It’s no secret that the art museums of the world are whitewashed both in their appearance and lack of artwork by artists of color, particularly artwork by black artists.
In recent years, more curators and museum buyers have made efforts to include artwork by black artists.
According to the New York Times, “the Museum of Modern Art has hired a curator whose mission is to help fill the wide gaps in its African-American holdings and exhibitions.”
While I’m more than glad to see a major museum like the MoMA hire a curator who will make it a goal to correct the wrongs of previous curators, I can’t help but think that filling the gaps of art history by including artists that should have been there all along should be the goal of every curator.
As an art history major, I had to take a class that was specifically about African-American art to learn about black artists.
And it’s not as if black artists were making art that was vastly different from white artists, it’s just that their artwork did not fit into the Eurocentric museum narrative of modern art.
According to the New York Times, as abstraction and modernist formalism became mainstream, black artwork was rejected by “the white establishment” because the works were more “figurative and too narrowly expressive of the black experience.”
While rejecting artwork for an exhibition based on differing formal elements is understandable, rejecting artwork because it is expressive of the artist’s identity and experience is shameful and hypocritical given that the few black artworks that were shown in the past were specifically chosen for their depiction of the black experience.
Art dealer Michael Rosenfeld told the New York Times, that “up until about five years ago, when curators came to (art dealers), they were really only interested in narrative works that showed the black experience so they could demonstrate in no uncertain terms to their visitors that they were committed to representing black America.”
Whether artworks by black artists were accepted based on their particular narrative or rejected due to formal concerns, it is clear that artworks by black artists were judged more critically and were far less likely to be shown than similar artworks by white artists.
Moreover, even though it was hard for black men to get their artwork noticed, it was even harder for black women to have their art featured in museums.
Assemblage sculptor Betye Saar told the New York Times, “We were invisible to museums and the gallery scene”, when speaking about the black, female artist experience.
Many black artists were simply unknown because of their difficulty in getting to show their work on highly regarded platform.
And while it is not as if there were absolutely no African-American artists exhibited in museums, there were only about two or three highly-featured black artists in museums and studios across the country.
As abstractionist Alma Thomas told The New York Times, “the exceptions prove the rule.”
When I think about how black artists have been left out of the compilation of art history shown in museums until a few years ago, it makes me think of how American identity and culture has been constructed to leave people of color out of it.
But most of all, I am disappointed that African-American artists are just recently getting the recognition, praise and place in history they have always deserved.
rcm2@indiana.edu
@RachelCMiller1
