This Spring, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., has opened AFRO-ATLANTIC HISTORIES — an enormous exhibition that visually explores the far-flung diaspora of the Western slave trade.  Organized in 2018 by the Sao Paulo Museum of Art, the show originally had a Brazilian focus. But NGA Curator Kanitra Fletcher has reconfigured it now as an exhibition with a vast canvas that conveys the impact and legacy of the African Diaspora across four continents–Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe. 

This is a different kind of exhibition for the National Gallery to undertake–notably, it is infused with an aggressive curatorial perspective, beginning with the first object visitors see.  A seven-foot-tall mirrored map (right) of the Americas and Africa confronts viewers rather than welcoming them passively–the visitor/mirror reflection is meant to link the viewer actively with the Atlantic slave trade over time and place. (“A Place to Call Home–Africa America Reflection” by Hank Willis Thomas, 2020.) Using mirrors is not unique, and in the Western creative canon mirrors have always told fascinating tales. They instantly provoke deeper meanings of a “reflective surface,” as in Lewis Carroll’s THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS (1871), when Alice is drawn into a fantastical world. Her curiosity takes her climbing through a mirror into a place where she meets chess pieces that come to life and flowers that speak like humans.

The Grimm’s SNOW WHITE portrayed a Magic Mirror obsessively worshipped by the Evil Queen. She constantly demands to know who is the fairest in the land, and when the Mirror one day proclaims Snow White as the most beautiful, the Evil Queen is driven by jealousy to destroy her. Mirrors, alas, reflect truth-telling no matter the consequences.

The Broadway show and movie CABARET planted a mirror on the stage of the Kit Kat Klub: in the opening scene, the audience sees a giant distorting mirror whose impact is shattered when the M.C. pops up and sings “Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome.”  In the final scene, the mirror is filled not with glassy distortions, but with images of human evil–Naziis. The intention here is for the mirror to transform an entertaining “pretend” surface into horrific reality.
Artists today use mirrors as an essential part of their work.  Yayoi Kusama is a notable example, and Washington’s Hirshhorn Museum is currently showing her exhibition ONE WITH ETERNITY.

The Hirshhorn began collecting Kusama in 1996, and in 2017 hosted a major survey ofher work  (see Elaine King’s 2017 review in ARTES MAGAZINE).  This year, Kusama’s ONE WITH ETERNITY features two of her Infinity Mirror Rooms–the first one she created (1965),  and one of her most recent. Her Mirror Rooms are intended to immerse visitors in endless reflections, with changing colors bouncing from lanterns to walls to ceilings and floors –the idea being to submerge viewers into a universal and infinite flow.

At the National Gallery’s AFRO-ATLANTIC HISTORIES, once visitors absorb their mirrored connection to the slave trade they are led through six thematic sections. There are 130 artists from 24 countries, and documents drawn from Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe between the 17th and 21st centuries.  Works were selected across time and geography to tell stories through major paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, photographs, time-based media art, and ephemera. The use of the word “HISTORIES” in the title is not meant to convey conventional data-based storytelling, but “HISTORIAS”—a Portuguese term that includes both fictional and nonfictional narratives. The exhibition explicitly uses this term “to present viewpoints of previously marginalized or forgotten people.”

The first section’s theme is “Maps and Margins,” and focuses on the beginning of the slave trade. The art includes an illustration of a slave ship’s cargo hold, and Aaron Douglas’s painting “Into Bondage” (1936).

The second section, “Enslavements and Emancipations,” examines how abuses of commercial slavery triggered rebellion, escape, and Abolitionist movements.  Art in this section includes a mezzotint by John Raphael Smith after George Moreland, Slave Trade (1791), below, left, where a male captive is restrained, as his wife and child are purchased by a different buyer. There is also a photograph of the heavily-scarred back of a former slave, a shocking image that was first published by McPherson and Oliver in 1863.

The third section is called “Everyday Lives,” and depicts daily life in the Black community during and after slavery. Most notable is Romare Beardon’s collage, “Tomorrow I May be Far Away” (1967).

“Rites and Rhythms” is the title of fourth section, and the theme here is Black celebrations and ceremonies fostered by the slave trade in the Americas and the Caribbean–notably, how the slave trade carried channels for worship that are retained today in Black Christianity, as well as for such celebratory rites and gatherings as “Carnival.”

The fifth section, “Portraits,” spotlights Black leaders of the 18th and 19th centuries that have been marginalized by the traditional American and European artistic canon.  One prominent example is Dalton Paula’s “Zeferina” (2018), which was commissioned for the show and portrays an important slave rebellion leader who was arrested and sentenced to death.

The final section, “Resistances and Activism,” examines the ongoing struggle for Black freedom.  Included in this section is Alma Thomas’s “March on Washington” (1964), inspired by Dr. King’s 1963 March that Thomas attended.

The exhibition’s striking main publicity image is “Ntozakhe II–Parktown” (2016), a photographic wall mural from a digital file by Zanele Muholi.

In addition to the art, the National Gallery is offering a vast array of live performances, films, and lectures to accompany the exhibition.  As NGA Director Kaywin Feldman explains, the museum’s intention is “to appeal to and represent the art history of a large, multiethnic population.”

 
Unlike its usual priority on scholarship and aesthetic greatness, the NGA in this exhibition has highlighted history and social context. The challenge for this traditional cultural institution as it is for others is how to successfully integrate these inclusive stories with older artistic priorities that remain essential. 

By Amy Henderson, Contributing Editor

                                                                   
AFRO-ATLANTIC HISTORIES will be open at the National Gallery through July 17, 2022. It will travel to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from Dec. 11, 2022 through April 30, 2023, and then on to the Dallas Museum of Art.  A catalogue of the same name is available at nga.gov.