2024 Elizabeth and Irwin Warren Folk Art Symposium - Day 2 - Closing Conversation

March 8. 2024
“The Picture Is Still Out There”: Reframing Black Presence in the Collections of Early American Art and Material Culture
“…Even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw, is still out there,” says one of Toni Morrison’s characters in her masterpiece Beloved. Reflecting on this process of Black “re-memory,” the symposium “The Picture Is Still Out There’: Reframing Black Presence in the Collections of Early American Art and Material Culture” presents curatorial practices and scholarship that affirm African American presence in early American art and material culture.
The two-day online symposium is organized in connection with the exhibition Unnamed Figures: Black Presence and Absence in the Early American North, on view from November 15, 2023-March 24, 2024. Drawing inspiration from the research behind this exhibition, the symposium serves as a platform for a broader consideration of museum practices in relation to folk art, early American history, and issues of anti-Black racism.
Art scholars, museum curators, and public historians - including exhibition co-curators Emelie Gevalt, RL Watson and Sadé Ayorinde as well as Janine Boldt, Alexandra Chan, Anne Strachan Cross, Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, Michael Hartman, Elizabeth S. Humphrey, Tiffany Momon, Marc Howard Ross, Jennifer Van Horn and Jill Vaum Rothschild - are invited to gather, share, and discuss their efforts in celebrating and reframing the early contributions of African American individuals to the field of art. Talks will consider early material culture from global and historically marginalized perspectives, acknowledging gaps in history, knowledge, and care. This virtual symposium will also present new methods of preserving, acquiring, and exhibiting that address colonialist and racist ideologies while rethinking accountability, transparency, and language choices in interpretation. This will be a unique opportunity to approach the colonial past and its continuities in museums and public institutions.
CLOSING CONVERSATION
1:30 pm - 3:00 pm EDT
Speakers:
Emelie Gevalt, Curatorial Chair for Collections and Curator of Folk Art, AFAM
RL Watson, Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies, Lake Forest College
Sadé Ayorinde, Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum