserted that

the mainstream art sectors’ inclusion of art created by African American’s has greatly

improved. 1 ? Q It appears that the curatorial staff at WAC believe that group exhibitions,

which focus on black artists, are no longer needed. Transiting to a different curatorial

focus, WAC’s twenty-first century group exhibitions have not centered on the race of the

artists. Furthermore, WAC chose not to refer to any other black artists within their

educational and marketing tools associated with Quartet.

127 Kinsella, 118-120,123. 128 Holland Cotter, "Beyond Multiculturalism, Freedom?,"New York Times, 29 July 2001, AR1. 129 Takenya LaViscount, “Phone Interview with Yasmil Raymond,” (Washington DC: 2006)

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The educational and marketing tools that are used to supplement WAC’s

exhibitions include their extensive website, a text that includes an in-depth discussion of

WAC’s collections entitled Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a

Whole: Walker Art Center Collections, and “Art on Call,” a devise that replaces the

traditional museum audio tour. “Art on Call,” allows a museum attendee to learn about

the artist displayed in an exhibition through the use of their cell phone. A visitor can call

the number placed on an exhibition label and hear a brief statement from a WAC curator

or a statement from the artist displayed. WAC does publish catalogues for some of their

exhibitions; however, there are exhibitions, such as Quartet, that are presented without a

formal catalogue.

In Quartet, each artist had a separate gallery for the display of their artwork. The

exhibition included a selection of Walker’s drawings, paintings, one large scale silhouette

installation entitled Endless Conundrum, An African Anonymous Adventuress, and an

innovative animated film entitled Testimony. The educational and marketing tools used to

supplement Quartet contained both curatorial statements and statements from Walker. In

2005 Walker lectured about her art at WAC while Quartet was still on display at the

institution. The text Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole:

Walker Art Center Collections contains an essay written by Philippe Vergne, who was the

chief curator for Quartet. WAC’s website provides statements from other WAC curators

about Walker’s art. Although these curatorial statements about Walker’s art differ, one

constant theme is present - every curatorial explanation of Walker’s art lacks any blatant

reference to other black artists.

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In Quartet, WAC situated Walker’s art within an exhibition that displayed three

Caucasian artists. Lowery Sims, the director of the Studio Museum in Harlem (SMH)

admits that displaying all black artist exhibitions can be a “catch-22.” According to

Lowery:

We’re [the Studio Museum] trying to make the point that African American art is just one aspect of American art that needs to be seen. But it makes sense that there may be a way that people deal with issues of identity that have many 1 commonalities among their peers.

WAC connected Walker’s art to her peers by emphasizing her age, not her race.

All four artists in Quartet were by described by WAC as a younger group of

contemporary artists that WAC has maintained a long-term relationship with.131 The

artwork created by Barney, Gober, and Levine contain aesthetic differences; however,

broad thematic connections can be made when all four artists are compared. Barney’s

sculptures and performances explore the intricacies of the body. He often performs

mythological characters in his films. DRA WING RESTRAINT 7 contains references to

ancient Greek mythology and the Cremaster cycle is a series of five films that investigate

the anatomy of the body, sexuality and mythology. Quartet displayed a few of the

photographic and sculptural components from the second Cremaster cycle. 132 Gober’s

sculptural works illustrate his on-going fascination with functional, every day objects.

Crates, sinks, chairs and other practical objects are often paired with replicas of body

parts in order to illustrate our expectations regarding childhood development, gender

Lowery Sims quoted in Kinsella: 120. 131 Takenya LaViscount, “Phone Interview with Yasmil Raymond,” (Washington DC: 2006) 132 Douglas Fogle, "Matthew Barney," inBits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance o f a Whole: Walker Art Center Collections ed. Joan Rothfitss and Elizabeth Carpenter (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2005), 117-118. Center, Walker Art Center Cun-ent Exhibitions^accessed).

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identity, sexuality and religion.133 Levine’s art complicates our understanding of

authorship and questions the validity of connoisseurship. By appropriating the work of

renowned Western artists, Levine’s paintings and sculptures redefine classic art icons and

while blurring the boundaries of high and popular art.134 Barney, Gober, Levine and

Walker all explore Western conceptions regarding sexuality and the body. Both Walker’s

and Barney’s art have performative elements. Levine and Walker are similar due to the

fact that both artists question the high art/low art dichotomy. While Levine appropriates

the work of famous Western artists, Walker makes use of silhouettes, an inexpensive

i craft Caucasian women made use of during nineteenth century.

The reasons why WAC presented Walker along side exceptional artists that are

not black are obvious. Mainstream art museums should communicate to the public that

that exceptional art created by black artists deserve the label “great art” instead stead of

the label “great black art.” WAC’s presentation of Walker’s art was problematic because

of their negative reference to other black artists. While Raymond may believe that the

number of black artists who receive exhibitions within the mainstream art sector has

greatly improved, there are arts administrators that disagree with her assessment.

According to Corinne Jennings, the director of Kenkeleba Gallery in New York City: “In

some ways the contemporary art scene is worse because people who use derogatory

133 Richard Flood and Linda Nochlin, "Robert Gober," in Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance o f a Whole: Walker Art Center Collections, ed. Joan Rothfuss and Elizabeth Carpenter (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2005), 234-235, 239. Center, Walker Art Center Current Exhibitions(accessed). 134 Richard Flood, "Sherrie Levine," in Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance o f a Whole: Walker Art Center Collections, ed. Joan Rothfuss and Elizabeth Carpenter (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2005), 340-342. Center, Walker Art Center Current Exhibitions(accessed). 135 Corris and Flobbs: 438.

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images, often originally created by white artists, can find quick support.”136 Instead of

communicating that there is a diversity of art created by black artists that deserves

recognition, the presentation of Walker’s art with Quartet could have communicated to

the viewer that WAC prefers to display art created by black artists who incorporate

familiar racial stereotypes.

Before the museum attendee entered Quartet they were greeted by a warning sign

that stated “This exhibition contains mature content.” Within the gallery space devoted to

Walker’s art, the wall text and the “art-on-call” segments were brief. These two

educational tools did not provide enough information to help a spectator make sense of

Walker’s seductive, but disturbing imagery. In this case, WAC used sound judgment by

providing a warning sign for the exhibition attendee. According to Reesa Greenberg, an

art historian and a museum consultant, warning signs can have important benefits for the

museum audience. Her article “The Display of the Transgressive: Art in the Museum”

provides a discussion about the curatorial techniques that have been used for the public

presentation of controversial art. Within the article she explains the potential advantages

warning signs can offer to the viewer by stating:

Rather than the abrupt, sudden, confrontational formula associated with the artistic or political avant-garde where visitors are not warned, as in The Perfect Moment, or warnings used as a dare, as in Sensation, the transformational potential of the exhibition experience can be conceived in terms of a developmental learning model that is gradual and slow. Risk, surprise, and confusion are reduced; the unexpected, destabilizing encounter is minimized to allow a safer space for contemplation.137

135 Corinne Jennings quoted in Kinsella: 123. 137 Greenberg, 90-91.

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However, WAC’s presentation of Walker’s art needed more than the warning sign

in order to create an environment where the density of Walker’s art could be understood.

Walker’s animated film Testimony contains graphically violent imagery, including a

scene where a white male slave meets his fate when he is hung from a noose. According

to art critic Michele Asselin, in the film Testimony:

Walker retells the fantasy of slaves turning the tables on masters. The film is silent, scratched, and shaky so as to look like footage from a century ago, when D.W Griffith turned a hymn to white supremacy into the screen classic, The Birth of a Nation (1915). The libidinal naive blacks who are subdued by the Ku Klux Klan in Griffith’s film are no more grotesquely stereotyped than the slave woman with huge lips and tiny braids who cracks the whip on the former masters.138

The main character in Testimony is a young “jezebel,” who owns the white slaves

living on her plantation. The young “jezebel” abuses her power throughout the film. The

film includes most of Walker’s signature motifs. The animated silhouettes are visually

stunning and seductive even as they participate in violent, sexually graphic acts. Walker

inserts herself into the animated piece both figuratively and literally. Often, Walker’s arm

and hands can be seen manipulating the silhouetted characters, which brings Testimony

into the realm of performance art. WAC’s educational supplements did not contain any

commentary about Testimony, creating an exhibition space where the spectator was left to

figure out the meanings embedded in Walker’s grotesque imagery on their own.

Walker’s other artworks displayed in Quartet were supplemented with vague

assessments from WAC’s staff that did not clearly allude to Walker’s critique of racial

and gender based stereotypes, or the way in which Walker attempts to alert us to our own

unconscious internalization of stereotypes. Philippe Vergne, the chief curator for the

138 David D’Arcy, "The Eyes o f the Storm: Kara Walker on Hurricanes, Heroes and VillainsModem " Painters, April 2006, 61.

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display of Walker’s art in Quartet, introduced Walker before she began a lecture at

WAC. Both his opening remarks for Kara Walker’s lecture and his discussion of her

work in Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole: Walker Art

Center Collections are very similar. It seems as if Vergne was reading from the WAC’s

collections text for his opening remarks. During his introduction for Walker’s lecture at

WAC and in the WAC’s collections text, Vergne states that Walker’s art is reminiscent of

artwork created by Francesco Goya, Egon Schiele, and Antonin Artaud. An explanation

for how Walker’s art is actually connected Goya’s, Schiele’s, and Artaud’s artwork is not

provided in Vergne’s opening remarks or in the educational tools that WAC supplies for

the viewer.

WAC’s website connected Walker’s art to a different set of artists than Vergne.

On their website WAC listed Zarina Bhimji, Jackie Copeland, Nick Deocampo, Willie

Doherty, Kay Hassan, Kcho, N.A., Gary Simmons and Meyer Vaisman in the “related

artists” category on the collections webpage that addressed Walker’s art. All of these

artists, with the exception of NA, were exhibited in No Place (like home)', a group

exhibition displayed at WAC in 1997 that included Walker’s art. A statement offering an

explanation for how Walker’s art is connected to the artists that were displayed in No

I 'IQ Place (like home) was not provided on WAC’s website. WAC published a catalogue

for the No Place (like home) exhibition, however, the catalogue was not available for the

museum attendee to view when Quartet was displayed. No Place (like home), curated by

Richard Flood, was a multicultural group exhibition that featured a racially/ethnically

139 Walker Art Center, The Walker Art Center Collections and Resources [Website] (2006, accessed 6 June 2006); available from http://collections.walkerart.org/item/agent/1250.

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mixed group of artists from the United States and abroad. The exhibition also included

another African American artist, Gary Simmons. Each artist visualized their

understanding of home and the inclusion of Walker’s art within this exhibition

highlighted Walker’s traumatic experiences in Atlanta. Access to the catalogue for No

Place (like home) would have provided a very helpful educational tool for the spectator

of Quartet. The catalogue includes a Walker interview. The concise, but thorough

interview provides a worthwhile discussion concerning important themes that are

repeated in Walker’s artwork, such as her traumatic move to the South that gave her the

feeling of being sent back in time, and the way in which her collection of racist

memorabilia has affected her artistic process.140 The interview provides a clear context

for the display of Walker’s art and certainly makes Walker’s racial and gendered

subjectivity more blatant than the educational tools that were designed to accompany

Quartet.

WAC’s website included a curatorial statement from Vergne. In this statement,

Vergne admits that he has a hard time discussing Walker’s artwork because he is from

Europe and he considers her art to be rooted in Southern, United States history and

culture.141 When he introduced Walker for her lecture at WAC, he explained that he

comes from France, “a country that has yet to acknowledge its colonial history.”142

140 Richard Flood, No Place (Like Home): Zarina Bhimji, Nick Deocampo, Willie Doherty, Kay Hassan, Kcho, Gary Simmons, Meyer Vaisman, Kara Walker (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1997). 14' Ibid- 142 The Kara Walker lecture and interview that took place at the Walker Art Center in 2005 was filmed. The video, which contains the lecture and interview, can be downloaded from the Walker Art Center’s website. Walker Art Center, Walker Art Channel [Website] (2005, accessed 5 June 2006); available from http://channel.walkerart.org/detail.wac?id=2013.

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Vergne’s curatorial honesty and his willingness to consider the way in which his

own cultural origins impact his view of Walker’s art are commendable. It is true that

Walker’s experiences in the United States prompted her to create art fused with identity

politics. However, Europe did receive slaves from the transatlantic slave trade. The

“Jezebel” and the “Mammy” are transnational stereotypes. In fact, Walker even addresses

the ways in black femininity is perceived abroad in her silhouette installation Endless

Conundrum, An African Anonymous Adventuress (Figure 8), which is displayed in same

exhibition that Vergne curated at WAC.

In Endless Conundrum Walker includes a silhouette depiction of Josephine Baker

among other figures that represent a transnational fascination with black, sexualized

“others.” As Vergne explains in Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a

Whole: Walker Art Center Collections:

The cut-paper composition [. Endless Conundrum] is dominated by a silhouette evoking Josephine Baker-the ‘black Venus,’ the ‘black pearl,’ the ‘Creole Goddess’— being stripped of the banana skirt that took Europe by storm in the 1920s and 1930s. Baker, the Missouri-born singer, dancer and actress who faced a violent racist reaction in America, embodies a fascination with the ‘other,’ and in Walker’s composition she is swallowed into an epic, sexualized, dramatic, and historical narrative.143

143 Philippe Vergne, "Kara Walker," inBits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance o f a Whole: Walker Art Center Collections, ed. Joan Rothfuss and Elizabeth Carpenter (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2005), 564-566.

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Figure. 8. Kara Walker. Endless Conundrum, An African Anonymous Adventuress. 2001. Silhouette images cut from brown and black paper, overall installed 180 x 420 in. Illustration courtesy of Brent Sikkema Gallery, New York City. Image reprinted from Walker Art Center, The Walker Art Center Collections and Resources [Website] (2006, accessed 6 June 2006); available from http://collections.walkerart.org/item/agent/1250

Vergne fails to include any commentary about the complexity of Josephine Baker’s

precarious career in Europe. With the exception of his statement that Baker “took Europe

by storm,” Vergne’s reading of Endless Conundrum is tied solely to the culture and

history of the United States.

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But what does taking “Europe by Storm” really mean? During the 1920s Baker sought a

career as a Broadway performer, but was repeatedly turned down for roles because within

the entertainment industry in the United States, her skin color was considered to be too

dark. Baker moved to France and attained celebrity status as an exotic performer. In

France she was considered to be a hyper-sexual black woman, representing “primitive”

sexuality. While the “jezebel” was considered to be a threat in America, the “jezebel”

was revered in France.144

J

Figure. 9. Kara Walker. Endless Conundrum, An African Anonymous Adventuress. 2001. Silhouette images cut from brown and black paper, overall installed 180 x 420 in. (detail) Courtesy of Brent Sikkema Gallery, New York City.

Despite the fact that Vergne recognized the Josephine Baker silhouette in Endless

Conundrum, he does not explain the transnational relevance imbedded in Endless

Conundrum. His comment implies that the perception of Baker within the United States

was problematic but the perception of Baker in France was not. By placing a replica of

Baker in her work, Walker positions the “jezebel” stereotype as a transnational myth. In

Endless Conundrum, Walker does not claim that the perception of black femininity was

more or less of a problem in Europe. Both cultural perceptions objectified the black

144 Farrington, 80. Willis and Williams, 98-101.

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female body, restrained black femininity, and contained racially-charged sexual

mythology.

The brief “Art on Call,” segment WAC provided for Walker’s art contained a

short statement from an interview that took place in 1996. While we could not hear the

questions that were posed to Walker during this interview, we were provided with a short

statement from Walker. Walker explains that silhouettes convey a certain form of visual

seductiveness, which proved to be the best medium for her to depict United States’

history and the stereotypical “characters” that Walker believes she unconsciously

performed in Atlanta. The interview segment is short and does not provide a statement

from Walker explaining who these “characters” are.145 Access to the No Place (like

home) catalogue would have been particularly helpful addition in this case. The interview

in the catalogue asserts that Walker’s collection of racist memorabilia depicted the

“characters” Walker performed.

The wall text in the gallery provides Vergne’s explanation for why Walker’s art is

controversial. In fact, this was the only topic presented. The selection of Walker’s

drawings that were displayed in Quartet were created in 1997 and contained Walker’s

artistic response to her critics.146 The other artworks that were displayed within the

exhibition are not illustrations of Walker’s reaction to the controversies. Often, an

exhibition will include a short statement within their wall text that broadly addresses all

of the art work shown in an exhibition, but WAC chose not use this technique.

145 Information about the “Art on Call” segment used to explain walker’s art can be found on the Walker Art Center’s website. Walker Art Center, Walker Art Center A n on Call [Website] (2006, accessed 8 June 2006); available from http://newmedia.walkerart.org/aoc/index.wac. 146 Takenya LaViscount, “Phone Interview with Yasmil Raymond,” (Washington DC: 2006).

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The wall text describes the group that has a problem with the display of Walker’s

art as “An older generation of African American artists.” The specific names of these

African American artists are not given. Vergne’s essay in Bits & Pieces Put Together to

Present a Semblance of a Whole: Walker Art Center Collections describes Walker’s

critics in the same manner, but also provides the names of two African American artists

that have voiced concern about Walker’s popularity; Betty Saar and Howardena Pindell.

Pindell has complained about the way in which Walker’s critics are described. In her

essay “Diaspora/Realities/Strategies” Pindell provides a different description of the group

of people that are concerned about the display Walker’s art. She explains that:

Recently there has been a swift negative response from a number of African- American artists, art historians, and museum curators to the rapid embrace of Kara Walker and Michael Ray Charles. Although the protests are multi- generational, the other side insists that it is specifically, and only, older people who object. There has been, however, a muffled, restrained, fearful response from more conservative sectors of the African American community, perhaps fearful because of the ostracism and trivialization of those who object, by those behind the trend.147

Within WAC’s collection text, Vergne describes Saar’s and Pindell’s complaints as

“violent criticism.” The use of the word “violent” seems to be a careless exaggeration.

Pindell and Saar have passionately argued that art museums in the United States need to

include a diversity of art created by black artists. The two artists have also expressed

serious concern about the audience reception of Walker’s art. Saar and Pindell are

worried that the spectator of Walker’s art may simply assume that Walker confirms

derogatory stereotypes about black people. In her book The Bodies that were not Ours

147 Pindell read her Conference Paper, “Diaspora/Realities/Strategies” at the Johannesburg Biennale in 1997. Her conference paper can be found in its entirety on the N. Paradoxa website. Howardena Pindell, Diaspora/Realities/Strategies [Website] (N. Paradoxa, 1997, accessed 28 Dec 2005); available from http://web.ukonline.co.Uk/n.paradoxa/pindell.htm

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and Other Writings, Coco Fusco, who is an artist, art critic, and curator, provides a

discussion about the public framing of the controversy that has developed from the

display of Walker’s art. According to Fusco “critics both black and white who have

joined the neoformalist bandwagon by dismissing any concern about art’s relation to the

social as philistinism, focus on her [Kara Walker] as the victim of “political

correctness.”148 Quartet confirms Fusco’s claim. When Vergne addresses the

controversy, any concerns about the audience reception of Walker’s art and museum

responsibility in regards to the inclusion of art created by black artists are set aside.

Unfortunately, WAC's presentation of Walker’s art gives Saar’s, and Pindell’s,

argument some validity. The fact that Walker’s art was presented with artwork created by

Barney, Gober and Levine is not an inherent problem. The real problem is that WAC

decided to provide an overly simplistic analysis of the controversy that surrounds the

display Walker’s art - an analysis that demonizes “an older generation of African

American artists.” To add insult it injury, there were no references made to other black

artists within the exhibition space or in WAC’s educational materials that are used to

accompany the presentation of Walker’s art. This act is at odds with Walker’s description

of the artists that have influenced her artistic production. During interviews, Walker has

explained that she appreciates and has been influenced by the work of Andy Warhol as

well as Robert Colescott, who happens to be an older African American artist and Adrian

Piper, an African American postmodern artist who also incorporates irony, identity

148 Coco Fusco, "Captain Shit and Other Allegories of Black Stardom," in The Bodies That Were Not Ours : And Other Writings (London ; New York: Routledge in collaboration with Institute of International Visual Arts, 2001), 38.

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politics and performance into her art.149 Furthermore, Walker’s animated film, Testimony,

was partially inspired by Oscar Micheaux’s films.150 Micheaux was an African American

director who created “race films,” which were shown during the early twentieth century

to inspire black communal pride.151 It would have been easier for the spectator to

understand Walker’s art if WAC had acknowledged the black and white artists that have

influenced Walker, instead of simply castigating “an older generation of black artists.”

The most helpful educational component that accompanied the Quartet exhibition

was the lecture and interview that took place at WAC in June 2005. Walker provided a

lengthy discussion about her art and was also interviewed by Vergne. Walker’s lecture

and the interview contrasted with the presentation of Walker’s art within the exhibition

space, in WAC’s collections text, the “Art on Call” segment, and the curatorial

statements on WAC’s webpage. The topics discussed by Walker during her lecture and

during her interview with Vergne provided the museum attendee with an in-depth

explanation about Walker’s influences, Walker’s career, and the subject matter portrayed

in Walker’s artwork. During the lecture Walker positioned her art within a discussion of

black artistic and literary expression, while also referencing other aspects of United

States culture that have impacted her artistic manifestations. Walker mentioned that she

149 Nickas and Walker, 154. Hannaham,Pea , Ball, Bounce [Website] (LookSmart Find Articles, 1998, accessed 3 March 2006); available from http://www.findarticles.eom/p/articles/mi_ml285/is_nl l_v28/ai_21248654. 150 D'Arcy, 61. During the interview Raymond mentioned that Walker had been influenced by Micheaux’s films when she created Testimony. Raymond agreed with my assessments that a curatorial statement about Testimony should be placed on WAC’s webpage. Takenya LaViscount, “Phone Interview with Yasmil Raymond,” (Washington DC: 2006). 151 Thomas Cripps, ""Race Movies" As Voices of the Black Bourgeoisie: The Scar of Shame " in Representing Blackness: Issues in Film and Video ed. Valerie Smith (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press 1997), 52.

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had been influenced by Oscar Micheaux’s films when she created Testimony and that the

American, iconic film Gone with the Wind has also inspired her artistic creations. 152

Throughout the evening that the lecture and interview took place, Walker

communicated to the audience that she uses her art to address her own internalized

oppression and to interrogate black femininity as a social, economic and political

construct. She stated that Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and

Alice Walker’s The Color Purple have impacted her artistic vision. Walker connected her

art to her own experiences and identity by explaining that her art contains “black

feminized” illustrations, where black women are the main protagonists. When asked by

an audience member if she has an ideal audience, she explained that “women of color”

are the group that she usually has in mind when she creates her art.153 In order for the

viewer to fully comprehend the intricate meanings embedded in Walker’s art, it would

have been helpful if WAC maintained consistency by offering descriptions of her art

which reflected Walker’s lecture and the interview. A museum attendee who did not have

the time to attend Walker’s lecture and interview at WAC, or view the lengthy webcast

provided on WAC’s website, could have easily misunderstood Walker’s art when

viewing it in Quartet. A museum attendee with little knowledge of her art could have

mistakenly assumed that Walker simply confirms racist and sexist stereotypes.

The staff at WAC designed multiple forms of communication that are used to

supplement exhibitions in order to accommodate different types of learning styles.

Providing the museum attendee with various options for how they can learn about an

152 Walker’s lecture and interview can be viewed from the Walker’s Art Centers’ webpage. [Website] (The Walker Art Center, The Walker Channel, 2006, accessed 8 June 2006); available from http://channel.walkerart.org/detail.wac?id=2013. 153 Ibid.

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artist on display is innovative and timely. As Raymond explained during an interview,

some visitors do not like to read wall text so WAC tries to reach a diverse audience

through the use of their website, “art-on-call” and the computers placed within the

museum.154 Unfortunately, the modes of communication designed for Quartet did not

offer consistency. “Art-on-Call,” the exhibition wall text, and the essay provided in

WAC’s collection text did not communicate the intricacies of Walker’s art or provide a

thoughtful analysis describing why some viewers are uncomfortable with the images

Walker includes in her art. Instead, each educational tool, with the exception of the

Walker lecture and interview, provided vague messages, that did not clearly

communicate the subversive aspects of Walker’s illustrations. When Quartet was

displayed, WAC may have lost the potential to reach an audience unfamiliar with

Walker’s art considering that some museum attendees would prefer not to sit through a

lengthy lecture and interview.

According to Raymond, Quartet was exhibited to showcase WAC’s collection in

light of their newly expanded exhibition space.155 That goal was well understood by

critics who spent more time praising WAC’s impressive new space than the art WAC

actually displayed in the museum. WAC’s curatorial staff does understand how to

manipulate the gallery space in order to emphasize important themes embedded in

Walker’s art. WAC’s 1999 group exhibition Art in Our Time: 1950 to the Present,

displayed Walker’s art by placing her work within a small gallery in order to emphasize

154 Takenya LaViscount, “Phone Interview with Yasmil Raymond,” (Washington DC: 2006). 155 Ibid.

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the personal elements of Walker’s art. According to Joan Rothfuss, a curator who worked

on the presentation of Walker’s art in this group exhibition:

We’ve installed it [Walker’s art] in a small room in the gallery because it is a very intimate piece. Our feeling was that viewers would want to go in and have time to spend very closely looking at and reading the pieces and have a chance to do that to do that in a small space where they could be sort of alone with it, as if you were reading a book and get the feeling of that intimate one-to-one connection with the work. It’s really a kind of look inside the mind of the artist and I think it’s interesting for that reason.156

In Quartet , the placement of Walker’s animated piece, Testimony, in a small gallery had a

similar effect. The intimacy of the gallery, combined with the image of Walker’s hands

manipulating the animated silhouette characters within the film, emphasized the diary­

like quality of Walker’s art. While, critics that reviewed Quartet complimented WAC’s

new architectural additions, they did not communicate in their reviews that they

understood the way in which WAC’s new space emphasized important themes imbedded

in Walker’s art. Other museum attendees may not have recognized the connection

between the WAC’s use of their space and the work displayed, given that WAC did not

include any commentary about Testimony on their website.

In his article “The Walker: An Alternative to the Mainstream,” critic Joel

Henning explained that the artwork created by the artists featured in Quartet “are more

discomforting to museum audiences that Matisse and Picasso.” He continues to explain

that WAC has installed computers in the museum so that a museum attendee can retrieve

more information about the artists displayed.’57 He does not, however, state whether or

not the electronic information provided by WAC actually helps the viewer decipher

156 Walker Art Center,Curatorial Commentaiy: Jane Rothfuss Discusses Kara Walker's Do You Like Creme in Your Coffee and Chocolate in Your Milk? (1997){\999, accessed 30 Dec 2005); available from http://collections.walkerart.org/item/text.html?id=533. 157 Joel Henning, "The Walker: An Alternative to the Mainstream,”Wall Street Journal, 20 Oct 2005, D8.

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unnerving images. Holland Cotter’s review of Quartet, featured in the New York Times,

only contains one statement about Walker, which is about her age. Instead of providing a

critique of the art displayed in the exhibition, Cotter states that Walker, Barney, Gober,

and Levine all represent a younger generation of artists whose work WAC has

collected.158 Both Cotter and Henning did provide detailed explanations about the way in

which WAC’s new space incorporates the urban environment that surrounds it and the

elegance and versatility of the new galleries. While Quartet did receive positive critical

reviews, critics did not actually discuss the merits of Walker’s art within their articles. In

fact, the critics that reviewed Quartet barely communicated that they had any

understanding of the themes conveyed through her artwork.

WAC’s presentation of Walker’s art did not provide a clear context for

interpreting the sensitive imagery displayed in Walker’s art. According to Greenberg:

As much as museum visitors want the reassurance of the familiar, they also expect new experiences. Their willingness to engage with the alien, the unpleasant, the dangerous depends on limited or gradual exposure and the assurance of support, either educational or emotional.159

Visitors who are not familiar with Walker’s art need clear educational support in order to

understand the complexities of Walker’s illustrations. Additionally, the staff at WAC

should have considered the implications of castigating an “older generation” of black

artists who have advocated against the exclusion of black art within mainstream art

museums. A lot of mainstream art museums, WAC included, are actively trying to

increase the number of minorities who visit their museum.160 The staff at WAC may not

158 Holland Cotter, "Probing Fringes, Finding Stars," New York Times, 15 April 2005, 31. 159 Greenberg, 86. 160 Kathy Halbreich, "Foreword," inExpanding the Center: Walker Art Center and Herzog & De Meuron, ed. Andrew Blauvelt (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center 2005), 6.

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have been conscious of the potential messages they imparted to the public, therefore, the

conclusion of this study provides suggestions for how WAC, and other mainstream

museums could improve their presentation of Walker’s art.

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CONCLUSION

Since there is no way of telling which image is meant to be ‘read’ first, the threads of the narrative that one can build are multiple. Confronted by such quandaries, the viewer may actually opt for escape rather than engagement. As Walker herself suggests, sometimes her images actually provide the means to do just so since they can often be dainty enough to allow ‘the viewer an out,’ a way so that s/he doesn’t ‘have to [really] see.’ The delicacy of some of her drawings can soften the shock of her images and allow viewers to bypass the difficult questions her work presents. Glenda Rossana Carpio "Critical Memory in the Fiction of Slavery." Dissertation, University of California, 2002.

Now that each museum has been analyzed separately, the conclusion of this thesis

will compare the presentation of Kara Walker’s art at Studio Museum in Harlem (SMH)

and the Walker Art Center (WAC). In addition to providing a comparison of the two

museums, the following chapter will also offer suggestions for how mainstream museums

can improve their presentation of Walker’s art. Mainstream art museums can become

institutions that successfully convey the attributes of Walker’s art, however, the staff who

work for mainstream art museums do need to provide a clear context for the display of

Walker’s sensitive illustrations and take audience reception into account. Mainstream art

museums should also acknowledge their history of excluding the collection and display

of black art.

88

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The presentation of Walker’s art does fulfill both SMH’s and WAC’s mission.

Considering the communal expectations that are associated with black museums, SMH

took a risky, but innovative step in the right direction by displaying Walker’s art.

Exhibiting Walker’s art appropriately coincides with SMH’s mission to expand our

understanding of black artistic practice. WAC, is a museum that is committed to

collecting and presenting avant-garde art. WAC’s staff includes museum professionals

that have an extensive history of working with performance artists to showcase their

work at the museum. Given WAC’s history as a museum that values performance art, the

multidisciplinary art institution has the potential to become one of the most suitable

venues to display Walker’s animation and other performance-based art. The staff at WAC

also understands how to utilize the gallery space within the museum in order to

communicate important themes embedded in Walker’s art.

While Kara Walker’s personal testimonials, illustrated figuratively throughout her

artwork, critique derogatory racial and gender stereotypes, her artwork is quite

ambiguous. Audience reception must be taken in to account when her artwork is

displayed. A spectator of Walker’s art might mistakenly assume that Walker is simply

confirming racist and sexist mythology without critiquing our assumptions about the way

in which we see the “other,” however, museums that display Walker’s art can lessen the

chance that this will occur. Kara Walker: Excavated from the Heart of a Black Negress, a

solo exhibition featured at SMH in 2003, decreased the likelihood that a spectator would

mistakenly assume that Walker is buying into racist and sexist rhetoric. The museum’s

communication tools conveyed Walker’s own self-analysis and her desire for the viewer

to participate in the same act of self-scrutiny. Their educational resources also made

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Walker’s art appear less ambiguous by connecting her art to other artwork created by

post-modern black artists.

The display of Walker’s art is an arduous undertaking for museum professionals

because her art contains graphic illustrations depicting painful instances of racism and

sexism within the United States and abroad. This task may seem particularly daunting for

museum professionals who work for mainstream art museums. Within mainstream art

museums the sensitive content embedded in Walker’s art is complicated by the legacy of

racial exclusion within mainstream art museums. WAC’s 2005 presentation of Walker’s

artwork within the exhibition Quartet did not quell the potential problems that can be

encountered when her artwork is displayed. WAC chose not to contextualize Walker’s art

within a black, post-modern framework. The end result was that a museum attendee

could have come to the same conclusions that Howardina Pindell and Betty Saar have

publicly voiced. Additionally, the multiple educational tools that were provided for the

exhibition attendee were uneven, lacking a consistent message that would dispel the

misconception that Walker reproduces stereotypes without critiquing them.

There are different techniques that mainstream art museums can use that have the

potential to successfully communicate the attributes of Walker’s art to the public. WAC

could have presented Walker’s art within a group exhibition that included other black

artists in order to avoid an instance where the public could mistakenly assume that WAC

is participating in racial tokenism and does not value the diversity of art created by black

people. The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) and the Dayton Institute of Art (DIA) are two

mainstream art institutions that have presented Walker’s art within group exhibitions

featuring artwork created by other black artists. Unlike WAC, both institutions have

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blatantly acknowledged the mainstream art sectors history of excluding the presentation

of art created by black artists and have considered the perspectives of museum attendees

that may be not familiar with post-modern art that incorporates minstrelsy.

The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) has boldly reexamined their collection of African

American art. Their 2005 exhibition Africa in America , a group exhibition that included

the display of Walker’s art, presented a variety of artistic approaches that African

American artists have used to illustrate the complexities of identity and experience.

Recognizing the lack of exposure a significant number of mainstream contemporary art

museums have given African American artists, SAM intentionally created a forum for

dialogue about pertinent issues regarding audience reception, racial exclusion and racial

inclusion within the museum space. For the promotion of the Africa in America, SAM ‘s

website included the statement:

For African-American audiences, however, the absence of art by and about their experiences can be a source of disappointment in American museums. As this museum ends a 4-year initiative called Deepening the Dialogue: Art and Audience, it was deemed a good time to look back through the collections and assess how well our holdings reflect this concern.161

Africa in America is one component of a four-year initiative at SAM entitled “Deepening

the Dialogue: Art and Audience.” The staff at SAM has self-consciously analyzed how

the museum has incorporated black art with their exhibitions and collections. 162

DIA is another example of a mainstream art museum that has made significant

progress in increasing the collection and display of art created by black artists, while also

161 [Website] (the Seattle Art Museum, Exhibitions Now on View, 2005, accessed 26 May 2005); available from http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/exhibit/exhibitDetail.asp?WHEN=&eventID=7502 162 [Website] (the Seattle Art Museum, Exhibitions Now on View, 2005, accessed 26 May 2005); available from http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/exhibit/exhibitDetail.asp?WHEN=&eventID=7502.

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considering the audience reception of the works displayed. DIA has carefully and

successfully presented postmodern art incorporating racial stereotypes created by black

artists. Looking Forward, Looking Black was a group exhibition presented at DIA in

2002. The exhibition included Walker’s art and centered on the display of art that

addressed the presentation of the black body in American culture. Looking Forward,

Looking Black provided a clear context for the display of postmodern black art by

including racist black collectables / black memorabilia, created from 1880 through 1950.

The museum attendee was able to see the types of objects that Walker collects and

critiques within her artwork.

Tuliza Fleming, who was the curator for Looking Forward, Looking Black,

recognized that a significant percentage of DIA’s museum attendees were unfamiliar with

the controversy that has erupted over the display of postmodern black art that

incorporates stereotypes. For this reason, she felt it was necessary to provide a clear 1 context for display of such sensitive and ambiguous art. Similar to SAM, but unlike

WAC’s presentation of Walker’s art, DAI did not castigate black artists that are

uncomfortable with the display of postmodern minstrel art. In Looking Forward, Looking

Black, postmodern artists such as Walker and Michael Ray Charles were shown in

conjunction with other artists who created Black Empowerment and Black Nationalist

artwork during the 1960s and 1970s. Postmodern art, Black Empowerment art and Black

Nationalist art were presented to showcase the different, but equally valid techniques

163 Fleming, 36-37.

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each generation has used to illustrate the complexities of racism, sexism and

oppression. 164

Group exhibitions that only feature black artists do have their drawbacks.

Walker’s artwork can be connected to other non-black artists who explore similar subject

matter, such as abuse of power, oppression and sexual mythology. Group exhibitions that

only feature black artists segregate art created by black artists, hampering the potential

for art of this nature to be seen by the public as great art instead of great black art.165

Despite the drawbacks, group exhibitions displayed at mainstream art museums, which

focus on black artists, are exhibitions that make the public aware that a diversity of black

art exists, and is a safe alternative for institutions that have just begun to include the

display of black art.166 Hopefully, the mainstream art sector will reach a point in time

when all black group exhibitions are no longer needed. At present, however, the

mainstream museum sector has yet to overcome the history of exclusion of black art.

While there are definitely mainstream art museums that have greatly improved their

inclusion of art created by black people, some museums have not improved their records

of exhibition diversity.

For the upcoming solo display of Walker’s art that will occur in 2007 at WAC,

the art institution may want to consider connecting Walker’s art to both non-black artists

who explore similar themes, and other postmodern black artist who also use their art as a

vehicle to provide commentary about United States history, racial and gender identity.

WAC owns artwork created by Robert Colescott and Adrian Piper, two postmodern black

164 Fleming, 36-37, [Website] (The Dayton Art Institute Past Exhibitions, 2006, accessed 22 June 2006); available from http://www.daytonartinstitute.org/exhibits/past_lookingforward.html. 165 Kinsella: 118-119. 166 Ibid, 120, 123.

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artists that have influenced Walker. WAC’s innovative educational tools can provide a

clear context for the display of Walker’s art. The section of WAC’s website devoted to an

analysis of Walker’s art can compare Walker’s art to other postmodern black artists that

are within WAC’s collection or at least, list the names of other postmodern black artists

in the in the “related artists” category on WAC’s collections webpage that addresses

Walker’s art.

Mainstream art museums that do not have the financial resources needed to hire a

black art specialist can create partnerships with identity-based museums. Some

mainstream art museums have collaborated with identity-based museums for certain art

exhibitions or have displayed a traveling exhibition from an ethnic museum. In 2001, the

Santa Monica Museum of Art displayed Freestyle, a group exhibition featuring young,

contemporary, black artists, which was organized by SMH and curated by Thelma

Golden.167 Adam Weinberg, the director of The Whitney Museum of American Art has

also created partnerships with black art museums and other black cultural organizations

for some of their exhibitions. In 2004, the Whitney displayed The Art of Romare

Bearden, a traveling exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington,

DC. The staff at the Whitney developed additional programming connected to the

exhibition by collaborating with SMH, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black

»s o Culture and other African American cultural organizations located in New York City.

The staff who work for SMH have significant experience displaying a diversity of art that

has been created by black artists, therefore, SMH is better equipped than a lot of

167 Cotter, "Beyond Multiculturalism, Freedom?," AR1. 168 Montagne, 2-3.

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mainstream art museums to display a solo exhibition for Walker. It may be beneficial for

the WAC to create a partnership with a black museum or black cultural organization for

their upcoming solo presentation of Walker’s art. Mainstream art museums may be able

to avoid the appearance that they are promoting painful racial and gender based

stereotypes through collaborations with identity based museums.

In his essay, “Minorities and Fine-Arts Museums”, Peter C. Marzio, the director

of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, voices the need for an increase in partnerships

between mainstream art museums and minority-oriented institutions. Foundations often

encourage their grantees to create partnerships with other institutions.169 Partnerships

between ethnic-specific museums and mainstream art museums have the potential to

create beneficial outcomes for all parties involved. Collaborations that include

mainstream art museums and black museums allow mainstream art museum professionals

to hone their skills for the presentation of art created by black artists. Partnerships of this

nature should also increase the diversity of curatorial perspectives that are included

within an exhibition and will lessen competition between mainstream art museums and

black museums.

There are multiple techniques that can be used to create a clear context for the

display of Walker’s art including group exhibitions that feature both Walker’s art and a

diversity of art created by other black artists, collaborations between mainstream art

museums and ethnic-specific museums, and the use of educational tools that

communicate who and what has influenced Walker’s artistic production. Additional

169 Francie Ostrower, "The Reality Underneath the Buzz of Partnerships: The Potentials and the Pitfalls of Partnering," Stanford Social Innovation Review (Spring 2005): 36.

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scholarship, which evaluates the curatorial and audience development outcomes from

collaborations between mainstream art museums and identity-based museums, would be

helpful for art administrators.

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