1/30/2022
New Exhibit Looks to Art as a Tool of Resistance to Anti-Black Violence
Historians in the Newstags: African American history, art, Black History Month
A new exhibit at Northwestern University is exploring America’s race relations dating back to the early 1800s.
“A Site of Struggle: American Art against Anti-Black Violence” spotlights the country’s racism in a visual history lesson, showcasing the intersection of violence and art, while also encouraging reflection.
With more than 60 works across various mediums, the exhibit takes visitors through American history starting in the 1890s and ending in 2013 with the start of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“Black art has always been a part of how history has been communicated,” said Leslie Harris, a history professor at Northwestern University.
For instance, Harris says art was always critical to the anti-slavery movement.
“From a very early time, artists were engaged in the politics of making it known there was an injustice happening,” Harris said. “That was at a time when you had lower literacy rates. So people had to rely on visuals to reach larger audiences, because not everyone was reading the paper or picking up books.”
Janet Dees, curator of the exhibition, said it seeks to show the various strategies artists have used to engage with the topic.
comments powered by Disqus
News
- Josh Hawley Earns F in Early American History
- Does Germany's Holocaust Education Give Cover to Nativism?
- "Car Brain" Has Long Normalized Carnage on the Roads
- Hawley's Use of Fake Patrick Henry Quote a Revealing Error
- Health Researchers Show Segregation 100 Years Ago Harmed Black Health, and Effects Continue Today
- Nelson Lichtenstein on a Half Century of Labor History
- Can America Handle a 250th Anniversary?
- New Research Shows British Industrialization Drew Ironworking Methods from Colonized and Enslaved Jamaicans
- The American Revolution Remains a Hotly Contested Symbolic Field
- Untangling Fact and Fiction in the Story of a Nazi-Era Brothel