Exhibiting Slavery and Representing Black Lives—Art Museums and the Legacies of the Dutch Slave Trade: Curating Histories, Envisioning Futures (Part 1)
Friday, 9 April 2021 – 1:00pm – 3:00pm EST
Curators will discuss their work on groundbreaking projects in the Netherlands and the United States, namely the Rijksmuseum’s current Slavery exhibition, the Rembrandthuis Museum’s exhibition Here: Black in Rembrandt’s Time, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s reinstallation of its permanent collection, and the Museums Are Not Neutral initiative. They will reflect on the broader call for museums to recognize the relationship of their collections to slavery and to present-day racial injustice.
Art Museums and the Legacies of the Dutch Slave Trade
This is the first session of Art Museums and the Legacies of the Dutch Slave Trade: Curating Histories, Envisioning Futures, presented by the Center for Netherlandish Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Harvard Art Museums, and Harvard University’s Department of History of Art and Architecture. This four-part program explores efforts by art museums to deploy their spaces and their collections—which are often enmeshed with colonialism and exploitation—to present more complete narratives of and perspectives on slavery and its legacies.
Art Museums and the Legacies of the Dutch Slave Trade: Curating Histories, Envisioning Futures is organized by Sarah Mallory, Kéla Jackson, and Rachel Burke, all doctoral students in Harvard University’s Department of History of Art and Architecture, and Joanna Sheers Seidenstein, the Stanley H. Durwood Foundation Curatorial Fellow in the Division of European and American Art, at the Harvard Art Museums.
Program
Welcome
Christopher Atkins, Van Otterloo-Weatherbie Director, Center for Netherlandish Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Introductions
Sarah Mallory, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University
“The Rijksmuseum and Slavery”
Maria Holtrop, Curator of History, Rijksmuseum
“Black Presence in 17th-Century Western Art”
Stephanie Archangel, Junior Curator, History Department, Rijksmuseum
“Reflections on Re-envisioning LACMA’s Permanent Collection”
Diva Zumaya, Assistant Curator, European Painting and Sculpture, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
“Possibilities of Imagining Otherwise”
La Tanya S. Autry, cultural organizer, co-producer of Museums Are Not Neutral, founder of the Black Liberation Center, and independent curator
Registration and information
This program will take place online via Zoom. Free admission, but registration is required. To register, please complete this online form. For instructions on how to join a meeting in Zoom, please click here. If you have any questions, please contact am_register@harvard.edu.
For the other sessions in this series see:
Part 2, Friday, April 16, 1pm EST
Part 3, Friday, April 23, 11am EST
Part 4, Friday, April 23, 1pm EST
Separate registration is required for each portion of the program.