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Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art

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Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art C In 1927, the Chicago Art Institute presented the first major museum exhibition of OOKS art by African Americans. Designed to demonstrate the artists’ abilities and to promote racial equality, the exhibition also revealed the art world’s anxieties about the participa- EXHIBITING tion of African Americans in the exclusive venue of art museums—places where blacks had historically been barred from visiting let alone exhibiting. Since then, America’s major art museums have served as crucial locations for African Americans to protest against their exclusion and attest to their contributions in the visual arts. BLACKNESS In Exhibiting Blackness, art historian Bridget R. Cooks analyzes the curatorial strate- AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE AMERICAN ART MUSEUM gies, challenges, and critical receptions of the most significant museum exhibitions of African American art. Tracing two dominant methodologies used to exhibit art by African Americans—an ethnographic approach that focuses more on artists than their art, and a EXHIBITING recovery narrative aimed at correcting past omissions—Cooks exposes the issues involved in exhibiting cultural difference that continue to challenge art history, historiography, and American museum exhibition practices. By further examining the unequal and often con- tested relationship between African American artists, curators, and visitors, she provides insight into the complex role of art museums and their accountability to the cultures they represent. “An important and original contribution to the study of the history of American art museums and American culture. Cooks not only demonstrates her thesis but also develops a useful perspective for studying the history of the deeply troubled re- B lationship between African Americans and American art museums.”—Alan Wallach, LACKN author of Exhibiting Contradiction: Essays on the Art Museum in the United States “One of the pleasures of reading Exhibiting Blackness is that it holds previous cura- tors and administrators to account, and invites a critical methodological approach that is refreshing in a field that tends to be overly cautious and conservative.” E SS —Jennifer A. González, author of Subject to Display: Reframing Race in Contemporary Installation Art BRIDGET R. COOKS is associate professor of art history, African American stud- ies, and visual studies at the University of California Irvine. Cover design by Sally Nichols in collaboration with the author Cover photo by Peter Brenner UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS PRESS Massachusetts Amherst & Boston www.umass.edu/umpress BRIDGET R. COOKS Cooks_cover_final.indd 1 08/10/2011 10:01:40 AM EXHIBITING BLACKNESS EXHIBITING BLACKNESS UNIVERSITYii OF MASSACHUSETTS PRESS Amherst and Boston EXHIBITING BAfricanLACKNESS Americans and the American Art Museum BRIDGET R. COOKS Copyright © 2011 by University of Massachusetts Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America LC 2011021565 ISBN 978-1-55849-875-4 Designed by Sally Nichols Set in Arno Pro and Kolosso Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cooks, Bridget R., 1972– Exhibiting blackness : African Americans and the American art museum / Bridget R. Cooks. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-55849-875-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Art museums—Social aspects—United States. 2. African American art—Exhibitions— Social aspects. 3. Art and society—United States. 4. Art and race. I. Title. II. Title: African Americans and the American art museum. N510.C67 2011 704.03'96073—dc23 2011021565 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data are available. Title page photograph: “1900–1919: From White to Black Harlem,” from Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968. Gallery Installation: Photographed March 25, 1969; The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Cover photograph: on exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art: Left: Mary Cassatt,Mother About to Wash Her Sleepy Child, 1880. Oil on canvas, 39 7/16 x 25 7/8 in. (100.3 x 65.8 cm). Mrs. Fred Hathaway Bixby Bequest (M.62.8.14). Photo © 2011 Museum Associates / LACMA. Center: Winslow Homer, The Cotton Pickers, 1876. Oil on canvas, 24 1/16 x 38 1/8 in. (61.12 x 96.84 cm). Acquisition made possible through Museum Trustees: Robert O. Anderson, R. Stanton Avery, B. Gerald Cantor, Edward W. Carter, Justin Dart, Charles E. Ducommun, Camilla Chandler Frost, Julian Ganz, Jr., Dr. Armand Hammer, Harry Lenart, Dr. Franklin D. Murphy, Mrs. Joan Palevsky, Richard E. Sherwood, Maynard J. Toll, and Hal B. Wallis (M.77.68). Photo © 2011 Museum Associates / LACMA. For Mom, Dad, Linda, and Joe CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix A Note on Terminology xv Introduction African Americans Enter the Art Museum 1 1. Negro Art in the Modern Art Museum 17 2. Black Artists and Activism Harlem on My Mind, 1969 53 3. Filling the Void Two Centuries of Black American Art, 1976 87 4. New York to L.A. Black Male: Representations of Black Masculinity in Contemporary American Art, 1994–1995 110 5. Back to the Future The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, 2002 135 Conclusion African Americans after the Art Museum 155 Epilogue Harlem on My Mind 161 Notes 165 Index 193 Color galleries follow pages 78 and 142. vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The publication of this book is as much the product of the generosity of time, spirit, and resources of many people as it is the result of years of soli- tary research and self-determination. I am grateful to have a formal space to thank those people here. Some of the core ideas for this book were conceived during my years as a graduate student in the Visual and Cultural Studies Program at the Univer- sity of Rochester. Key faculty who discussed ideas about art, museums, criti- cal theory, race, and exhibitions with me were Kamran Ali, Douglas Crimp, Deborah R. Grayson, Michael Ann Holly, Jeffrey Allen Tucker, and Sharon Willis. The encouragement and empowerment I received from my adviser Douglas were invaluable. Thank you to my comrades and friends with whom I read, wrote, watched movies at The Little Theatre, danced, and enjoyed the hours through the long Rochester winters: Ondine Chavoya, Lisa A. Finn, Eloy J. Hernández, O. Funmilayo Makarah, Jeanette Roan, Tina Takemoto, and Lisa Viñolo. I received funding to help with much of the costs incurred to conduct the research necessary to complete this book. The Luce Dissertation Fellowship in American Art, Academic Senate Council on Research, Computing and Libraries (CORCL), University of California, Irvine, and the Individual Research Project Grant, Humanities Center, UC Irvine, provided grants that allowed me see this project through. Much of the analysis in the following chapters was dependent upon the cooperation of people to be interviewed. Each gave of their time to think about their participation in the art world, cultural politics, and personal histories. Some dug through their personal archives to find materials that would help this history’s factual correctness and let me dig alongside them. Thanks to Bill Arnett, Matt Arnett, Paul Arnett, Mary Ann Bendolph, Mary Lee Bendolph, Louisiana Bendolph, Aurelia Brooks, David C. Driskell, Cecil Fergerson, Thelma Golden, Richard Mayhew, John Outterbridge, Leonard Simon, Timothy E. Washington, Robert Wilson, and Lloyd Yearwood. ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have benefited from the encouragement of a wide range of artists, cura- tors, scholars, and writers who have invigorated me through their conver- sation, and by example. My gratitude goes to Abraham Agonafir, Arthé A. Anthony, Renée Ater, Juliette Bethea, Sheila Pree Bright, Adrienne Childs, Linda Day Clark, Huey Copeland, David C. Driskell, Ruth Fine, Cheryl Finley, Jacqueline Francis, Jennifer A. González, Lisa Henry, Ginger Hill, Kellie Jones, Titus Kaphar, Amy Kirschke, Cynthia Moody, Charmaine Nelson, Howardena Pindell, Kymberly Pinder, Richard J. Powell, Franklin Sirmans, Margaret Rose Vendryes, Alan Wallach, Carla Williams, Deborah Willis, and Judith Wilson. Their encouragement and interest in my project has been uplifting. The professionalism of dozens of staff members of museums, libraries, and archives across the country has made the research and documentation in this book accessible. The following people have assisted me with efficiency and often an informed intuition that led me to important materials that shaped this text: Margaret Rose Vendryes, curator, Brenda Square, director of Archives, and Christopher Harter, director of Library and Reference Services, Amistad Research Center; Aimee Marshall, manager of Rights Licensing, Art Institute of Chicago; Alisa Adona, Artis Lane studio manager; Márta Fodor, Ann Handler, Elizabeth Huffer, Timothy McCarthy, Tricia Smith, and Robin Stolf, Art Resource; Amanda Hamilton, Rights and Reproductions assistant, and Emily Rafferty, associate librarian and Archives, Baltimore Museum of Art; Patricia Hills, professor, Boston University; Tara Cuthbert, Archives assistant, and Angie Park, archivist and manager of Special Library Collections, Library and Archives, Brooklyn Museum; Tammy Carter and Marianna Pegno, Rights and Reproductions, Center for Creative Photography; Debbie Vaughan, Research Center, Chicago History Museum; Lisa L. Crane, trustee of the Hayden Family Revocable Art Trust; Maxine Wright, executive assistant to the president, and John Wells, director of Development and Alumni Relations, International House; Austen Bailly, associate curator of American Art, Meagan Blake, intern, Oral History Program,
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