#understandingrace

Tuesday, March 26, 2013 at 5:30pm

at the University of Michigan Museum of Art

525 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1354

Cuban artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons visits UMMA to discuss her wide-ranging work in visual and performance art over the past three decades. Dealing extensively with the legacy of the African diaspora across the Atlantic, Campos-Pons’s work inquires about the continuities of family and traditions as they persist and sustain despite the disruptions of the past, while also exploring how they can define and constrain definitions of selfhood. Her art has been exhibited around the world, with notable solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the Venice Biennale 2001 and a large retrospective at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 2007, the same year in which she was also the recipient of the Rappaport Prize. She is co-founder of GASP, a gallery and collaborative artists’ space in Boston, and teaches at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in the same city.

Joining Campos-Pons to discuss her work will be Larry La Fountain-Stokes, UM Associate Professor of American Culture, Romance Languages, and Women’s Studies. Dr. La Fountain-Stokes is a scholar of contemporary avant-garde performance cultures across Latin America and is most recently the author of Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora (2009).

This project is made possible in part by the LSA Understanding Race Theme Semester and the Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs. For more information about the Theme Semester, click here.

Student Docents at UMMA are encouraged to be creative when they engage with the Museum’s collection and when they interpret it for others. This is the second year we have asked them to identify art in our collection that speaks to them about a theme and present their understanding to a specific audience. This year they were asked to explore the topic of “race” in connection with theUnderstanding Race LSA Theme Semester. This week The Annex is featuring the comments they wrote about the art they selected. We hope you will enjoy this project.

Diego Rivera, Market Place, 1930

Museum Purchase, 1950/1.172

Diego Rivera is famous for his Detroit Industry fresco in Michigan’s own Detroit Institute of Arts. His imagery offers commentary on the relationships between the environment, industry, and individual identity as well as relationships between different types of people. UMMA owns another piece by Rivera, a lithograph entitled Market Place from 1930.  Printed on a bright yellow background, the black ink offers a simple outline of five figures surrounded by or carrying baskets filled with goods. The plain outlines and forms of the figures and lack of anyspecific context allows this image to be universal, to represent any number of cultures. Just as Rivera’s Detroit Industry fresco represents workers of a variety of races working alongside each other in automotive factories, this lithograph offers a frame through which to examine the broad similarities between people in such a vibrantly populated world.  While the specifics of a market scene may vary across continents and countries, its foundation as a community center is fundamental to all ethnicities. 

Student Docents at UMMA are encouraged to be creative when they engage with the Museum's collection and when they interpret it for others. This is the second year we have asked them to identify art in our collection that speaks to them about a theme and present their understanding to a specific audience. This year they were asked to explore the topic of "race" in connection with the Understanding Race LSA Theme Semester. This week The Annex is featuring the comments they wrote about the art they selected. We hope you will enjoy this project.

Artist Unknown, African, Yombe Peoples Democratic Republic of the Congo

Power Figure (nkisi nduda)

Gift of Candis and Helmut Stern 2005/1.191

Unknown Artist, Vili Peoples, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Nail figure (nkisi nkondi)

Gift of Candis and Helmut Stern, 2005/1.192

In examining our semester of Understanding Race I want to pull out the word “understanding” as a key term. Before we can even begin to understand race we must first abolish our misunderstandings. Africa is commonly misrepresented in western culture as a dark, mysterious, and primitive continent.  Similarly, African art is often unwittingly misinterpreted. A good example is the nkisi. To a beginning admirer of African art the nkisi seems foreign, strange, and possibly frightening, which perpetuates the image of Africa as a dangerous and primitive place. The nails in the first nkisi seem aggressive and give the figure an intimidating aura. The second, smaller nkisi is adorned with hides and feathers of animals, often seen as primitive, and the mirror in its center adds confusion. But to understand these figures and then African culture we must abolish our preconceived notions and have an open mind. The nails in the first nkisi are not violent but political; each nail represents a contract between two people in a community. The nkisi is kept by an important leader in the town and when an agreement is made and meant to be official, the two people will put a nail in the nkisi, solidifying the contract much like a signature. The second nkisi has a traditional mirror that represents the looking glass into the spirit world. These figures are not only important instruments of mediation for the town but also important religious objects that carry medicinal herbs inside and symbolically powerful animal skins outside. By learning about the nkisis we can begin to understand their context and then begin to understand African culture as a whole.

Student Docents at UMMA are encouraged to be creative when they engage with the Museum's collection and when they interpret it for others. This is the second year we have asked them to identify art in our collection that speaks to them about a theme and present their understanding to a specific audience. This year they were asked to explore the topic of "race" in connection with the  Understanding Race LSA Theme Semester. This week The Annex is featuring the comments they wrote about the art they selected. We hope you will enjoy this project.

John Hoppner, Portrait of Sir Foster Cunliffe, 3rd Bt. Of Acton Park, Wrexham, Denbingshire (1755-1834)

Museum purchase made possible by the Margaret Watson Parker Art Collection Fund, 2007/2.1

This oil on canvas painting features the 3rd Baronet, Sir Foster Cunliffe, standing full length in a deciduous forest landscape. In an archer’s uniform, he wears a green coat, yellow breeches, and hessian boots. His plumed black hat rests at his feet. John Hoppner, the English portrait artist, had a reputation for painting portraits of members of English high society and was himself a man of great social power.

The baronet, Hoppner’s subject, lived off his grandfather’s fortune which was made in the slave trade, thus demonstrating how this piece relates to our Understanding Race theme. His grandfather was the main slave trader in Liverpool, and was mayor three times.

Granted, the subject of the portrait did feel uneasy about the origin of the fortune, and omitted the mention of the word ‘slavery’ in a descriptive history of his family’s genealogy. This feeling of uneasiness obviously exists today, and UMMA bought this portrait at a reduced price attributed to the fact that the subject acquired wealth from the slave trade.

Written by Robbie Austin, Student Docent

_________________________________________________________________

This portrait shows a wealthy English aristocrat from the late eighteenth century; however the portrait gives no hint as to where the Baronet’s wealth came from. This man’s family fortune came at a pivotal time in the history of race, and his fortune came from the African slave trade. Up to this point, race did not exist in the way that modern individuals understand it. 

It was the slave trade of Africans by wealthy white Europeans such as Sir Cunliffe and his family that purported the idea of racism and racial inferiority in order to justify their trade.  As such, we, people who no longer trade in slaves and believe slavery to be morally wrong, must ask ourselves, what is race and does it actually exist anywhere but in our minds?