Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum

Epilogue: Harlem on My Mind

 ePilogUe Harlem on My Mind I in January 2008, a friend and fellow art historian sent me an e-mail telling me that Harlem on My Mind was currently on view. Confused, I read the forwarded information about the exhibition being remounted at South Carolina State University, the historically Black university in Orangeburg. The exhibition was being installed in two parts over a six-month period. I knew I had to go see the show. After the initial heat of the original 1969 exhibition subsided, the photo murals were donated to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, where some were displayed as decoration in one of the reading rooms. Other panels were donated to the I. P. Stanback Museum and Planetarium at South Carolina State, where professors used them as illustrations in their teaching for many years. In 2008, the recently hired director and assistant professor in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts, Ellen Zisholtz, remounted the exhibition. As part of the celebration of the reinstallation, the exhibition catalogue was printed for the fourth time, this time including a quotation of approval on the cover from President Bill Clinton and a new introduction by New York Congressman Charles B. Rangel. Opening events included a book signing of the new catalogue with Allon Schoener. I went to Orangeburg to see the second half of the exhibition. It was conclUsion  incredible to see so many of the images in person after studying the photographs during my research. The missing and peeling corners on many of the panels that bowed away from the walls told of their discarded history and journey away from the Met. I was pleased that the photographs were on view at an educational institution where students could learn firsthand from the objects in the first blockbuster exhibition in America, and one of the most provocative. However, I was surprised and disappointed to see that there was no wall text that informed viewers about the embattled discourse surrounding the exhibition. The director’s statement didn’t tell of the opportunity available in the reinstallation to learn about the culture wars, Black artists, activism, institutional racism, and the art world. Walking through the exhibition, one could see no sign that its history had ever happened. Void of context, the show was a celebration of mid-century pictures of riots, Black protest, 1960s icons, and closely cropped portraits of Harlem residents. It was Schoener’s and Hoving’s Harlem after all. The Black voices of the exhibition were silenced again. The installation and republication of the catalogue made an attempt nearly forty years after the original exhibition to validate the show—this time in a historically Black institution. What was at stake in remounting this exhibition in 2008? Why is it important to insist on a White vision and authorship of Harlem even at this historically Black university? Zisholtz’s statement for the exhibition was printed on a text panel. In it she wrote: . . . I have always felt that there is an affinity between the Jewish and Black communities. The controversy surrounding this exhibit in 99 has made me think. Some of the distress resulted from an article written by a 7-year-old girl, which was said to have anti-Semitic overtones. It is interesting that the first exhibition of harlem on My Mind and this exhibition were both curated by Jewish persons, and one of the major photographers in the exhibition is Aaron Siskind. It strikes me that if someone other than a liberal Jew was the editor of the first edition, the comments which were taken as anti-Semitic would not have made it to publication. Freedom of speech is important to us. . . . If, as I believe, the Jewish and the African American peoples have much in common and an affinity of values, what causes the rifts? Are we being manipulated into not working together? We can be powerful. Will we ever get together and stop those who seek to prevent us from uniting? Zisholtz’s statement was both a way of introducing herself to visitors and introducing the show. The controversy that she refers to only points toward part of the story. Framed in a “Can we all get along?” question about rela-  conclUsion tionships between Jewish and African American cultures, the voice of the Black artist was lost. Unless the history of the exhibition were made part of its...