Whitewalling : art, race & protest in 3 acts

Whitewalling Art, race & protest in 3 acts

Aruna D'Souza

Book - 2018

In 2017, the Whitney Biennial included a painting by a white artist, Dana Schutz, of the lynched body of a young black child, Emmett Till. In 1979, anger brewed over a show at New York's Artists Space entitled Nigger Drawings. In 1969, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition Harlem on My Mind did not include a single work by a black artist. In all three cases, black artists and writers and their allies organized vigorous responses using the only forum available to them: public protest. 'Whitewalling: Art, Race, & Protest in 3 Acts' reflects on these three incidents in the long and troubled history of art and race in America. It lays bare how the art world - no less than the country at large - has persistently str...uggled with the politics of race, and the ways this struggle has influenced how museums, curators and artists wrestle with notions of free speech and the specter of censorship. 'Whitewalling' takes a critical and intimate look at these three "acts" in the history of the American art scene and asks: when we speak of artistic freedom and the freedom of speech, who, exactly, is free to speak?

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Subjects
Art and race > History.
Freedom and art > United States > 20th century.
African Americans in art > History.
African American art > History.
Racism in museum exhibits > History.
Museum exhibits > Social aspects > History.
Museum exhibits > Political aspects > History.
Published
New York : Badlands Unlimited [2018]
Language
English
Main Author
Aruna D'Souza (author)
Other Authors
Parker Bright (-), Pastiche Lumumba
Physical Description
149 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
9781943263141
  • List of illustrations
  • Setting the stage
  • Act 1. Open Casket, Whitney Biennial, 2017
  • Act 2. The Nigger Drawings, Artists Space, 1979
  • Act 3. Harlem on My Mind, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1969
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Art critic D'Souza (Cézanne's Bathers) provides an impressively nuanced exploration of the relationship between art and race in America in this account of three controversies from the New York City art world. In 2017, the curators of the Whitney Biennial exhibited white artist Dana Schutz's Open Casket, a painting of Emmett Till's disfigured body, precipitating a debate about censorship and the responsibilities of artists and institutions. In 1979, Artists Space, an independent art space in SoHo, displayed white artist Donald Newman's Nigger Drawings series, sparking an emotional back-and-forth between black artists, the gallery, and the wider art world about the meaning of open dialogue. And in 1969, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Harlem on My Mind exhibit provoked protests and dialogue about inclusion and museums' power to police their boundaries. In examining these three events side by side, D'Souza lays bare the "contradiction at the heart of our idea of open dialogue: while it seems to depend on the idea of leaving open space for ambiguity, uncertainty, and the contingent, it is grounded in... de facto limits of who can speak and what can be said." Though navigating this work is demanding, this book could become an essential primer in discussions about exclusion, free speech, and the power of institutions in the art world and outside it. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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