Specters in the Museum
Historical amnesia has been a disease that has infected most of recorded history. When it comes to identifying African diasporic contributions to the largest religious, social, political, artistic movements in the history of civilizations all over the world, there is a covert attempt to erase their specific contributions. The recorded history of the indigenous people to the land that was colonized, has been strategically targeted and positioned to have limited recorded memory. However, the fact that we are able to identify that there has been an erasure or attempt to do so serves as evidence that these efforts were not possible. There are still remnants of history that have african representation laced in the hems of the clothing made, embedded in the culture of the food produced, and portrayed in the production of some of the most renown art pieces. I have become increasingly interested in finding these lost remnants of history and evaluating the ways in which the erasure was not completely successful. The work of connecting these dots is still vastly undiscovered. I believe my curiosity about what is lost is an ancestral call to act in which I am to look into ways in which I can connect to these missing pieces and share this history with others.
Within the disconnected histories, there comes to be a cyclical occurrence. The same questions of absence arise. Even when these questions are answered…their answers are not passed down. There is a need for a permanent space in all museums centering Eurocentric art to invite in the closure of gaps and share the critical component of the omission of facts. Even when these artifacts, experiences, and archives are hidden, natural causes or perhaps the ghosts of our ancestors bring us to search for where our predecessors left off. My experiences learning about fine art have always been presented through a Eurocentric point of view. The most documented works and the most discussed pieces are from artists like Picasso, Monet, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and Pollock. The ways in which African influences fueled the production of so many of these artists are not widely spoken about. Delving into this deeper, I decided to visit the Metropolitan Museum which historically has kept so many renowned international works to display and educate the public. My goal in visiting the museum was to evaluate how memory, objects, and experiences were documented in the European context and search for gaps where I notice there is missing context. For example, we are aware that enslaved Africans were the source of free labor internationally. So much of the architecture we admire was put together by enslaved Africans. My goal was to search for some gaps that I could point to and further research. Upon visiting, I was drawn to a brand new exhibition not open to the public yet. This exhibition was only to be viewed by patrons and members of the Metropolitan Museum. Inquiring about the show, I learned the exhibition was from a collection of pieces donated to the Schomberg Center by Arturo Schomberg. The exhibition, “Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter” was one of the documented classical paintings from Juan de Pareja who was an enslaved man of African descent owned by Diego Velasquez. Arturo took a trip to Spain where he searched for African presentations in the Golden Age and fell upon Juan De Pareja’s work.
Arturo Schomberg found this work very enlightening as the time of Juan’s documented paintings and depictions of African peoples was the height of the transatlantic slave trade. In America, the ideas of blackness and enslavement were one concept. Blackness did not exist outside of the narratives of inferiority. In this context, however, Juan depicted what he saw in Spain. While he was an enslaved black man, he did not view himself as inferior. In fact, in several of his paintings, he is depicted as a saint, as someone in aristocracy, and as someone of high society. Not only is this an example of counternarrative work, but it is an effort to record himself in history but also share a story of how black people existed in other parts of the world. Arturo Schomberg was moved by this counternarrative and thought if black people in America could see this depiction of blackness, we could view ourselves in a different light. Moreover, if our country could see us through this lens, we could challenge the narrative of inherent genetic inferiority. Arturo then dedicated his life to cultivating and documenting black history. He created a library that is, to date, the largest archive of black history. In “Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter”, there is a display of his findings and notes from his trip to Seville Spain where he pulled so many documents that reflected the talents of black people in a time when our stories were being told for us in a negative context.
The further significance of Arturo Schomberg's work is its connection to my questions that naturally formulated when interacting with mainstream art education and global history. Arturo was born in 1874 and sought to make this connection 150 years ago. 150 years later, I present the same questions and receive the same sense of enlightenment seeing my history recorded in a way that shows me more than enslavement. To deepen my understanding of the exhibition and the work of Juan de Pareja, I attended a conversation on Modern Spain and Arturo's travels in the early 1900s held by the Co-Curator of the exhibition, Dr. Vanessa Valdes, Dr. Eva Maria Copeland, and Dr. Nicholas R. Jones who have all done significant work in Latinidad as Black researchers. The conversation was held at the Schomberg Center which is the home of Arturo’s Collection. Going into the conversation, I knew Dr.Valdes would provide invaluable insight into her creative process in sharing Juan de Pareja's work in the exhibit. I learned more about what inspired Arturo and about the personal experiences of the black researchers navigating a Latin History space. They all expressed experiences of being discounted, pushed out of their departments and not being acknowledged as Spanish speakers. I had not even remembered my personal experience with these tensions until they shared their stories. I studied abroad in Valladolid, Spain. I experienced very similar occurrences. One of the biggest full-circle moments for me was revisiting the memory that I actually visited Seville, Spain. I learned from their presentation that this was historically a city where many peoples of African descent lived. I had not fathomed the potential of African history being in Europe when I lived there. As I continued to learn more about history, my curiosity for the black influence in global history grew.
Seeing the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum really brought all these experiences to view and the need for the work to be continued was emphasized. The cycle of omission creating curiosity is the inability to completely erase our history. Who prompts us to look into these details? In places where we meant to hide unwanted narratives to support the right of the victors, we have then aggravated the ghosts of the hidden stories. In places like the Metropolitan Museum which dedicates most of its space to documenting European history, there are several remnants of untold contexts that have left a “bare trace…visible to those who bothered to look” and are finding ways to “understand the conditions under which a memory was reproduced …toward a counter-memory of the future” (Gordon 1997). In other words, it is the omission of these events that creates curiosity and disrupts the evident cultivation of a story of superiority and inferiority. A similar curiosity that inspired Arturo Schomburg has also pulled work from Toni Morrison and Derek Walcott in their observation of the need to restore public memory of the slave trade. Similarly, Teju Cole’s Open City, mentions the African burial ground beneath New York City’s Lower Manhattan. In this case, the bodies of Africans are memorialized in a way that further subjects them to inferiority in space and in concept even after death. How can we expect to continue to patch and cover these truths without the specters of the “forgotten past '' surfacing (Rice&Kardux 2012)?
The history of black creativity is also notable as the documentation of culture and comradery was almost impossible to record as it was not celebrated. Black creativity is the resistance to erasure. Black hymns, dances, and traditions were ways to preserve our culture. Juan de Pareja's craft was used as a tool to place himself in recorded history as well as share his narrative with generations to come. Creativity as resistance is a tactic used globally across the African diaspora. The use of the body in forms of creative expression is a direct rebellion against the subjectivity of black bodies. Specifically considering the slave trade and the American history of African Enslavement. The memory of the contributions of enslaved African people was sometimes recorded with artifacts of the body. The expression of culture through the body is a reclamation and effort to re-present history in a way that centers the individual not just as a victim who lacks agency.
African history did not begin with enslavement. In “Juan de Pareja, Afro Hispanic Painter” the collection depicts several pieces that show how colorful and vast African history is. African history is not limited to enslavement in America and underdevelopment in the African Continent. In several of Juan’s pieces, black saints were depicted. He included himself in several of his pieces and even alluded to his religious beliefs in a piece where he depicts himself in the room of disciples. In the artist talk, Dr.Valdez shared that historically Spain was viewed by Europe as part of Africa. Because of that historical context and the negative connotation of being of African descent carried globally, Spain worked very hard to separate their history from African History. While many times, it did overlap as did many countries in the African Diaspora. Juan De Pareja is one of many black artists during this time in Spain. Also on view in the collection is a piece named “Three Boys” painted by Bartolome Esteban Murillo dated between 1617-1682. This piece stood out to me because it is one of the first depictions of a Black man of higher class or socioeconomic status than white men also depicted in the piece. The painting shows two young boys at the feet of a Black Man withholding an item. The Black man is dressed in a suit and is holding what looks to be an expensive vase. The boys on the floor have no shoes and tattered clothing. The man is also reaching down to retrieve an item that was taken from him. Not only has this form of depiction of black history not been widely depicted, but the concept of wealth for the enslaved American or modern marginalized individual also was not a common vision. Additionally, a painting of Seville, Spain in 1660 depicted the people of Seville. Given the collection at the Metropolitan Museum of European Architecture and city living where the black presentation was completely erased and not documented, this painting depicts black figures as the majority. This calls to question the ways in which the omission of black bodies could suggest that in so many other cities, there may have been people of African descent living within the community.
These depictions were extremely valuable in my concept of global history and black influence in art around the world. I believe it is the duty of the institution to provide a space where these stories can be centered like Juan de Pareja’s but not just as an enslaved painter. I would love to see this work continued by contributing to the archive of black representation globally but specifically where it is most erased, in Europe and Latin America. I think it is beautiful that life brought me to similar passions of Arturo Schomburg but I also imagine a future where these memories and stories are recorded in an accessible way where I would be presented this history prior to learning one of defeat and subjectivity. This tension shows up in the present day as the book bans and elimination of African American History AP courses reflect a similar intention to control the narrative of history as not to display the stories as a record of perpetrators and victims to extreme marginalization and death of peoples. I believe this tension should be handled with care but it is still important to share these stories with the “socio-political context in which human beings came to commit evil acts and the human agency that promoted this shift. (Bull&Hansen 2015). My reimagined space of memory in these museums would be a collective of memories and artifacts that share all the experiences that existed in a time and space without omission of details. Bakhtin mentions in 1981, “Memory should be reflexive in ways which not only expose its socially constructed nature and/ or include the suffering of the ‘Others’ but also through a dialogic approach which relies on a multiplicity of perspectives”. Providing multiple perspectives gives the learner an opportunity to think critically about events in history without efforts to portray any group as more or less than. Presenting these histories could further connect us globally and deconstruct anti-blackness as we begin to observe ways in which all of our histories intertwine with the African Diaspora. It is time our Museums evaluate how they are presenting information in ways that are harmful narratives and inherently anti-black. Additionally, the resources to present multiple perspectives are within the archives of all these museums. The need to continue Arturo Schomburg's work is evident in that we came across similar passions through life experiences. My hope would be to provide these narratives to black and brown youth in schools who share the identities of the omitted histories to share these counter-narratives and answer the questions left by our specters of untold history. Through my non-profit organization, I am able to teach about the artists and present work that highlights our thoughtful contributions to society beyond enslavement. Through guided tours, the criticality of the work and context can be added to help encourage students to think more critically about their identities and how they are positioned in society. Through my organization, I provide tours where added materials, supplemental artifacts, and multimedia are brought to provide multiple perspectives in live time. The mission of this initiative is to share stories with multiple perspectives, provide a world view to students where they are not positioned as victims and provide an entry point for the love of education through work that relates to personal experience. Specters of our history can never be fully erased and this work highlights our ancestral ghosts in the museum.
References
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Rice, A. & Kardux. J.C. (2012) Confronting the ghostly legacies of slavery: the politics of black bodies, embodied memories and memorial landscapes, Atlantic Studies, 9(3), 245-272.
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